Body Language: The Study of Kinesics

Body language is one of the many ways that individuals communicate to each other.  Body language, of course, is the way we talk to one another by using our body.  Body language incorporates many schools of communication techniques from the way we use our eyes in communication to the way we use our body distance to say something to someone else.  Some research even suggests that body language may be even more communicative than even the words we use!  We surely depend on our language skills to get our intended messages across to our communication partners, but body language is another strong way in which we ‘talk’ to others, for sure.

Studies on kinesics encompass the whole broad range of body language techniques we use to communicate with one another.  Kinesics specifically is the study of our movements, our facial expressions and the likes as evidence of body language communication measures.  Kinesics, as a concrete area of study, came about in the twentieth century and has been explored through many avenues and across many disciplines since its origin.  Birdwhistell is considered the father of the study as he really got it all going.  Since these origins, though, many other scholars have greatly expanded on our knowledge of body language and kinesics as we know it today.