Week 5

• Proxemics


  The amount of space that people feel necessary to put between themselves and others as they interact
• Categories of proxemics


  • Physical territory
  • Personal territory
• Types of personal territory

  • Public space (12-25 feet)
  • Social space (4-10 feet)
  • Personal space (2-4 feet)
  • Intimate space (1 foot or less)
• Physical distance between people

  Related to their social distance
• People who know each other very well often communicate in the intimate space, which is about 1.5 feet away from each other, whereas acquaintances will usually communicate about 12 feet from each other
• Factors that affect proxemics


  • Culture
  • Gender
  • Social setting
  • Individual preference
• In U.S. grocery stores it is considered polite to leave the person in front of you in line plenty of personal space, whereas in China it is common to leave less than a two-foot gap
• Chronemics


  A field of study examining the utilization of time in nonverbal communication
• Perceptions of time in chronemics


  • Mood transmission
  • Attention span
  • Power relationships
• Types of cultures based on time perception

  • Monochronic cultures
  • Polychronic cultures
• Monochronic cultures


  • Appreciate doing one task at a time without interruption or tardiness
  • Believe time is linear
  • Value punctuality, brevity, and adherence to plans made in advance
  • View time as a resource
• Polychronic cultures


  • See time as fluid and malleable
  • Have interrupted meetings, flexible schedules, and higher values placed on people and relationships over punctuality and deadlines
  • Tend to keep open schedules, often altering plans without notice and "double-booking" themselves
  • More susceptible to distractions and open to interruption but better at focusing on many tasks at once
  • Prefer to keep their time unstructured, changing from one activity to another as the mood takes them
• Kinesics


  The study of how body movements and gestures serve as a means of nonverbal communication
• Through body movements, it is possible to send signals, such as leaning forward when someone is talking to show you are engaged and listening
• Posture


  The position in which someone holds their body when standing or sitting, which can be interpreted as nonverbal communication
• Posture can be used to determine a participant's degree of attention or involvement, the difference in status between communicators, and the level of fondness a person has for the other communicator
• Gesture


  A form of non-verbal communication, a distinguished physical movement that is an expression of inner thoughts and emotions
• Gestures


  • Full-body expressions such as dancing or hugging
  • Smaller gestures in the hands or arms such as a slap across the face
  • Facial gestures such as scrunching of the face to convey discomfort or disgust
• Gestures vary widely across cultures, just as vastly as spoken language
• Gestures of anger


  • Holding up your middle finger in the U.S.
  • Hand flick under the chin in Spain and Latin America
  • Thumbs up in Iran and Iraq
• Haptics


  The sense of touch and touching capabilities
• Types of haptic communication

  • Positive touches
  • Playful touches
  • Control touches
  • Ritualistic touches
  • Hybrid touches
  • Task-related touches
  • Accidental touches
• Haptic perception


  The recognition of an object by touching it, involving the combination of the senses in the skin, the position of the hand, and conformation
• Haptic perception is particularly useful for the blind who may rely entirely upon touch in order to identify an object since they cannot see it
• In the United States it is usually a form of positive touching when you pat someone's head, but in the Thai culture, it is rude to touch someone's head
• Eye contact

  One of the most important forms of nonverbal communication between people
• In America, someone who is unable to maintain eye contact is seen as unconfident, shy, or submissive, whereas in some Arab countries, a person who is unable to maintain eye contact is seen as disrespectful
• In South Asia, extended eye contact may be viewed as challenging, rude, and aggressive, and in the Islamic faith, Muslims often lower their gaze and do not look at the opposite gender's eyes after the initial greeting
• In English-speaking cultures, a certain amount of eye contact is required in daily social situations, but too much eye contact can have misdirected meaning, often misinterpreted
• Sign language


  A formal language using a system of hand gestures and movements, typically replacing vocalization, and is the dominant language for the deaf community
• Sign language is actually one of the quickest ways for children to learn how to communicate as well, as picking up on motions and symbols is a much easier thing for children to do than make sounds
• American Sign Language is an intricate language that uses signs made with the hands and other movements such as facial expressions and postures of the body, and is the fourth most commonly used language in the United States
• ASL originated when Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet, an apprentice lawyer, and Laurent Clerc, a prominent deaf man who was fluent in French Sign Language, founded the American School for the Deaf, the first of its kind in the U.S., and in 1817 the school would witness seven students become the first class to graduate
• ASL was not recognized as a legitimate language until the 1960s, prior to which it was considered a broken, limited form of the English language