Body Expression

Umaima Sayyid Ali 12/13/2011

Tongue language is usually insufficient to achieve effective communication due to various reasons such as different in languages, word pronunciation and others. Thus it is difficult to pass a clear message which will be understood by two different people. Therefore people attempt to use some different body expression to express their emotional feelings and full meanings to understand each other in a better way as part of the effective communication. Body expression is a different language from the standard tongue language where as it is more of a visual language used by all humans beings to pass their non verbal massages. There are different types of body languages which are used to express the requirements and the desires. The meaning of Body Language as refers to the revised definition on 2005 by The Oxford English Dictionary: "Body language is noun and means the conscious and unconscious movements and postures by which attitudes and feelings are communicated e.g.: his intent was clearly expressed in his body language.", as well mentioned that it is used as a tool, rather than it being an unconscious consequence with no particular intention. http://www.businessballs.com/body-language.htm Body language is considered to be relatively important in comparison to the tongue language. Studding body language has become very popular in recent years with business managements, in order to understand their employees as well as clients' bodily gestures and facial expressions to act accordingly and grab their attention. Therefore, better understanding of the body language may lead to a better human understanding with an effective control over humans. A successful leader must have a good knowledge of body language to be able to analyze, respond and to communicate efficiently with the co-workers and the clients to run a successful business and achieve a good work. Hence, body language has a strong influencing on attracting the listeners and refers to Albert Mehrabian, a professor of psychology at UCLA, did studies on body language and become known for his 55%, 38%, 7% rule of communication, Mehrabian has found that people while having a face to face communication they are influencing the listeners only 7% by using the words, 38% by the tone of voice and the most influencing tool was the body language which covered 55%.

Communication Skills
Words Tone of Voice 38% 7% Body language

55%

Similar to the tongue language which have common and different languages, the body language have various languages depending upon peoples countries, cultures and behaviors. Moreover there are some basic common body languages which are considered to be as gifts from the God which are called inborn language and used mainly by new born babies and blind people, as it has been concluded by Allan, Pease, B. "Most of the basic communication signals are the same all over the world, when people are happy, they smile; when they are sad or angry, they frown or scowl. Nodding the head is almost universally used to indicate "yes" or affirmation. It appears to be a form of head lowering and is probably an inborn gesture because it's also used by people born blind. Shaking the head from side to side to indicate "no" or negation is also universal and appears to be a gesture learned in infancy. When a baby has had enough milk, it turns its head from side to side to reject its mother s Brest. When the young child had enough to eat, he shakes his head from side to side to stop any attempt to spoon-feed him and in this way; he quickly learns to use Head-Shaking gesture to show disagreement or a negative attitude. (05.12.2011': Podium Coaching Blog) http://www.podiumcoaching.com/blog/ Visited on 09.12.2011 Body language is one of the tools used to get first impression about someone who's new, people's body expression can express their personality whether they are confident, relaxed or bothered and shy. As well it can express the gesture and attitude of a person by using different types and movements of the body language. Some of departments in the organizations focus on this language and give it a big attention, for example: The Recruitment Department upon conducting interviews to new staff to analyze their personality and identify the expressions to know if they are saying what do they mean and vice-versa, Marketing Department where this tool is used by sales people to grab the attention of the clients and to pass them the correct messages. That is a reason why sales people prefer face to face marketing then telephonic or any technology communication, for the simple reason based on the fact that body language and face to face communication can have higher influence on the listener. As been mentioned by Carol Kinsey Goman: A recent study by the Harvard Business Review confirms that most leaders put great importance on doing business in person and link it directly to the bottom line. The study shows that 87 percent of professionals think that face -to- face meetings are essential for sealing a business deal, while 95 percent said they are the key to successful long lasting business relationships.

After describing the differences between tongue language and body language and explaining the concept and types of body language, we can further explore the importance of knowing and understanding the body language by the following: Knowing and understanding body language is important to evaluate situations to find out and determine if the person in front of you is lying or being honest. To read customer's minds and that will help to work with the customer accordingly. Applying body language may help in being careful to create a good impression to others and this mostly applies in a job interview. Understanding body language of animals can save the person's life, by speaking animals body language to signal them that no harm will be occurring to them by being close to them.

Posted on Friday, July 27th, 2007 (http://positivearticles.com/blog/2104/why-knowing-bodylanguage-is-important/)

However, body language can be distinguished and comes in many different forms, where usually it falls under two main groups: - Parts of the Body - Intent As well tone of voice & intonation are somehow grouped under body language Below is a table of each group s contents and their movements: Moving the head, back to front, left to right, side to side and shaking of hair Eyebrows: Up, down, frowning Nose: Wrinkle, flaring for the nostrils Lips: Smiling, snarling, puckered, kissing, opened, closed, tight. Facial Expressions Parts of the Body Eyes: Left, right, up, down, blinking, eye dilatation Tongue: In, out, rolled, tip up or down, licking of lips Jaw: Open, closed, clinched, lower jaw left or right. Body procimity: How far or close to other people Shoulder Movements: Up, down, hanging, hunched Arm placement: Up, down, crossed, straight Body Posture Leg & Feet placement: straight, crossed, weight placement, feet towards speaking partner or pointing elsewhere, dangling of shoes Hand & Finger gestures: Holding & moving hands & fingers Handing and placement of objects eg. pens, paper, etc Intent Gestures: Shaking a hand, blinking with one eye Voluntary/Intentional Tells/Ticks: body movements that have no control movements over it, eg. sweating Pitch of voice: High voice, low voice, intonation Loudness: Everything from shouting to whispering Tone of voice & intonation Breathing: Slow, fast breathing, shaky voice.

The Head

http://www.simplybodylanguage.com/types-of-body-language.html

After explaining the importance of body language and its positive effect on communication between people, it s indeed important to highlight some of the limitations involved. Body language cannot express the detailed information as well the receiver may miss understand the given messages and the body signs may varies in meaning from place to place depending on the countries, cultures and people's behaviors. Therefore using tongue language along with body language will send the messages and feeling more clearly. An example of a gesture which is common in many places but can be taken completely different meaning in some of countries ''Nodding the head'' refer to a positive Yes gesture! However, in Bulgaria, and parts of Greece and the Middle East, it means no. It is important that government leaders know about these things. It could be bad if a president offended the leader of another nation because of a gesture that was misunderstood. At least an embarrassed smile will be understood between people from other countries. http://www.articlesbase.com/literature-articles/non-verbal-communication-906189.html Non Verbal Communication: Posted: May 07, 2009 by Hiltrud Dave Eve It has been concluded that tongue languages are not enough to communicate and pass a correct emotional message without applying body language. Expressing emotions by using body language sometimes has more effectives and influences than words and it grab more attention to the receivers, based on which we believe that body language can be more powerful than any spoken language and learning it could be very fruitful to be a successful person. However, people sometimes conscious or unconscious give their feelings away because of the use of body language in everyday conversation without using a speaking word. Understanding body language though is very important to know others feelings and control over our own emotions by using the correct movements depending on the situations. Though it is very useful to communicate with body language in our personal and professional lives, it has negative impact sometimes due to misunderstanding the messages and controlling over the movements which occurs depending on varies cultures, traditions and human's breeding and attitudes Learning to read body language can help building successful relationship between people and may assist in judgments about people s behavior whether lying to you or trying to hide his or her real feelings from you and to be judged in a good way.