August 26, 2004
Body talk: Surely you gesture
The ContraCosta Times has an interesting article on Proxemics, the study of how people perceive and use the space around them founded in the 1950s by anthropologist Edward T. Hall - Hall observed that humans like to keep their distances from one another, and that those distances vary according to social interactions or cultural differences.
Related to cell phones and e-mail, Dr. William Pulte, anthropologist, linguist and associate professor in Southern Methodist University's Education Department, says:
"Body language is so deeply rooted in human nature that it's not endangered," he says, though some people are so absorbed in electronic messages that they may become less astute in judging the nonverbal kind.
But even if there's nobody to receive them, we still send them.
One of Pulte's students observed people talking on their cell phones. He reported about 20 percent of them still gesture and smile and nod as though someone else were actually there listening and watching."
Following my post of this story, Régine from near near future sent me a related study: Exploring the potential of gestures in mobile communication: How do we communicate emotional content through gestures over distance?
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