Nonverbal Communication - History

History

The first scientific study of nonverbal communication was Charles Darwin's book The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals. He argued that all mammals reliably show emotion in their faces. Seventy years later Silvan Tomkins (1911–1991) began his classic studies on human emotions in Affects Imagery Consciousness volumes 1-4. Rudolf Laban (1879–1958) and Warren Lamb (1923-) raised body movement analysis in the world of dance to a high level. Studies now range across a number of fields, including, linguistics, semiotics and social psychology. Another large influence in nonverbal communication was Birdwhistell. “ Anthropologist Ray Birdwhistell pioneered the original study of nonverbal communication—what he called ‘kinesics.’ He estimated that the average person actually speaks words for a total of about ten or eleven minutes a day and that the average sentence takes only about 2.5 seconds. Birdwhistell also estimated we can make and recognize around 250,000 facial expressions.”

Read more about this topic:  Nonverbal Communication

Famous quotes containing the word history:

    While the Republic has already acquired a history world-wide, America is still unsettled and unexplored. Like the English in New Holland, we live only on the shores of a continent even yet, and hardly know where the rivers come from which float our navy.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    America is, therefore the land of the future, where, in the ages that lie before us, the burden of the World’s history shall reveal itself. It is a land of desire for all those who are weary of the historical lumber-room of Old Europe.
    Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)

    The myth of independence from the mother is abandoned in mid- life as women learn new routes around the mother—both the mother without and the mother within. A mid-life daughter may reengage with a mother or put new controls on care and set limits to love. But whatever she does, her child’s history is never finished.
    Terri Apter (20th century)