Doubt has occasionally been expressed as to whether a laugh is a piece of non-verbal behaviour or whether it is close enough to being a word (as other exclamations often are) to be considered to be verbal. We shall regard it for our purposes here as non-verbal. Laughter usually follows on from, or may accompany, smiles and grins. It can be graded from the quietest chuckle or slight giggle to the most raucous of belly laughs. Laughter is also infectious. When one person in a company starts laughing, it is very difficult for the others to avoid following suit. And why should they? For laughter lifts the spirits.
Since we are concerned here with �inding ways of improving our use of body language it is worth considering the laugh as an aid to this end. You should, where you reasonably can, encourage laughter. If you have the facility to make people laugh, use it; if you have not, at least encourage those who have. As long as there is an emphasis on laughing with, rather than at, the results should be entirely positive and beneficial. All you have to avoid is an inane, pointless cackle. Friendly, convivial laughter should not be too difficult to find.
Exercises and experiments
1 Er, ah, urn
Select one or two public speakers, lecturers or speakers on television. Record the number and types of speech errors they make. Which is the one that each is most prone to make? You should usually find that nearly every speaker has a favourite speech error. ' Er' is by far the most common.
1 24 2 Party political broadcast
Watch several party political broadcasts on television and see if you can identify the favourite facial expression, body movement, posture, and so on of each politician. Compile a list of typical non-verbal behaviours associated with each party. Compare and contrast them. Which parties are most similar to each other in styles? Which are the furthest apart? Is it possible to tell what a person's political opinions are likely to be from their body language?
3
Keep stillUsing a tape recorder and standing in front of a mirror, record a short talk on a subject you know well. Try to make the talk without any body language at all. Is it possible? If it is, is it easy? You may very well find this exercise virtually impossible to carry out.
4 There's a call for you
Observe people telephoning. How close is their body language to what it would be if they were conversing face to face? Which kinds of body language can be communicated by telephone and which cannot? Are any non-verbal behaviours more exaggerated when telephoning than in face-to-face encounters? Do any never occur?
...
:e
In this chapter you will learn:
• about cultural d ifferences in
the use of body language
• some of the more u nusual,
unexpected and significant differences.
Body language, as you should be aware by now, is complex enough when you are dealing with people from your own culture, but when you encounter those from other cultures it becomes fraught with difficulties. Things can so very easily go unintentionally wrong that we shall find it useful to consider some of the principal difficulties and some of the ways in which they can be avoided.
Edward Hall tells of instances in which inappropriate non-verbal behaviour, coupled with general cultural insensitivity, can cause poor communication and can even cause communication to break down altogether. One example describes some negotiations between American and Greek officials, which had reached stalemate. Later examination revealed that the American habit of being outspoken and forthright was regarded by the Greeks as indicating a lack of finesse, which made them reluctant to negotiate. Further, the Americans wanted to limit the length of meetings and to reach agreement on general principles first, leaving the details to be sorted out by sub-committees. This the Greeks saw as a device to pull the wool over their eyes, since the Greek practice is to work out details in front of all concerned and to continue meetings for as long as necessary.
Another example concerns the use of time. An American attache new to a Latin country tried to arrange a meeting with the minister who was his opposite number. All kinds of cues came back that the time was not yet ripe for such a meeting. The American persisted and was eventually reluctantly granted an appointment. When he arrived, he was asked to wait in an outer office. The time of the appointment came and went. After 15 minutes, he asked the minister's secretary to make sure the minister knew he was waiting. Time passed. Twenty minutes, 25 minutes, 30 minutes, 45 minutes. At this point, he jumped up and told the secretary he had been 'cooling his heels' for long enough and that he was 'damned sick and tired' of this kind of treatment. His stay in the country was not a happy one. He had forgotten that a 45-minute waiting time in that country was no greater than a five minute waiting time in America.
Effective cross-cultural communication is so important in the modern world that breakdowns like these need to be studied for the lessons they can teach us. They also make it increasingly important that people who live and work in countries other than their own should be given training in the local body languages as well as the local spoken language.
1 28 Exercise: Black and White body language
Select five Black men and five Black women to observe. Also select five White men and five White women. If you cannot find this number, conduct the observation with as many as you can find. If you live in an area which is not multiracial, select your subjects for observation from television programmes.
Record in your notebook, or on tape, clothing styles, including colours, formality of clothing, patterns, and so on. Record as much detail as you can about eye contact patterns, facial expressions, gestures, proximity and bodily contact.
When you have collected as much information as you reasonably can, analyze it. What seem to be the main differences between Blacks and Whites in the use of body language? What are the similarities? What differences are there between the sexes?
Exercise review
It is quite possible that you will have collected a rich amount of data which will repay careful analysis and tell you many things about how different races and different cultures interact. Some of the things you may have noticed are:
1 Whites typically spend about half the time in eye contact and half the time looking away; Blacks tend not to look at the other person when listening.
2 The facial expressions of Black people are less restrained than those of Whites.
3 Black people use more palms-upward hand movements than Whites.
4 A limp stance and lowered head indicate submissiveness when used by White people; when used by Blacks this indicates that the individual has switched off and is not attending to the speaker. 5 White people do not touch each other except in greetings; Blacks
do more touching, especially of arms and shoulders during conversation.
6 Black people choose more vivid colours and stronger patterns for their clothing than Whites.