Kinesics
Kinesics is the interpret1ation of body language such as facial expression and gestures or more formally non-verbal behaviour related to movement, either part or whole part of your body. Kinesics was first used by Ray Birdwhistell (1952).
Body Language
Body language is a form of non-verbal communication which consists of actions or movements by the speaker. Example gesture, facial expressions and eye movements. Human send and receive body language subconsciously. They provide clues as to the attitude or state of mind of a person like whether aggressive, relaxed, pleasure etc
Importance of body language
– Gives the speaker the extent to which their audience is accepting or not accepting the message they sending
– It also provides instant feedback
– Reveals the speaker’s attitude and feeling about the message being send
Note: even though it gives instant feedback, if a speaker is not aware or insensitive of body language, then his/her communication is wasted.
The non-verbal messages of a speaker tend to reveal the degree of presence of sincerity, conviction, honesty, ability and knowledge and they also reveal a lot about the speaker. The same goes with the receiver of the message. It follows that as a good reader of body language you need to sharpen your powers of observation and your ability to decode messages. You need to be more aware of the presence of these messages and their possible meanings. For you to be effectively alert of non-verbal communication, you should be alert of the available feedback so that you can use your other communication techniques if the feedback tells you is necessary
Types of Body language
- Space – just as silence and time speak so does space. Not only does space affect the way we communicate but we also use space to communicate. We all use our space in the we feel its our own example we complain about “someone’s sitting in my chair”, like in families “dad’s chair” and normally we say dare to sit in it. Another instance is in offices, it is unthinkable for a subordinate to walk into a boss’s office and sit down in the boss’s chair, unless specifically invited to do so etc
Let’s look at some of the elements in space;
– Space and Status
– Territory
– Personal space
Personal space is the distance which we are prepared to interact with others; we normally called “space bubble”. We are prepared to vary our distance according to how well we know someone and the activity or type of communication taking place. For example, while you may be quite happy for a close friend or relative to carry on a fairly intimate conversation at very close quarters, you are likely to become very uneasy if a total stranger speaking on a very formal matter were to stand only one foot away from you.
These space bubbles or distance seem fall into fall into four types (each of which has close space and far space)
I. Intimate distance
II. Personal distance
III. Social distance
IV. Public distance
- Head nodes – the interpretation of head nodes (i.e. up or down movement of your head) is very diverse. In western countries, we shake our head up and down to indicate interest or to encourage another person in what they are saying. It is one of the qualities of a good-listener. It is also one of the non-verbal signs that we use to control or synchronise speech when we are conversing with other peoples. In most cases, head nodes have different meaning in most countries:
– In India, head node means no or a disagreement
– In Britain it means permission to go on etc
- Eye Movements – the movements of the eyes have an effect quite out of the proportion to the physical effort exerted. Eye movements are quite uncontrollable but send out very strong messages which are unaware of all the time. The movement of the eyes perform a number of important functions in social interaction.
– To Indicate interest
– To gain feedback
– To synchronise speech
– To show attraction
- Gestures – it can be define as the movement of our body parts – hands, arms, legs and feet. It is the mostly commonly thought method of body language. The famous type of gesture is people who “talks with their hands”. The kinds of meaning conveyed by gestures are certainly too numerous, but in general gestures serve the following functions:
– Communicating information i.e. for instance a Hand-raise signifies greetings
– Communicating emotion
– Supporting speech
– Expressing self image and
– Expressing relationship
- Orientation and Posture – orientation is defined as the way someone position him/herself when speaking to someone like in an interview.
Posture likewise explains how the speaker moves or stands using his body whether dormant or sub massive.
Normally we can often influence communication by the way we stand and position we adopt. Experts have written various thoughts about people’s attitude towards the way they stand and posture themselves. People who communicate always make a sense out of the way orientation and posture we choice. Bodily posture can communicate for instance dominant, submissive, shyness, inferiority, self-satisfaction etc. see textbook for different body posture and their meanings.
- Facial expressions – this is the non-verbal expression that we can control the most out of all the others. The facial expression can sometimes gives a full reaction of the individual like being surprise, disbelief, anger, etc. you can always decode somebody’s feelings by looking at his face.
- Touch – haptic communication is the means by which people communicate via touching. Touch is an important sense for human communication especially to children. Touch is closely related to the idea of personal space. The communication of touch depends on the timing and instance of communicating. The ideology of touch was developed by fetus.
Uses of touch:
– It has a functional or professional use
– It shows friendship
– Its use for love expression
– A good weapon for social or political issues