Philosophers and scientists have connected human physical behaviour with meaning, mood and
personality for thousands of years, but only in living memory has the study of body language
become as sophisticated and detailed as it is today.
Body language studies and written works on the subject are very sparse until the mid-1900s.
The first known experts to consider aspects of body language were probably the ancient Greeks,
notably Hippocrates and Aristotle, through their interest in human personality and behaviour,
and the Romans, notably Cicero, relating gestures to feelings and communications. Much of this
early interest was in refining ideas about oration - speech-making - given its significance to
leadership and government.
Isolated studies of body language appeared in more recent times, for example Francis Bacon in
Advancement of Learning, 1605, explored gestures as reflection or extension of spoken
communications. John Bulwer's Natural History of the Hand published in 1644, considered hand
gestures. Gilbert Austin's Chironomia in 1806 looked at using gestures to improve speech-
making.
Charles Darwin in the late 1800s could be regarded as the earliest expert to have made serious
scientific observation about body language, but there seems little substantial development of
ideas for at least the next 150 years.
Darwin's work pioneered much ethological thinking. Ethology began as the science of animal
behaviour. It became properly established during the early 1900s and increasingly extends to
human behaviour and social organization. Where ethology considers animal evolution and
communications, it relates strongly to human body language. Ethologists have progressively
applied their findings to human behaviour, including body language, reflecting the evolutionary
origins of much human non-verbal communication - and society's growing acceptance of
evolutionary rather than creationist theory. Austrian zoologist and 1973 Nobel Prizewinner
Konrad Lorenz (1903-89) was a founding figure in ethology. Desmond Morris, author of The
Naked Ape, discussed below, is an ethologist, as is the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins
(b. 1941) a leading modern thinker in the field. Ethology, like psychology, is an over-arching
science which continues to clarify the understanding of body language.
The popular and accessible study of body language as we know it today is very recent.
In his popular 1971 book 'Body Language', Julius Fast (1919-2008) wrote: "...kinesics [body
language] is still so new as a science that its authorities can be counted on the fingers of one
hand..."
Julius Fast was an American award winning writer of fiction and non-fiction work dealing
especially with human physiology and behaviour. His book Body Language was among the first
to bring the subject to a mainstream audience.
Significantly the references in Julius Fast's book (Birdwhistell, Goffman, Hall, Mehrabian,
Scheflen, etc - see body language references and books below) indicate the freshness of the
subject in 1971. All except one of Julius Fast's cited works are from the 1950s and 1960s.
The exception among Fast's contemporary influences was Charles Darwin, and specifically his
book The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, written in 1872, which is commonly
regarded as the beginnings of the body language science, albeit not recognised as such then.
Sigmund Freud and others in the field of psychoanalysis - in the late 1800s and early 1900s -
would have had good awareness of many aspects of body language, including personal space,
but they did not focus on non-verbal communications concepts or develop body language
theories in their own right. Freud and similar psychoanalysts and psychologists of that time were
focused on behaviour and therapeutic analysis rather than the study of non-verbal
communications per se.
A different view of human behaviour related to and overlapping body language, surfaced
strongly in Desmond Morris's 1967 book The Naked Ape, and in follow-up books such as
Intimate Behaviour, 1971. Morris, a British zoologist and ethologist, linked human behaviour -
much of it concerned with communications - to human 'animalistic' evolution. His work remains
a popular and controversial perspective for understanding people's behaviours, and while his
theories did not focus strongly on body language, Morris's popularity in the late 1960s and
1970s contributed significantly to the increasing interest among people beyond the scientific
community - for a better understanding of how and why we feel and act and communicate.
An important aspect of body language is facial expression, which is arguably one part of body
language for which quite early 'scientific' thinking can be traced:
Physiognomy is an obscure and related concept to body language. Physiognomy refers to
facial features and expressions which were/are said indicate the person's character or nature, or
ethnic origin.
The word physiognomy is derived from medieval Latin, and earlier Greek (phusiognominia),
which originally meant (the art or capability of) judging a person's nature from his/her facial
features and expressions. The ancient roots of this concept demonstrate that while body
language itself is a recently defined system of analysis, the notion of inferring human nature or
character from facial expression is extremely old.
Kinesics (pronounced 'kineesicks' with stress on the 'ee') is the modern scientific or technical
word for body language.
The word kinesics was first used in English in this sense in the 1950s, deriving from the Greek
word kinesis, meaning motion, and seems to have first been used by Dr Ray Birdwhistell, an
American 1950s researcher and writer on body language. (See references).
The introduction of a new technical word - (in this case, kinesics) - generally comes after the
establishment of the subject it describes, which supports the assertion that the modern concept
of body language - encompassing facial expressions and personal space - did not exist until the
1950s.
Proxemics is the technical term for the personal space aspect of body language. The word
was devised in the late 1950s or early 1960s by Edward Twitchell Hall, an American
anthropologist. The word is Hall's adaptation of the word proximity, meaning closeness or
nearness. (See personal space.)
From the word kinesics, Ray Birdwhistell coined the term kine to refer to a single body
language signal. This is not to be confused with the ancient and same word kine, meaning a
group of cows. Neither word seems to have caught on in a big way, which in one way is a pity,
but in another way probably makes matters simpler for anyone interested in the body language
of cows.
The Greek word kinesis is also a root word of kinaesthetics, which is the 'K' in the VAK ('see
hear feel') learning styles model.
Kinaesthetics (also known as kinesthetics) in the study of learning styles, is related to some of
the principles of body language, in terms of conveying meaning and information via physical
movement and experience.
Body language is among many branches of science and education which seek to interpret and
exploit messages and meaning from the 'touchy-feely' side of life.
For example, the concepts of experiential learning, games and exercises, and love and
spirituality at work - are all different perspectives and attempts to unlock and develop people's
potential using ideas centred around kinaesthetics, as distinct from the more tangible and easily
measurable areas of facts, figures words and logic.
These and similar methodologies do not necessarily reference body language directly, but there
are very strong inter-connections.
Bloom's Taxonomy, and Kolb's Learning Styles are also helpful perspectives in appreciating the
significance of kinaesthetics, and therefore body language, in life and work today.
The communications concepts of NLP (Neuro-linguistic Programming) and Transactional Analysis
are closely dependent on understanding body language, NLP especially.
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