"Sit up straight!!! You don't even look like you are paying attention!" How many times have you heard a teacher say that to students throughout your educational career? After thinking about this for a few moments, I began to realize that perhaps my body posture meant something, almost as if I was communicating through my body positioning.
My junior year of high school, I read the book ONE DAY IN THE LIFE OF IVAN DENISOVICH by Alexander Solzhenitsyn. The main premise of the book is one day in the life of a prisoner in a Siberian work camp. At one point in the book, Denisovich wakes feeling ill and goes to the infirmary to get excused from work that day. Upon visiting the infirmary, he takes a seat to wait his turn to see the doctor. He takes particular care to position his body to look as if he isn't familiar with the place, because repetitively sick inmates are often refused. Here is the passage...
Shukhov [the prisoner] was not one of those who hung around the dispensary. Vdovushkin [the receptionist] knew this. But in the morning he had the right to exempt from work two men only, and hed already exempted them-their names were written down under the glass-it was greenish-on his desk, and hed drawn a line across the page.
Shukhov sat on a bench near the wall, right at the very end, so that it nearly tipped it up. He sat in that uncomfortable way, involuntarily emphasizing that he was unfamiliar with the place and that hed come there on some minor matter.
Here in this passage, Solzhenitsyn is playing on the idea of nonverbal communication, using the body as the medium for the transmission of the communication. The idea of communicating ideas, thoughts, or emotions through body language is not a very far-fetched idea. In fact, many sociologists have devoted much time and research to explaining this concept. Two such sociologists are Tsutomu Kudoh and David Matsumoto. They believe that postures have been considered as an expressive medium for ones personality, and as a means of communicating certain types of information to other.
However, the idea that posture and body positioning can display specific meanings like Take out the trash or Clean your room is a bit too much. Rather, they believe, as I do too, that postures could communicate gross types of emotions (e.g. like-dislike) This would reserve the face for more specific emotions. This could explain why so many speech coaches place such emphasis on the use of body movement to highlight points throughout a speech.
In his article, Whats a Body to Do, Stephen Boyd elaborates on the importance of good posture while presenting a speech. He says, Posture reflects your self-confidence and enthusiasm for your subject. The difference that a good posture makes is the difference between a good presentation and a great presentation. Oftentimes, presenters fall victim to improper use of their hands throughout the presentation. According to Boyd, folding your arms while speaking shows that you are bored, tired, or indifferent. That is because this is a very closed body posture. By crossing your arms in front of you, it is as if you are blocking entrance to yourself and to what you are saying. This not only applies to speeches, but to personal interaction as well.
When interacting with other people, body posture is everything. How many times have you been told that it isnt what you say, but how you say it? Well, how you say it largely includes your body positioning. This aspect of communication is often taken for granted or simply overlooked. As stated above, crossing your arms in front of your body while interacting with someone is a nonverbal sign that you are either bored, tired, or indifferent, as Boyd puts it. Other nonverbal clues that could signify disinterest in the interaction include poor eye contact, facing away from the other person, and daydreaming.
However, the exact meaning of postures relies primarily on the other gestures and nonverbal cues that go along with it. Much like the handshake, posture never occurs in a vacuum. Rather, it is always accompanied by other nonverbal cues. Kudoh and Matsumoto believe that postures communicate particular meanings according to the combination of each of the important components that compose them. Now, as stated above, this doesnt mean that a person can tell a story through their body position, but they can convey some meaningful information.
Take the art of ballet and professional dance. Granted this is not a stationary posture, but it does involve using your body and positioning it so that you can convey some emotions or feelings to the observer. If it were true that posture was incapable of conveying meaning then there would be no point to studying or practicing ballet or dance. However, both forms are alive and well respected. The fact is that artistic dance, like ballet, relies on the concept of nonverbal communication through manipulation of the body in order to convey its message.
As you can see, the use of body posture to convey meaning is more complex than originally thought. Body postures can convey everything from personal emotions and feelings to personal interest in a subject in school. Furthermore, posture can even be used to determine the relationship between two people, even if you dont know them. The study of body posture is a section that I believe is a little overlooked in our current textbook. I hope this site has been beneficial to you, as well as entertaining. Enjoy the visual representations, courtesy of our President George W. Bush. |
