Dancing – The Art of Non Verbal Communication and the Science Behind the Message.
Charlie Becker
Robert Adams
English 102
30 October 2013
Dancing – The Art of Non Verbal Communication and the Science Behind the Message.
Dance is a unique social interaction that sends both intentional and unintentional messages. Dance is a part of American culture and is important because it’s used as a way to socialize, flirt, and attract others (Lovatt). As a dancer myself, I have always thought of dancing as the best form of nonverbal communication, other than sex, and you can dance in public.
Believed to be important in the courtship of a variety of species, including humans,
Dr. Peter Lovatt noted in his blog Sex and Dancing that Charles Darwin believed that dance was part of the mate selection process. “More recently two groups of researchers, Brown et al., 2005 and Fink et al., 2007, suggest that the way we dance might be influenced by our hormonal and genetic makeup, and that we use dance to communicate the quality of our genes to potential mates” (Lovatt).
Igor Ristić is a graduate student working on a PhD in Communication Studies at the University of Kansas. In Dancing as Non Verbal Communication, he states that “we do not talk, read or write for 24 hours a day, yet we are always communicating nonverbally. We cannot not communicate. Even silence is sending a very strong nonverbal message, i.e. the silent treatment. Nonverbal communication uses anything but words.” So, what is this chemistry that happens without words?
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. Allan and Barbara Pease cite that another large influence in nonverbal communication was Ray Birdwhistell, who 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
Robert Adams
English 102
30 October 2013
Dancing – The Art of Non Verbal Communication and the Science Behind the Message.
Dance is a unique social interaction that sends both intentional and unintentional messages. Dance is a part of American culture and is important because it’s used as a way to socialize, flirt, and attract others (Lovatt). As a dancer myself, I have always thought of dancing as the best form of nonverbal communication, other than sex, and you can dance in public.
Believed to be important in the courtship of a variety of species, including humans,
Dr. Peter Lovatt noted in his blog Sex and Dancing that Charles Darwin believed that dance was part of the mate selection process. “More recently two groups of researchers, Brown et al., 2005 and Fink et al., 2007, suggest that the way we dance might be influenced by our hormonal and genetic makeup, and that we use dance to communicate the quality of our genes to potential mates” (Lovatt).
Igor Ristić is a graduate student working on a PhD in Communication Studies at the University of Kansas. In Dancing as Non Verbal Communication, he states that “we do not talk, read or write for 24 hours a day, yet we are always communicating nonverbally. We cannot not communicate. Even silence is sending a very strong nonverbal message, i.e. the silent treatment. Nonverbal communication uses anything but words.” So, what is this chemistry that happens without words?
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. Allan and Barbara Pease cite that another large influence in nonverbal communication was Ray Birdwhistell, who 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