May 2016 Paper 1 (SL) Text 2, Aggressiveness and Readiness Gestures

This text, ‘Body Language: How to read others’ thoughts by their gestures’ is written by Allan Pease and published in 1981. The extract is from a book, the genre of which is ‘self-help’. The title is interesting in that it suggests it is possible to access human cognition – how we think – on the basis of behaviour – what we do. The main purpose of the book is to help readers understand this connection, and then exploit this understanding of non-verbal communication in a range of social and business interactions. That is, if readers can better understand how peoples’ body language reveals their inner cognition, they can better respond to, and potentially take advantage of a variety of social interactions. The intended reader can be a general reader, someone interested in (pseudo) psychology, or someone employed in business or sales who seeks an uncomplicated understanding of human behaviour, and who may be able to extract career or monetary advantage from their developing awareness.

Contexts of production and reception are significant to understanding this text. The text exists as one of many self-help texts. The publication of the book assumes that people want help – in this instance help to understand human behaviour. However, this understanding is not intended as an end in itself. Rather, the text exists in a society where ideas such as self-actualisation, individual fulfilment, and advantage over others are considered appropriate and desirable. Interestingly, at the time of publication, right-wing economic liberalism was ascendant in many advanced capitalist societies, and so the text seems very much of its time. The reader is positioned in the text in a form of ‘knowledge is power’ relationship. That is, if the reader can develop an understanding of what the text claims to teach, they can reap the reward of this knowledge. Presumably much serious work has been done in psychology on body language and its relationship to human cognition. However, this is not intended to be a serious work of academic psychology (intended for an academic community); instead, it is intended for a non-expert reader who wants a straightforward and uncomplicated understanding of human behaviour. Other assumptions inform the text too. For example, it is assumed that men and women are straightforwardly different from one another, and part of this binary difference involves a male propensity to aggression.

The text is multimodal – that is it includes both visual and written text. The visual text functions to illustrate and intratextually support the written text. For example, Figure 98 supports the ideas established in the written text and is itself anchored by the caption ‘ready for action’. If the reader has any difficulty understanding the written text, it is clarified by the corresponding visual illustration and associated caption. The visual texts are line drawings. That is, they are partially iconic, partially realistic. This is important. The realism lends the text a degree of seriousness and there is no ambiguity in conveying the ideas. However, the departure towards iconic is also important. It suggests that what is shown is universal, and is not the idiosyncratic behaviour of an individual (as a photograph could potentially suggest). Furthermore, the slight abstraction from reality allows readers to read themselves in to the text. The men and women in the drawings could be potentially anyone. Whilst the men in the drawings are attired in rather neutral business attire (understood in the context of 20^th century ‘Western’, capitalist societies) the depiction of females is much more sexualised. Both women appear ‘slim’ and emphasize their sexuality; thus, the figure on the left emphasizes her hips, and in the figure on the right, both breasts and legs appear prominent. Possibly this is appealing to a male reader, but it also confirms the simple binary male-female logic of the text, and both reflects and constructs a sexist ideology where women are objectified to satisfy a ‘male gaze’.

The text is intended to be read, as suggested, by non-experts. Thus, there is little in the way of a complex argot. Where a technical register exists – ‘gesture cluster’, or ‘readiness’, for example – this is normally explained or clear in context. Nevertheless, the language is not colloquial; there is a certain formality of register that gives the text credibility. Indeed, one of the most noticeable aspects of the text is its high modality that reinforces a sense that the ideas expressed in the text are incontrovertible. The writer expresses, for example, that ‘the individual is seen standing with the hands-on-hips pose, for this is one of the most typical gestures used by man to communicate an aggressive attitude’. The extract is made up of mostly declarative sentences – statements of ‘facts’ – with very few modal verbs that would potentially, through their inclusion, reduce the apparent truth status of the text.

In addition to high modality and mainly declarative syntax, the writer uses other rhetorical strategies that aim to persuade the reader of the text’s credibility. The first paragraph is a question with an embedded three-part list that potentially engages the reader. The response follows in the second paragraph, where the verb construction, ‘is seen standing’ suggests not only that the claim – hands on hips communicates aggression – is true, but also that it is timeless and transcends space/place. Immediately, the reader is drawn into the text and asked to unquestionably accept the writer’s argument. Some obfuscation follows in the third paragraph where the writer claims that ‘some observers have labelled this gesture ‘readiness’’. Who ‘some observers’ are is never stated, but the ideal reader is probably invited to assume that, like the writer, they are experts in the field of body language.  

The main focus of the text’s first section is made obvious by the frequent repetition of ‘aggressive’ and ‘aggression’. Through the analogy of ‘birds fluff their feathers to make themselves appear bigger’ to humans’ ‘hand-on-hips gesture’ it is implied that human body language derives from a biological or evolutionary perspective. Human males make this gesture, the writer claims, to dominate females and to challenging other threatening males. Women may also make a similar pose, to show themselves as ‘modern, aggressive, and forward-thinking’. In this way, the hands on hips gesture, when used by females, is connoted positively, and the metaphor, ‘forward-thinking’ suggests that the gesture is associated with intelligence and ambition.

Most of the first section of the text is written in a rather distant third-person voice, and this contributes to the text’s seriousness and claim to unambiguous truth. However, the insertion of the pronoun ‘you’ in the claim that ‘several other gestures can support your conclusion’, and ‘to throw you out’, creates a form of synthetic personalization, and creates a kind of dialogic space for the real reader to adopt an ideal reader position. Moreover, the pronoun gives the sense that the text is a form of ‘user manual’; through decoding body language, the reader identified as ‘you’ can interpret thought.

The structure of the text makes for easy, relatively straightforward comprehension. Simple paragraphing, two-columns of text interspersed with visual line drawings, and sub-headings in bold (e.g. ‘seated readiness’) make the text readily understandable to a reader who wishes to understand body language and cognition without complication. Not only does the text make bold claims to ‘correctness’ that follow a simple logic of ‘if this, then that’, there is also a somewhat arrogant implication that the text provides better insight into human behaviour than ‘most sales courses’.

The strong claim the text makes to the accuracy of its assertions is possibly the defining feature of the text. This, I have suggested, meets the needs of a real reader who wishes straightforward clarity. However, it is not difficult be critical of the text, and oppositional readings are manifold. We know from the history of psychological research that that there is no linear relationship between behaviour and thought. Moreover, it seems unlikely that every instance of human behaviour corresponds to a particular way of thinking that is universal over time and space. If the claims in the text are bold, others are hyperbolic, verging on the absurd. For example, the claim that the ‘person is openly exposing his heart and throat in a non-verbal display of fearlessness’ seems quite ridiculous, although it is likely that even a critical reader may have suspended their disbelief by the time they read this. Furthermore, there is nothing in the text to support claims to veracity; there is, for example, no obvious accessed voice of authority, nor is there any reference to robust experimental study. On the contrary, the text seems to be very much the product of a particular time and place, where men tend to be more aggressive than women, where men seek to dominate others, and where exploitation of others for financial reward is regarded as normal and even commendable. Social life is seldom this straightforward.