Book Description

"How much do we communicate with words, and how much with gestures, posture, and movement? What can we learn from the study of nonverbal behavior? Is it really possible - or desirable - to "read" body language? Flora Davis set out on a one-and-one-half-year odyssey to universities and mental hospitals interviewing anthropologists, psychologists, ethologists, sociologists, and psychiatrists to find the answers to these questions. What she discovered is that words are often the least important part of a conversation. By the way people move and hold their bodies they supply a whole emotional undercurrent. They may court, or maneuver for status, or contradict what they're saying verbally. Their body movements can be a tip-off to social status and cultural differences and an expression of maleness or femaleness as well as projection of personal style. We all "read" these signals intuitively and respond to them, usually without being at all conscious that we're doing so. But now scientists working with slow-motion films have learned to translate much of this language of the body. The nonverbal "language" is as complex and subtle as the verbal one: it is not really possible to say that any one particular gesture or posture always means the same thing. Yet an awareness of the multiplicity of meanings that lies beyond words can, in Flora Davis' view, bring us into closer touch with ourselves and with one another." -- from book flap.