Rationale for the Study
Throughout the history of the world, languages used to be the main tools for the communities to cooperate, survive and develop Such tools may vary from this type of creature to the others For instance, the oceanic creatures such as the dolphins and seals have their sounds to make lingual connections with the others in their communities; for mammal animals such as the lions and the dogs, they may bark or grind as the signals of communicating In another example of the birds, they may sing to call for help or dating of their kind Each type of create has its own specific type of language, and the world may have thousands of languages to be recognized
However, the most significant and supreme one is the language systems of the humans Since ancient times, the language systems of humans have associated with a number of crucial elements, such as the movements, gestures, sounds or symbolic items
To date, there have been a lot of hypotheses of the origin, the spot of time, the methods and conditions of the appearances of languages in the world, and the first one to be used in the world is still a great topic for debates
The origins of languages have been in efforts of scientists to figure out the first appearing one, and the progress is still very long for the world to continue There have been a number of approaches that scientists have used as tools to find out the true The first approach is the ―Continuity theories‖ The assumption of this type of theories is that the languages cannot be the single form as the starting point to the ending ones used in today‘s context Our primate ancestors should have generated a lot of pre-linguistic systems as the foundation for the later developments of lines of languages Based on the demographic, ethnic, living and communicating conditions, each language can have their separate developments from those systems in their evolutions
In another type of theories, the "Discontinuity theories", which have the assumption that languages integrated unique characteristics, and that they should have had their appearances in the long progress of human evolution
Another important approach is that the languages can be formed in the combinations of the genetic codes and the social interactions, through appearances, experiences and modifications (U1bek, 1998) However, the common important agreement of those theories is that language is the multifunctional tool, which can critically help the developments of human communications It can serve humans with countless cultural, communal, and societal functions
Firstly, with the cultural functions of languages, it can help the particular society to preserve and transfer the cultural elements from this generation to the others For instance, the Vietnamese people have the customs to teach the children the traditional values such as patriotism, respect, and worshipping the ancestors; the American kids can learn the traditional values by themselves to individualism and freedom in social activities
Secondly, by the main tools o shared identities, languages can help individuals in the society to build linkages to the others Each individual should have their own perception of the significance of contribution and donation to the values of the communities Last but not least, as for the social functions of languages, it has been recognized as the primary tools for human interactions at all times
In any language, conversation should be recognized as the most important tool for mankind to exchange information This element has the role as the fundamental form of communications in social interactions For each ethnic group, the traits and methods of interactions may vary As an example, the body, signal and behavioral languages of the Western people may have specific differences from the ones of the Vietnamese people
A comprehensive, effective and applicable investigation of all aspects of languages uses and traits may have great contributions to the understanding of the learners of specific language, such as English More particularly, the implications and findings of this study have been expected to help the English learners to identify and get rid of the potential cultural shock and failures in social communications
Nonverbal communication, another main tool in making interactions of human social courses, has the important role in the second language communicative competence
However, there has been little attention made as efforts to identify and apply the possible techniques for the English teachers and learners to this essential element in language uses (Gregersen, 2007) Such indispensable role of the nonverbal communication in the human communicative process will be identified and exampled in this study
The findings of this study will aim at all elements of nonverbal communication process, such as the gestures, facial expressions, and gaze behaviors used officially used by the US Presidents in their inaugural addresses They will have the common outcome of constitute the interplay of body language, so that the English learners can avoid the possible obstacles and deploy the potential conditions to facilitate their long progress to approach the world wide uses of English language.
Aims of the Study
The main aims of this study will be elaborated as to:
- The different roles of hand gestures and facial expressions in their uses in official events of the US Presidents
- The differences in the uses of dominant and non-dominant hands of the US presidents in relation with their valances to the good or bad things
The findings in this study will be exploited to test the validity of the hypotheses:
- The Presidents have the tendency to use more body movements as elements of body languages than facial expressions
- Different uses of dominant and non-dominant hands of the presidents, according to the nature of the object in the speeches and the valences.
Significance of the Study
In our time of globalization of the business and social environment, cross-cultural interactions have been the important elements to be identified and deployed Culture has been recognized to be very important in the international context of interactions (Hofstede,
2001) However, there have been little reaches into the roles of nonverbal interactions in the course of cross-cultural communications Culture matters, as well as the methods and time of their effects, should be identified and discussed due to their increasingly important role in international communications (Leung, Bhagat, Buchan, Erez, and Gibson, 2005;
Derived from such situations, nonverbal interaction should be placed into the higher level of significances The findings in this study will be expected to identify and discuss the relationships between the differences in cultural applications of the nonverbal interactions in social affairs, as well as the effects they may provide the communicators in different contexts With the official Western uses of nonverbal communicating elements identified and analyzed in this study, the roles, applications and effectiveness of those elements can have significant enhancements for the learners and communicators of English in international contexts.
Scope of the Study
- This study will mainly focus on the nonverbal elements used by the U.S Presidents in the official events in the history, so that they can constitute the possible applications of nonverbal interactions
- Besides, the degrees of possible differences between the applications of nonverbal interactions into social affairs in Western
- Another important expected field of the findings in this study is the portion of content of the interactions to be conveyed by the uses of nonverbal elements in Western.
Organization of the Study
Part A – Introduction will give us the background and rationale of the study, the scope, aims, significance and design of the study
Part B – Development will make various insights into the theoretical background and data analysis process, with a number of subsequent chapters as below:
Chapter 1 will make initiative presentation of the uses and effectiveness of nonverbal interactions in social affairs, the theories and traits of the nonverbal interactions, as well as their effects to the communicators This part will provide the readers with the possible strategies to deploy nonverbal interactions into social affairs, as well as the benefits and limitations of them
Chapter 2 will present the detailed data collection, analysis and discussions of the role of nonverbal interactions in social affairs with the official examples derived from the gestures used as nonverbal communication of the US Presidents
Part C – Conclusions will summarize the main findings of this study, the possible limitations and suggestions for the later researches in the same and related fields of languages
LITERATURE REVIEW
Introduction to Body Language or Nonverbal Communication
In the simplest form, the language of body can be stated as the ―all communication other than language‖ (Andersen, 1999, p 2) The core meaning of this statement is that the body language contains other efforts of the communicators to convey more meanings to the receiver, through symbols or movements of the body As described by Hsiao and Rashvand (2011), body language conveys the messages that the communicators wish to send and expect to get responses
Being derived from such definition, the language can be translated into symbols, so that it can be used internationally As an example, when a man raises his arm over the head, together with stretching his muscle, this means that he is trying to relieve his muscles from boredom However, for this type of movement in the classroom, this means that he has the intention to get answered a question, as using body language to express his intention This part of the definition implies that not all the body behaviors can be seen as the nonverbal communication In the second part of the meaning of body language, or called ―other than words‖, there have been the codes created by the body of the communicator, such as the facial expression, vocal changes, touches, space, physical appearance, and the environment in which the communication happened This definition also limits the body language or nonverbal communication into the scale that it will only involve into communication between people, to indirectly limit the transferring of information of animals or intrapersonal communication
1.1.2 Elements of nonverbal communication 1.1.2.1 Gestures
In nonverbal communication, there are four types of gestures to be used: the illustrators, regulators, emblems, and affect displays (Kelly, Manning and Rodak, 2008)
Illustrators: contains the behaviors which can complement or accentuate the verbal messages used in the communication Generally, this contains the parts of the body such as the natural hand and the body gestures used by the communicator that can help to describe the content of the speech, such as smiling, gesturing, smiling, or pointing They have the same meaning to the verbal content, and even enhance them for better effects The Illustrator would be very helpful for the learners of English, since it can describe more the meaning which the speaker is trying to transfer In another example, when asking for a direction, the speaker uses to point to the appropriate direction which is showed in figure 1 bellow:
Figure 1: The Illustrator used in communication (Gregersen, 2007)
Regulators: is another type of gesture as in figure 2 used in inter-personal communication to point out the personal turn or procedure in communication In social communication, turn-taking has its important role in determining the interaction pattern of the communication, so that each participant can have his or her meaning of the meaning and intention of the speaker In most social affair, this used to be done unconsciously and smoothly, as it can covey the intention of both the listener and the speaker for the coming session of the communication (Duncan,
1972, 1974) Most of the time, turn-taking in conversation is conducted by transition signals It is important that the participants should understand the use of the transition signal, otherwise the conversation may be interrupted and the meaning of the conversation can be limited
Figure 2:Transition signals used in interpersonal communication (Gregersen,2007)
Emblems: are the nonverbal behaviors used by the participants that can be translated into an underlying message They can be substitute for words, and the verity can change from this culture to another one For the good understanding of the meaning of those elements in nonverbal communication, the learners of every language should learn all the possible meaning of those emblems And in figure 3 is an example:
Figure 3 Emblems used in communication (Gregersen, 2007)
Affect Display: As can be seen in figure 4 is another type of expression of the body that can be used by the communicators to express the personal emotion at the very time Most of the time, this type of expressions can be communication through the movements of the facial expression such as smiling, laughing or crying However, the norm of expressing emotion can change from this culture to another
Figure 4: Affect Display of personal emotion (Gregersen, 2007)
Another tool used in nonverbal communication is the facial expressions, which can further help the communicator with conveying more meaning of the communication
Knapp and Hall (2006, p 260) provided us with the meaning of facial expression that ―The face is rich in communicative potential It is the primary site for communication of emotional states, it reflects interpersonal attitudes; it provides nonverbal feedback on the comments of others; and some scholars say it is the primary source of information next to human speech For these reasons, and because of the face’s visibility, we pay a great deal of attention to the messages we receive from the faces of others.”
The face can be used as the primary tool in interaction to manage the progress of the communication, to complement the responses, or to replace a possible speech The process of communication can be continued or closed with the facial expression Besides, the movements of the face can imply the thoughts of the communicator to qualify the messages or to complement them
Depending on the specific cultural aspects, there have been the ―display rules‖ to be followed by the communicators to be considered socially and situational appropriate For each specific culture, there are the norms to define the level of emotion to be express in communication through intensification, simulation, de-intensification, neutralization, and masking (Ruch, Hofmann and Platt, 2013)
The applications and integration of the above elements of facial expression of each culture can vary from this one to another, so that the communicator can have the most effective manner in social or interpersonal communication In figure 5, we can have better demonstrations of the possible forms of facial expressions used in communication to imply more meanings:
Signals readiness Smiles and flashes used in greeting
Smiles temper a negative message Conspiratorial wink
Eyebrows meet to communicate confusion Happiness
Face intensifies emotion Face neutralizes emotion
Figure 5 Various Facial Expressions of the communicators (Source: Gregersen, 2007)
The eyes used to be called ―the window to the soul‖ Thus, in interpersonal communication, the eyes used to be focused more than the other parts of the body This is due to the unconscious perception of the highly expressive nature, which can very helpfully to send and receive the communicating messages in face to face communication
By the fact that the eye has higher probability of being noticed in communication, it has more prominent interaction signal to convey meanings
Richmond and McCroskey (2000) describe the uses of the eyes to help us to control interactions, elicit the attention of others, and show an interest of the specific piece of information being transferred There are two types of eye behaviors to be identified and deployed into social affairs, including eye contact and eye gazing Eye contact occurs in communication when people participating into the communication looks into the eyes of the others, while gazing can occur anytime a person look at another (Andersen, 1999)
According to Knapp and Hall (2006), gazing itself has five functions in communication, such as Regulating the flow of conversation, monitoring feedback, reflecting cognitive activity, expressing emotion, and communicating the nature of interpersonal relationship All the above elements of gazing have their specific roles in contextualizing the verbal message and to complement the understanding of the piece of information being exchanged.
Theories, Structures and Significance of Nonverbal Communication
1.2.1.1 Ray Birdwhistell's Theory on Kinesics (1970)
In this theory of Nonverbal Communication, the author highly focus on the potential skills of the person to create meanings to the bodily movements that h might make in social affairs This theory will put insights and analyze the patterns and repetition of systems body movements, so that they can be viewed as parts of the social communication
This theory introduced the readers with Kinetics, which contains the ways that people act, to describe the personal moods and expressions in our life Those elements of personal movements may change in the courses of communication In this theory, the visual part of communication in our life can have affections to the others With the integration of nonverbal movements into communication, the communicator can express more of the meanings that he would like to convey to the receiver
1.2.1.2 Edward Hall‘s Theory on Proxemics
This theory of nonverbal communication of Hall (1966), the author focused on the multichannel affections of nonverbal communications and the effects that distance can create to the communicators Besides, distance can be considered as the affecting element in conveying the meanings to the receiver Proxemics is the core of this theory The meaning of Proxemics is that distance can make space between individuals in many activities
In this theory, it studied the way people behave and react to the space and distance used in the interaction with the others This theory also embraces the possible ways for space and distance to be used in social communication Those ways can also change in communication, according to the culture that the communication happened In Proxemics, there are many typos of spaces and distances that may create various effects for the communicator:
Types of Space o Fixed Feature Space: this includes the unmovable objects involve in the communication, such as the rooms and walls o Semifixed Feature Space: embraces the movables objects in the communication to have better results o Informal Space: personal environment in which the communication created, which may vary in different cultures
Types of Distance o Intimate (0-18 inches): to be used in communications of closely related persons, such as family, friends and love ones o Personal (1 ẵ to 4 feet): to be used in some more formal communications, such as the interviews or discussions o Social (4 to 12 feet): most commonly used in casual communication in daily communication o Public (over 12 feet): mostly used in formal conferences a meeting, with large number of people involved
In this theory of Edward Hall, distance has an important role in communication to provide the participants with the indications to the relations with the others, the way to perceive the particular subject, the way to interact with others, and the way cultures can have effects to the uses of distance in communication Besides, the author also provided the readers with the factors that the participants can use to affect the others in certain conditions
1.2.1.3 Paul Ekman and Wallace Friesen‘s Theory on Kinesics (1969)
In this work, their theory mainly concern with the movements of hands and the face The outcomes of this theory can help the readers with more understanding of the mood, personality, mood and actions of individuals in communication The combination of the different movements of the face and hands can help the participants to understand more of the meaning of the communication In their theory, there are 3 ways to analyze the meaning of the nonverbal behaviors of the communicators:
1 Origin - source of the act (innate, species-constant, or variant)
2 Coding - the act-meaning relationship (arbitrary, iconic, intrinsic)
3 Usage – a degree of non-verbal communication to what does the behavior do, how does it convey information (communicative act, interactive act)
Also according to Ekman and Friesen (1969), there are five types to embraces all the nonverbal behaviors of the communication:
Emblems: the movements of the body with the effects to convey the meaning to the participants of the communication without saying
Illustrators: with 8 different types, these nonverbal behaviors can help to depict the verbal messages o Baton: the movements to emphasize the content of the communication o Ideograph to describe more of the thoughts direction o Deictic movement to point out the content of the communication o Spatial movement to identify the space o Rhythmic movement to describe motion o Kinetograph to describe physical action of the communicator o Pictograph to make a picture o Emblematic movement to illustrate a verbal movement
Adapters: the behaviors to facilitate the release of body intention Those behaviors can also be used to help the individuals to adapt to the new environment
Regulators: the behaviors to control or coordinate the interaction The participants can base on those behaviors to take turns to act or communicate in the environment
Affect displays: are the presentations of the feelings or emotions of the communicators Those behaviors can also describe the tendency of the individuals to react in a particular environment
Nonverbal itself can serve a lot of functions in the curse of communication (Harrison, 1973) Nonverbal communication can define the communications by offer the background for the communication to be established For instance, the context made by the participants in the room can indicate the content of the communication to be transferred It can also be the behaviors or the ways people dress to join the communication Nonverbal communication can also regulate the verbal communication of people
Most of the verbal communication includes the nonverbal behaviors of the participants, which people may realize and redirect the content t of the communication For instance, the movements of nod or smile in the communication may indicate that the communicator is listening and understanding the content being transferred For the speakers, he may slow down or lower the voice at the end of the communication Or if he would like to continue the communication, the speaker would add the signals of pause into the communication, which can help the listener to keep listening and focus on the progress of the communication Those subtle signals are the back channel of the communication
They have the function at the peripheral side of the communication, and not in the main concentration of the communication
Nonverbal communication can also be the message itself For instance, a smile can indicate the joy of the speaker, a frown indicates happiness, and a wrinkled nose associating with the saying ―I love you‖ may indicate deception A series of hand movements may indicate the saying ―Goodbye‖ of the communicator There are no words needed to convey those messages Most of their meanings are culturally determined, and they can change from this culture to another
1.2.3 Structure and Properties of Nonverbal Communication
According to the suggestions of many scholars, nonverbal communication has the same properties to the ones of verbal communication Those properties are structured rules, intentionality, awareness, the rate of overt, control, and how to be conducted publicly
However, those properties may be slightly different from the ones of the verbal communication (Andersen, 1999; Burgoon, Buller, & Woodal, 1996) In order to be able to convey meanings in communication, the nonverbal massages should be rule bound, much like speech All nonverbal communication has the similar properties, and the rules of violation can change the meanings of them
As a result, all the spoken communication are intentional, which means that we can choose the words to be used in the conversations Similarly, nonverbal communication is also intentional However, scientists have argued that a greater portion of the nonverbal communication is unintentional (Ruch, Hofmann and Platt, 2013) For instance, some people may intend to communicate calmness and maturity with the deaths of their pets, but sadness still remains in their faces, which is unintentionally
Significance, Benefits and Limitations of Nonverbal Communication
Ekman & Friesen (1969) defined that there are six ways in which the verbal and nonverbal communication can relate to another Base on those means, the nonverbal communication can replace verbal communication in several situations: repeating, contradicting, complementing, accenting, and regulating the verbal communication
The meaning of ―replacement‖ is that the nonverbal communication can substitute for verbal communication For instance, in case we are asked for agreement or not for a particular subject, there are many times we just need to nod or not, instead of trying to utter the word ―yes‖ or ―no‖ for our opinion of it
Nonverbal communication can also repeat the verbal communication for enhancements In saying ―yes‖ or ―no‖ to words, people can also shake their heads or nod simultaneously The situation is much like when nonverbal communication can substitute the verbal communication
However, substitution has the other meaning that in conducting nonverbal form, people do not need to speak out the word while people can still understand the conversation Contrarily, ―repeating‖ means that the speaker needs to say the words out lout and nonverbal communication can enhance the meaning or implications of the ideas
Sometimes, verbal and nonverbal communication can contradict each other For instance, there are also many social situations that people say the positive opinion of the objects, while the facial expression conveys the contradict meaning of his opinion This may due to the suppression or hesitation in social communication that we may have encountered
Nonverbal communication can also complement the verbal communication in social situations For example, people may say that they have had a tough day, while the movements and facial expressions proved that they have had to work very hard under pressure Although the movements of the shoulders and the facial expressions can convey a lot of meaning in communication, the association with the words spoken out loud can help the participants to constitute the meaning of the speaker on their own
Additionally, there are times that nonverbal communication would simply accent the specific part of the spoken verbal communication For instance, in describing a progress being implemented, the speaker may use the nonverbal communication movements to describe the particular step as punctuating or stopping, so that the listener can clearly know where they are going on Such movements can also emphasize the importance of the words being spoken out
Finally, nonverbal communication can also regulate the verbal communication In association with the backchannel communication, there are a lot of rules that nonverbal communication can help the communicators to take turns and choose the suitable role in verbal communication In those situations, nonverbal communication can help the communicators to organize and control the effectiveness of the conversation
1.3.2 Studying fields of nonverbal communication
Nonverbal communication can be recognized as the study that can be integrated into many fields such as sociology, psychology, anthropology, communication, computer science, event art, and even in criminal cases In each of them, the particular aspect or application of nonverbal communication will be examined For instance, psychology will specifically focus on the nonverbal expressions of personal emotions; anthropology will particularly focus on the applications of interpersonal spaces in various social situations; computer science will concentrate on the appearance and movements of the avatars in software or application; and communication may have focuses on the content of the massages being transmitted However, the boundaries among them are quite vague, and there used to be more overlaps among them than divergence in real applications (Matsumoto, Frank and Hwang, 2013)
In the history, evidences proved that all cultures have their centuries of written or oral appearances of the significance of nonverbal communication in the basic forms of human communication (Matsumoto, Frank and Hwang, 2013) For example, for many thousand years, the Chinese culture has had sets of rules to define and judge the personality and characters of a specific person base on the size, shape, or the positions of parts of the body
Although there have not been many evidences for the relationships of facial expressions and personality, the modern people still believe on this validity Similarly, in the Greek, Indian and African cultures, the situations are the same for many efforts of the humans to define the possible relationships between nonverbal communication and personality or internal perception (Matsumoto, Frank and Hwang, 2013)
1.3.3 Significance of nonverbal communication in social activities
Although to date, there have been a lot of information available for the significance of nonverbal communication in conducting social activities, scientific comparisons of verbal and nonverbal communication indicated that the vast majority of conversational messages communicated are nonverbal (Friedman, 1978) According to the information given in this study, the estimated amount of information to be communicated in nonverbal forms accounts for the range of 65% to 95% of the total number of messages conveyed
This fact can be ironic, as we compare with the perception that people will mostly consciously deploy and appreciate verbal communication in interacting and judging the others (Ekman, et al 1985)
Nonverbal communication should be recognized as the essential part, the ―hidden dimension‖ of communication as the second, silent language to be used in social activities (Hall, 1973) Generally, if one is to miss attentions to the nonverbal behaviors in communication, there are a lot of chances that he or she would much of the content of the communication and the real information to be conveyed This proved that active observation in social communication is essential for effectiveness of communication
However, so far, there have been no schools or classes for nonverbal behaviors
Despite the fact that this type of communication can contribute much to the effectiveness of communication in our social activities, most aspects of nonverbal communication acquired and deployed in our communication are done in real living experience We can have the chances to manage or analyze the nonverbal meanings conveyed from our parents, families, friends of partners, things regarding to nonverbal communication used to be conducted informally and implicitly (Hall,1973; Matsumoto, Frank and Hwang, 2013)
1.3.4 Applications of body gestures in nonverbal communication
DATA COLLECTION, ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION OF NONVERBAL
The uses of Hands and Smiles of the Presidents in Inaugural Addresses
According to Hall (1966), in social communication, there are four zones in figure 6 that the communicators keep to interact with the others They are the public, social, personal, and intimate As described by Hall, if the specific distance chosen in the communication changes, there will be changes to appear in the effects and progresses of both verbal and nonverbal communication In adjustment in the progress of interpersonal communication can pose the associating losses of the recognition of the communicators with the changes in facial expressions and the modifications of hand gestures
Figure 6 Four distance zones in interpersonal communication
As we have elaborated in the above sections of this study, the hand and gestures have been the most important elements used in nonverbal communication In the limited scale of this research, we will present and analyze the uses of hands and gestures as the body languages of the US Presidents in the inaugural addresses The official and scientific examples of those uses of body languages in the US presidents can help us to build more significance of the elements of nonverbal communication in social affairs
According to many researchers, the nonverbal behaviors can serve and number of functions in social interactions (Ekman & Friesen, 1969) and to be affected by the self- presentational emotion (Riess & Rosenfeld, 1980) Thus, we can predict that there will be many smiles used by the Presidents in their inaugural address in engagements (Whitehead
& Smith, 1999) Godfrey, Jones, & Lord, (1986) defined that people will smile more in their progresses of ingratiating and when seeking for approval (Rosenfeld, 1966)
Based on the above facts that in social affairs, as the distance increases, hand gestures will be more important than facial ones, we can also predict that the US Presidents would use more hand gestures than the changes in their faces in inaugural addresses This was due to the fact that the hand gestures have been attributed with power (Spiegel &
Machotka, 1974) and dominance in current social position (Dovidio, Brown, Heltman, Ellyson, & Keating, 1988; Dovidio & Ellyson, 1982; Dovidio, Ellyson, Keating, Heltman,
Besides, Hall (1966) also stated that a change in public distance will generate and change in the speaking style of the speakers, especially the Presidents in their speaking positions In important social affairs, people must exaggerate the voices, gestures, and body stance to get all the information conveyed to all the audiences Scientifically, in each inaugural address, there should be many changes in forms of nonverbal communication, so that there can be a lot of effective channels to convey the information to the audiences
From such proposition, researchers have collected and made analysis of the frequency and effects of the hands and gestures in inaugural addresses of the Presidents:
Dwight D Eisenhower, John F Kennedy, Richard M Nixon, George H W Bush, and William J Clinton Although there have been availability of the presidents Harry S
Truman, Ronald W Reagan, and Jimmy Carter, the video tapes of their presentations could not allow such analysis, thus their performances in those inaugural addresses cannot be included in our research field in this study
In the implementation of the analysis, the researcher made efforts to rate the effectiveness of the nonverbal communication in their inaugural addresses by turning off the sound to remove the affections of the sounds to the meanings conveyed, to enlighten the effectiveness of the verbal cues in their communications The results of the rating, in the combination with the meanings identified in the analysis, could help the researcher to make discrepancies of communications in those inaugural addresses
In the above events, the videos of the Presidents were analyzed carefully to make comparisons of their uses of facial or hand gestures to attract the audiences in each clause
The result was that the presidents have used more hand gestures than smiles In the above analysis, the numbers of hand gestures used by the presidents were 11 for Eisenhower, 81 for Kennedy, 12 for Nixon, 84 for Bush, and 85 for President Clinton However, there were large differences in the uses of smiles of the above Presidents While the use of smiles of the Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy was 0, 3 of President Nixon, the other Presidents such as Bush and Clinton used many more smiles in their inaugural addresses, with 23 and
12 times, accordingly This result established the meaning that there was not much difference in the effectiveness of the two forms of nonverbal communication of the Presidents.
The Uses of Left and Right Hands of the Presidents for Positive and Negative Valences
In another important dimension of our analysis of the use of body language of the
US Presidents in their inaugural addresses, I will make examinations of the linkage of the body-specific association between people's dominant and non-dominant sides and ideas with positive and negative emotional valence can be observed beyond the laboratory, where people are not constrained to make binary choice
To date, across languages and cultures, good things are conventionally associated with the right, and bad things with the left This can be explained by exploiting the links between left-right space and positive-negative valence are also found in nonlinguistic conventions From now on, there is the question to arise: Why does good correspond to right and bad to left, throughout the world and throughout the ages? The Left-right conventions in language and culture may arise as a consequence of ‗body-specific‘ associations between action and valence
According to the body-specificity hypothesis of Casasanto and Jasmin (2010), to the extent that the content of our minds depends on the structure of our bodies, people with different types of bodies should think differently, in predictable ways In a possible sense people come to implicitly associate good things with the side of their bodies they can use more fluently, and bad things with the side they use less fluently
From this proposal, linguistic and cultural conventions linking right with good may develop according to implicit handedness-based preferences of the right-handed majority
The second section of our study will base on this proposal, so that we will examine the use of left and right hands of the US presidents in their inaugural addresses, to see if they would use the dominant hands to describe the good things and the non-dominant hands for taking about bad things
To collect and analyze the necessary data for this study, the specific demonstrations of the US Presidents in their inaugural addresses, George W Bush in 2001 and Barack Obama in 2009 will be presented and analyzed for their roles in those official events The expected finding of our analysis can help us in the proposition that the US Presidents used to gesture with the dominant hands for describing the good things, and the non-dominant hands would be used to talk about bad things
The written transcripts and the videos of the 2001 and 2009 US inaugural addresses were obtained from and , respectively In the collection and analysis procedure of the study, we have coded the spoken texts of the two speeches and gestures of the two presidents in those events
In the procedure of the study to code the spoken texts used in those events, the objective was to make identifications of the emotional valences used with the spoken clauses In transcripts of the clauses used by the Presidents would be changed into clauses, which could help to facilitate the efforts for the later analysis The result of following table 2.1 proves that those Presidents used both negative and positive
In the second stage, in order to analyze the gestures used by the two Presidents, the main objective was to determine the specific uses of the right or left hands with the spoken clauses, which could be negative or positive The result of the table 2.1 below could help the author to identify the possible relationships between the emotional valances and the uses of the dominant or non-dominant hands of the Presidents
Table 2.1 Spoken clauses used by the two presidents in the analysis
SPOKEN CLAUSES USED BY THE TWO PRESIDENTS WITH VALENCES
Obama Left Positive “You can keep your health insurance ”
“And they will continue to get their checks”
In this step, the videos of their inaugural address will be divided into many smaller clips, which would associate with the number of 1292 clauses Those clauses were both negative and positive; with each clip would be a clause The length of each clip would last from the first words of the clause to the ending ones The author would only view the clips in order while listening to each speech, which can help to ensure the fact that the clips can supply the author with the right verbal materials The result of the analysis is that there were 940 clauses were used with at least one gesture
Among this large number of gestures used, there were the left, right or both hands of the Presidents associated with their clauses Among the number of 940 clips, there were
397 of them (36%) were associated with more than one hand gestures, with a number of
1747 gestures used They would be helpful for our analysis later In the above number of gestures used by the two presidents, more than half of them completed with just one hand
In the second approach to the uses of those gestures of the presidents, the author would view the videos while listening to the above number of clips For this aim, the author would choose a number of 500 gestures of the presidents for analyzing Each half number of them was selected from the 2001 and 2009 inaugural addresses This author would not know which gestures were made during the positive or negative valences of the clauses, and the content of the clips cannot have affection to the identifications of the author As a result, he could not be affected by his knowledge for the experimental predictions of the study of those gestures
The final result of the study offered the author with the fact that there has been the strong relation between the valences of the spoken clauses used, which can be negative or positive, and the hands uses in associations with the speeches Those hand gestures could be both dominant and non-dominant In this result, the dominat hands were used much more times than the non-dominant ones, which was also most double the number of non- dominant hands used The dominant hands gestures were used for almost all the positive valance of the speeches, and the non-dominant hands were mainly used in associations with the negative valences of speeches For the President Obama, the uses of left hand gestures were mainly associated with the positive valence clauses, and the right hand gestures were used with mostly all the negative-valance clauses
In case of President Bush, the uses of right-hand gestures were for also most all the positive valence clauses, and the gestures made by the left hand were for the clauses with negative valances Such findings provide the author with the fact that the association between the uses of left and right hand gestures with the valences of clauses was established However, the strength of such findings was not very different between the two Presidents
In this study, the author made the complete transcripts of the speeches used in the official events of the two Presidents, the inaugural addresses in 2001 and 2009 Almost all the clauses used by them were identified to convey the positive, negative and indeterminate emotional valences Besides, the gestures made during those clauses have been identified as to convey the positive and negative valence by the uses of the dominant and non- dominant hands of the two Presidents, or both of them Based on the results of such identifications, the author could make the associations between the uses of left and right hands with the emotional valence of clauses in those speeches of the two presidents, which could be negative or positive The result of the analysis could help the author to make the determinations that President Obama used to use the left hand gestures to describe the good things, and President Bush had the tendency to use the right hand gestures to talk about good things In figure 7, the uses of left and right hands of the two presidents will be showed and compared:
Figure 7 Comparisons of the uses of left and right hands of the two Presidents
The listings of the uses of left and right hands of the two presidents in the above figure could give us the clear associations between the positive and negative emotional valence and the uses of left and right hands For President Obama, who was the left- hander, the uses of left hand gestures were strongly associated with the positive valences of the speeches in his inaugural address, while the uses of the right hand, which was non- dominant, were mostly for the negative valence clauses However, for President Bush, the situation was quite opposite, with the uses of the dominant hand gestures were identified to be more than twice to be made in the clauses with positive valence than the uses of non- dominant hands for the negative valence clauses
Conclusion Remarks
The main findings of this study include the two signification aspects of body languages used by the US Presidents in their inaugural addresses The author has been trying to analysis the different uses of body language between two Presidents to test the validity of the given hypotheses
So far, reaching this section of the study, the first hypothesis of the study has been proved to be true, that the presidents have the tendency to deploy more body gestures than facial expression in their official events such as the inaugural addresses The result of the first analysis between the frequency of using hand movements and facial expressions of the presidents could prove the validity of this This can be explained by the nature of these events, which used to embrace a lot of audiences and the atmosphere is very large Thus, the uses of facial expressions can only bring limited effects to the level of attractiveness of the presidents, as well as the attention and understanding of the audiences
Secondly, sides of the body were proved to have strong correlation with the valence of the presidents, for which they have the tendency to use the dominant side of the body with gestures when describing positive objects, and the non-dominant side in talking about contrary things Through the second analysis of this study and the based literature, this fact can be explained by the nature of the communicators in their uses of body language in social communication, not excluding the presidents in their official events
In this study, the author has predicted that the presidents would use their hands more than smiles in the official events, particularly in inaugural addresses, as stated in the first hypothesis With the result of the first analysis of the uses of left and right hands of Bush and Obama Presidents, this hypothesis has been proved to be true This was due to the fact that those events contained the large distance between the speaker and the audiences This condition, leaded to the fact that most Presidents chose to use the hand gestures to associate with each change in their speech
The literature derived from the works of Spiegel & Machotka (1974), Dovidio et al., (1988), and Dovidio & Ellyson (1982) supported us that the hand gestures used to be more powerful than the facial expressions, such as the smiles, to be used by those Presidents Thus, to get the information conveyed to the audiences most effectively, the presidents mostly exaggerate the hands and other body movements to enhance their speeches The effectiveness of such changes can help the audiences to recognize every change in the progress of the speech Another interesting finding of this study is that the Presidents do not always smile to the audiences in the inaugural addresses
In the second study of the uses of the left and right hands of Barack Obama and George Bush in their inaugural addresses, the result was obvious that there has been strong relation between the valence of the spoken clauses and the uses of left and right hands
More specifically, right-handed people would use the right hand in their gestures to describe positive things, and the left-handed people would use the left hands in describing the negative things, and vice versa
Either consciously or unconsciously, the use of hand gestures would change, according to the valence of the objective in the speeches Based on the valance of the speaker to the good or bad things in the speech, the dominant gestures would have more than twice tendency to be used by the presidents Thus, from the above findings, we can judge that the initiative prediction of the author that the different uses of dominant and non-dominant sides of the body of the presidents, according to the nature of the object in the speeches and the valences has been proved to be accurate for the hand behaviors of the two Presidents.
Implications for The Use of Nonverbal Behavior in Cross-cultural Communication
Good understanding of the intercultural differences can be very helpful to create common ground and trust, to remove cultural barriers among communicators, as well as to enhance relationships through interpersonal communication As a matter of fact, the success of the language leaner is to acknowledge all aspects of the languages, so that they can successfully communicate with the native people Such success can help the English learner with a lot of further advantages in business transactions, at work, study or daily or social activities
With references to the significance of cultural awareness in communication, people should be more active and knowledgably in the open, international contexts Thus, nonverbal communication, in relations with cultural differences in the uses of them, can be expected to help the communicators much for their good understanding of the information being conveyed in communication
In fact, as we have mentioned in the above sections, the uses and identifications of the nonverbal communication or body languages will vary for different cultures Thus, particularly for the Asian English learners, the findings and applications of this study can help to fill the cultural gaps in communication, so that the body languages can be recognized as the important element in interpersonal communication.
Suggestions for Further Studies
The limited scale of this study was not enough to reflect the overall significance of body language in interpersonal communication; especially it could only reflect the uses of body language of the Presidents in official events, inaugural addresses For the further studies, there are many potential fields of communication should be analyzed, such as the differences in uses of body languages in different cultures, especially the possible comparisons between the Asian and Western cultures; the changes in uses of body language associating to social changes; the political impacts to the uses of the body languages of the famous persons; and the current trends of using body languages in social and political contexts of the famous persons
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APPENDIXES Appendix 1: President Bush’s 2001 Inaugural Address Transcript
President Clinton, distinguished guests and my fellow citizens, the peaceful transfer of authority is rare in history, yet common in our country With a simple oath, we affirm old traditions and make new beginnings
As I begin, I thank President Clinton for his service to our nation
And I thank Vice President Gore for a contest conducted with spirit and ended with grace
I am honored and humbled to stand here, where so many of America's leaders have come before me, and so many will follow
We have a place, all of us, in a long story—a story we continue, but whose end we will not see It is the story of a new world that became a friend and liberator of the old, a story of a slave-holding society that became a servant of freedom, the story of a power that went into the world to protect but not possess, to defend but not to conquer
It is the American story—a story of flawed and fallible people, united across the generations by grand and enduring ideals
The grandest of these ideals is an unfolding American promise that everyone belongs, that everyone deserves a chance, that no insignificant person was ever born
Americans are called to enact this promise in our lives and in our laws And though our nation has sometimes halted, and sometimes delayed, we must follow no other course
Through much of the last century, America's faith in freedom and democracy was a rock in a raging sea Now it is a seed upon the wind, taking root in many nations
Our democratic faith is more than the creed of our country, it is the inborn hope of our humanity, an ideal we carry but do not own, a trust we bear and pass along And even after nearly 225 years, we have a long way yet to travel
While many of our citizens prosper, others doubt the promise, even the justice, of our own country The ambitions of some Americans are limited by failing schools and hidden prejudice and the circumstances of their birth And sometimes our differences run so deep, it seems we share a continent, but not a country
We do not accept this, and we will not allow it Our unity, our union, is the serious work of leaders and citizens in every generation And this is my solemn pledge: I will work to build a single nation of justice and opportunity
I know this is in our reach because we are guided by a power larger than ourselves who creates us equal in His image
And we are confident in principles that unite and lead us onward
America has never been united by blood or birth or soil We are bound by ideals that move us beyond our backgrounds, lift us above our interests and teach us what it means to be citizens Every child must be taught these principles Every citizen must uphold them
And every immigrant, by embracing these ideals, makes our country more, not less, American
Today, we affirm a new commitment to live out our nation's promise through civility, courage, compassion and character
America, at its best, matches a commitment to principle with a concern for civility A civil society demands from each of us good will and respect, fair dealing and forgiveness
Some seem to believe that our politics can afford to be petty because, in a time of peace, the stakes of our debates appear small
But the stakes for America are never small If our country does not lead the cause of freedom, it will not be led If we do not turn the hearts of children toward knowledge and character, we will lose their gifts and undermine their idealism If we permit our economy to drift and decline, the vulnerable will suffer most
We must live up to the calling we share Civility is not a tactic or a sentiment It is the determined choice of trust over cynicism, of community over chaos And this commitment, if we keep it, is a way to shared accomplishment
America, at its best, is also courageous