kinesics

is non-verbal communication through posture, gesture, stance, and movement which carries from 65-70% of a conversation's meaning and makes social personality not a discourse of words, but a temporo-spatial system.

Coined by anthropologist Ray Birdwhistell in 1952, it is the study of 'different levels of communication not clearly seen otherwise. Bateson and Margaret Mead joined this study that argued that 'all movements of the body have meaning (i.e. are not accidental), and that these non-verbal forms of language (or paralanguage) have a grammar that can be analyzed in similar terms to spoken language. Thus, a 'kineme' is 'similar to a phoneme because it consist of a group of movements which are not identical, but which may be used interchangeably without affecting social meaning'. (Knapp 1972:94-95) Birdwhistell estimated that 'no more than 30 to 35 percent of the social meaning of a conversation or an interaction is carried by the words.' (Birdwhistell, 1985: 158). . In short, the argument is that social personality is a temporo-spatial system.

kinesics, n.All

kinesics