Allan Pease - Body Language | Page 5

used, in combination with other gestures, as a power and
superiority signal or in situations where people try to get us ‘under their thumb’. A later
chapter takes a closer look at the use of the thumb in these particular contexts.
The V Sign
This sign is popular
throughout Australia, New
Zealand and Great Britain and
carries an ‘up yours’
interpretation. Winston Churchill
popularised the V for victory sign
during World War II, but his
two-fingered version was done
with the palm facing out, whereas
the palm faces towards the
speaker for the obscene insult
version. In most parts of Europe,
however, the palm facing in
version still means ‘victory’ so
that an Englishman who uses it to
tell a European to ‘get stuffed’
could leave the European wondering about what victory the Englishman meant. This
signal also means the number two in many parts of Europe, and if the insulted European
were a bartender, his response could be to give an Englishman or an Australian two
mugs of beer.
These examples show that cultural misinterpretation of gestures can produce
embarrassing results and that a person’s cultural background should always be
considered before jumping to conclusions about his or her body language or gestures.
Therefore, unless otherwise specified, our discussion should be considered culturally
specific, that is, generally pertaining to adult, white middle class people raised in
Australia, New Zealand, Great Britain, North America and other places where English
is the primary language.
GESTURE CLUSTERS
One of the most serious mistakes a novice in body language can make is to interpret
a solitary gesture in isolation of other gestures or other circumstances. For example,
scratching the head can mean a number of things -dandruff, fleas, sweating, uncertainty,
forgetfulness or lying, depending on the other gestures that occur at the same time, so
we must always look at gesture clusters for a correct reading.
Like any other language, body language consists of words, sentences and
punctuation. Each gesture is like a single word and a word may have several different
meanings. It is only when you put the word into a sentence with other words that you
can fully understand its meaning. Gestures come in ‘sentences’ and invariably tell the
truth about a person’s feelings or attitudes. The ‘perceptive’ person is one who can read
the non-verbal sentences and accurately match them against the person’s verbal
sentences.

Figure 5 shows a common critical evaluation gesture cluster. The main one is the
hand-to-face gesture, with the index finger pointing up the cheek while another finger
covers the mouth and the thumb supports the chin. Further evidence that this listener is
critical of the speaker is seen by the fact that the legs are tightly crossed and the arm
crosses the body (defensive) while the head and chin are down (hostility). This
non-verbal ‘sentence’ says something like, ‘I don’t like what you are saying and I
disagree with you.’
Congruence
If you, as the speaker, were to ask the listener shown in Figure 5 to give his opinion
of what you have just said and he said that he disagreed with you, his non-verbal signals
would be congruent with his verbal sentences, that is, they would match or be
consistent. If, however, he said he was enjoying what you had to say, he would be lying
because his words and gestures would be incongruent. Research shows that non-verbal
signals carry about five times as much impact as the verbal channel and that, when the
two are incongruent, people rely on the non-verbal message; the verbal content may be
disregarded.
We often see a high ranking politician standing behind a lectern with his arms
tightly folded across his chest (defensive) and chin down (critical or hostile), while
telling his audience how receptive and open he is to the ideas of young people. He may
attempt to convince the audience of his warm, humane approach while giving short,
sharp karate chops to the lectern. Sigmund Freud once noted that while a patient was
verbally expressing happiness with her marriage, she was unconsciously slipping her
wedding ring on and off her finger. Freud was aware of the significance of this
unconscious gesture and was not surprised when marriage problems began to surface.

Observation of gesture clusters and congruence of the verbal and non-verbal
channels are the keys to accurate interpretation of body language.

Gestures in Context
In addition to looking for gesture clusters and congruence of speech and body
movement, all gestures should be considered in the context in which they occur. If, for
example, someone was sitting at a bus termin al with arms and legs tightly crossed and
chin down and it was a chilly winter’s day, it would most likely mean that he