Body Language and the Social Order
by Albert E. Scheflen
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First published 1972
MacMillan Publishing Company
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Focusing on the significant role of body language in
controlling behaviour, Scheflen argues that human communication, verbal and
especially nonverbal, is based upon lower and earlier primate development as
well as on extensive culturally learned behaviour. Kinaesthetic study can
discover behaviours which maintain and disrupt social orders of all
types--governmental, economic, familial, and personal. Communicational behaviour
exerts controls and limits on human freedom, especially as practiced by all
kinds of institutions and in politics. We constantly instruct, qualify, modify,
and directs behaviours as it’s in progress, often reaching for the expected
actions, carrying out roles consistent with our past or the present situation.
Scheflen sees many actions as elements of a fuller action. These representations
can have influence without needing the full behaviour. For example, animals
(including man) can face each other and engage in exchanges or displays of
aggressive or affiliative behaviour that do not escalate to physical engagement
by producing elements of an act. A significant contribution to our
understanding of body language.