Use Of Paralanguage And Kinesics In Everyday Life Essay -- essays rese

Use of Paralanguage and Kinesics in Everyday Life The use of kinesics and paralanguage in everyday life is the most prominent use of persuasion we use subconsciously. They are used subconsciously because you may not know what they mean. Which can cause cultural tension if you do something that may seem harmless to you but may be a great insult to another culture. Paralanguage has many forms such as whistling which can be used by many people as a means of entertaining by whistling a song or even in American culture used to hound women on the streets because they appear to be attractive. These two uses of persuasion I will discuss about in my paper. I will discuss the history of both and also how they are used today in everyday life. To start of with I will define kinesics. Kinesics is articulation of the body, or movement resulting from muscular and skeletal shift. This includes all actions, physical or physiological, automatic reflexes, posture, facial expressions, gestures, and other body movements. Body language, body idiom, gesture language, organ language and kinesic acts are just some terms used to depict kinesics. In ways that body language works in nonverbal acts, body language parallels paralanguage. Kinesic acts may substitute for language, accompany it, or modify it. Kinesic acts may be lexical or informative and directive in nature, or they may be emotive or empathic movements. Posture is one of the components of kinesics. Posture is broken down into three basic positions: bent knees, lying down, and standing. Artists and mimes have always been aware of the range of communication possible through body stance. But there are some cultural differences in posture positions. Most people use the bent knee position to eat, but while the Romans used to eat lying down. Prince Peter of Greece and Denmark described the sleeping posture of the Tibetans before World War II. He said that the local men slept outside at night huddled around the fire, hunched over on their knees with their faces resting in their palms. In 1932, William James did a study of expression of bodily posture. He recognized the relationship of facial expression, gesture, and posture. He declared that studying each one independently was justified for the purpose of analysis, but they should be re... ...ell, and variations of it as expressed by the scream, shout, roar, howl, bellow, squeal, holler, shriek, or screech, are effective non-speech communications, difficult to describe technically, and almost impossible to duplicate the effect of in other kinds of communication media. The Confederate Yell, during the Civil War, was a ulant yell that was the signal for the Confederate troops to charge at the enemies. The use of paralanguage in today's society is very prominent. We use paralanguage with children when we tell them to be quiet by saying "shush." If we see something disgusting we can make a gagging sound which shows disapproval. We also use kinesics today a lot too. We use the "O.K." sign to signal that everything is fine. We even have body language for vulgar words that many people today seem to use a lot. The study of these two topics can help a lot in understanding what people are really saying in today's society. Without the understanding of kinesics or paralanguage we would not be able to help bridge the gap between certain cultures or even each other. We need these two non- -verbal communication techniques to survive.