Kinesics And Context: Essays On Body-Motion Communication
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: No dust jacket
Pages: Good
Condition remarks: Condition as shown in image
Long before words are spoken, the body has already told its story — and Kinesics and Context: Essays on Body-Motion Communication by Ray L. Birdwhistell is the landmark work that first brought this truth into sharp academic focus. Birdwhistell, a pioneer in the field of kinesics — the systematic study of body movement as communication — presents a rigorous and groundbreaking collection of essays that argues human gesture, posture, facial expression, and movement are not random impulses but structured, learnable, and culturally embedded systems of meaning, as rule-governed as spoken language itself. Drawing on decades of fieldwork and multi-disciplinary research spanning anthropology, linguistics, and psychology, the author chronicles the development of a formal notation system for body motion and illustrates how these non-verbal signals operate in precise, context-dependent ways. Situated at the crossroads of anthropology and communication theory, this seminal collection reshaped how scholars understand human interaction, challenging the primacy of verbal language and positioning the body as a co-equal communicative instrument. Birdwhistell's prose is meticulous and authoritative, reflecting both the rigour of a scientist and the observational acuity of a cultural anthropologist, making Kinesics and Context essential reading for students of linguistics, psychology, sociology, and the performing arts. Decades after its first publication, its central question remains as urgent and unsettling as ever: how much of what we truly communicate are we even aware of saying?
Author: Ray L. Birdwhistell
Format: Paperback
Genre: Anthropology
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: No dust jacket
Pages: Good
Condition remarks: Condition as shown in image
Long before words are spoken, the body has already told its story — and Kinesics and Context: Essays on Body-Motion Communication by Ray L. Birdwhistell is the landmark work that first brought this truth into sharp academic focus. Birdwhistell, a pioneer in the field of kinesics — the systematic study of body movement as communication — presents a rigorous and groundbreaking collection of essays that argues human gesture, posture, facial expression, and movement are not random impulses but structured, learnable, and culturally embedded systems of meaning, as rule-governed as spoken language itself. Drawing on decades of fieldwork and multi-disciplinary research spanning anthropology, linguistics, and psychology, the author chronicles the development of a formal notation system for body motion and illustrates how these non-verbal signals operate in precise, context-dependent ways. Situated at the crossroads of anthropology and communication theory, this seminal collection reshaped how scholars understand human interaction, challenging the primacy of verbal language and positioning the body as a co-equal communicative instrument. Birdwhistell's prose is meticulous and authoritative, reflecting both the rigour of a scientist and the observational acuity of a cultural anthropologist, making Kinesics and Context essential reading for students of linguistics, psychology, sociology, and the performing arts. Decades after its first publication, its central question remains as urgent and unsettling as ever: how much of what we truly communicate are we even aware of saying?