ABSTRACT
Although largely self-explanatory, it should be stressed how large a part of communication is non-verbal. Even speech is accompanied by a host of what linguists call ‘paralinguistic features’ such as intonation, facial expression, body posture, hand gestures, and touching, which variously communicate our attitudes to the listener and the message itself, our emotional state and sincerity, etc. In fact, conversations overtly about one topic can covertly be about something quite different being communicated non-verbally. Hand gestures and body posture (‘body language’) convey a wide range of messages of course, but NVC extends in principle as far as our mode of dress and general appearance. As a research topic in Psychology, NVC emerged in the late 1950s (Ruesch and Kees, 1956) but did not take off until the 1970s (e.g. Siegman and Feldstein, 1978). The majority of Psychological research focuses on conversation and facial expression (often closely integrated). This may be aimed at developing ways of enhancing the social skills of those who are poor at ‘reading’ NVC. There are of course numerous popular works aspects of the topic, right down to magazine articles on the signals that someone fancies you.
