Non-verbal communicative behavior.

Analysis of the components of communicative behavior in relation to each other, testifies their interdependence. The verbal and non-verbal communicative behaviors are closely related to each other. The dominant features of communication are manifested in each communicative event, which in their turn depend on the national character of interlocutors. The national character of the communicative behavior can be defined as a set of psychological features of a person belonging to a particular nation.

A socially and communicatively relevant domestic behavior belongs to the communicative behavior. It is a set of domestic activities of people, which receive semantic interpretation in a given society and cultural linguistic community, and thus including it into the general communication process and influencing the behavior and communication between people. This is a kind of 'language of everyday behavior', which is called the social symbolism.

Social symbolism is the reflection of the semiotic function in the minds of the people, which a certain action, fact or event acquires in a certain culture. All these phenomena acquire a certain symbolic sense in the minds of people, characteristic and unique for the whole society or a particular social group. Social symbolism is a component of national culture.

The members of society often take no notice of social symbolism, though it is usually strictly observed. That means that it is used and interpreted in interpersonal relations. A different culture may not interpret symbolic meaning of a certain phenomenon; it can be misunderstood, and may get an unexpected interpretation that could lead a man of a different culture into direct conflict with the 'home' culture.

Symbolic meanings can participate in the communicative act directly: to provoke verbal responses, question, emotional reaction, brainstorming, etc., and indirectly, by implication: the participants in the communication process implicitly interpret, account for some or other actions, the actions of the interlocutor, the 'language' of the social symbols of the interlocutor and take this information into account, interpret these symbols as the informational component of the situation. Information of social symbols is included in the non-verbal information obtained and used by the interlocutors in the communication process. Social symbolism is to be described in the framework of non-verbal communicative behavior of the nation.

Description of verbal and nonverbal communicative behavior helps to reveal the peculiarities of the phenomenon. G.V. Kolshansky notes that "a study of the communicative process can only go towards the consideration of verbal behavior of a person in interaction with a variety of paralinguistic means, provided that the language, as the only global manifestation of human cognitive activity, is the dominant means in the system of human communication" [Колшанский 1975:215].

Verbal communicative behavior is also defined as speech behavior; the latter term is used more often. This is a set of rules and traditions of verbal communication in certain circumstances. It is not simply a verbal expression, but the use of language in various communication situations. Typically, verbal behavior is represented by the formulas of etiquette, that is, speech etiquette, but this includes business communication, written communication, telephone conversation, etc. It is stipulated by social and culture-specific rules of conduct in a certain society.

A number of scientists have come to conclusion that a variety of forms of interaction of non-linguistic means with linguistic ones makes it necessary to incorporate these means into linguistic research area, aimed at studying the actual conditions in which language function. This necessity, to take into account the significance of gestures and facial expressions in communication progress, increases significantly when studying spoken language.

G.E. Kreidlin cites E. Sapir: “We are extremely attentive to gestures and respond to them, so to say, in accordance with this complex and mysterious code, which is not written anywhere, not known by anyone, but everyone understands it” [Крейдлин 2004: 127]. Linguists consider the problem of non-verbal aspect of communication, because without knowing it, it is impossible to understand the meaning of many verbal units. Gestures play an important part in spoken language. Oftentimes, we can “say” more using gestures, than words. Gestures are used particularly often when expressing surprise.

To ignore a number of problems associated with gestures used in spoken language means to simplify (or even to misinterpret) to a considerable degree the picture of actual communication, because the sense implied by gestures enters into complex relationships with semantics of the utterance [Муханов 2009:11].

I.L. Mukhanov speaks about “full elements of communication”, such as gestures, facial expressions, speaker’s posture, which are usually called paralinguistic means (“near” linguistic) or paralinguisms (or somatisms, from Greek word “soma” – body, corpus). He also mentioned their contribution to actual speech acts [Муханов 2009:11].

U.D. Apresyan, while analyzing emotional expression, came to conclusion that it is necessary to study its two main forms. He singles out the following two types of emotional expressions: uncontrollable physiological responses of body to the cause, which gave rise to emotion, or response to actual emotions, for instance raising eyebrows (widening eyes) in case of surprise; and controllable motor and voice response of a person to the factor, triggering emotions, or to his intellectual evaluation, for instance attacking in case of anger, growling in case of rage etc. [Апресян 1995:369].

Russian non-verbal dictionary points out a certain similarity between non-verbal and verbal languages. Simultaneous co-existence and interaction of body language and verbal language in the act of communication is possible due to the fact that basic processes, underlying verbal and non-verbal activity of a human being, are most of the times analogous to each other. The authors of the dictionary believe that at least 4 facts demonstrate this, namely: (a) under certain conditions, the meaning can be expressed by gestures alone, or by words alone, or by a combination of both signs; b) sign language behaviour, as well as speech behaviour change in space, time, as well as under the influence of changing social economic and cultural conditions; c) gestures, as well as linguistic units are mostly symbolic signs. They constitute the lexicon of body language in the same way as lexical units constitute the lexicon of natural language; d) many gestures of this body language allow of translation not only into verbal language, but also into another body language, and the problems of translation associated with body languages are similar to that of translation from one natural language into another [Крейдлин 2004:167–68].

E.M. Vereshagin и V.G. Kostomarov, in comparing gesture with “pointless actions”, single out communicative behaviour and self-sufficient behaviour. The first one is greatly different from the second one: communicative behaviour becomes clear only in context; it should reflect the communicative gesture-act and the addressee should know the described gesture, its form and content beforehand. The authors give an example: when a person wants to flap flies away, he can either wave his hand, or move his head, and he succeeds; there is no gesticulation by definition. On the contrary, when a person desperate to find something that is lost waves his hand, that means that he puts up with it; or when the addresser tells about his doubts to the addressee by moving his head. It should be noted that “in verbal representation both absolutely different types of bodily movements are not differentiated, they are represented by one and the same verbal means” [Верещагин и Костомаров 1981:36].

Before naming kinemes corresponding to surprise, we should pay attention to kinesics. In broad meaning kinesics is a science, studying body language and its parts, in narrow meaning, it is the study of hand gestures [Капанадзе 1973:43–45]. The predecessor of the word “gesture” is the Middle Latin word “gestura”, the meaning of which can be described as “the way of wearing something or mode of action” [Капанадзе 1973:166–167]. In addition, the object of kinesics includes facial gestures, gestures made by head and legs, postures and sign gestures. This scientific discipline does not study artificial body languages (primarily languages for deaf-mute people), pantomime language, body languages of relatively small social groups, ritual body languages, professional body languages and dialects. Firstly, the communicative behaviour is meant; it either involuntarily displays the inner state of mind of a person, or communicants use it to deliberately exchange information with each other. Kineme is a complete (having a definite structure, method of implementation and stable meaning) and independent (different from the other) movement of expression or gesture [Верещагин и Костомаров 1981:37]. The main criterion for distinguishing gestures from physiological, purely utilitarian bodily movements is sign-oriented nature of gestures.

It is very important to divide kinemes into classes. There can be singled out the following 3 groups of kinemes: 1) emblematic kinemes or emblems; this type of kinemes has its own independent lexical meaning and they are capable of conveying the meaning regardless of the verbal context (for instance, “to cup one’s hand over one’s mouth in amazement”); 2) illustrative gestures or illustrative; this type of kinemes singles out this or that verbal fragment of communication (for instance, “slightly widening eyes in the end of a usual question”); 3) regulatory gestures or regulators; this type of kinemes governs the course of communicative process, i.e. they start, maintain or finish communicative process (for instance, to nod one’s head in order to maintain conversation) [Капанадзе 1973:79].

G.E. Kreidlin refers kinemes of surprise to emblematic gestures. He singles out two main semantic types of emblems: communicative (“to reach out a hand for a handshake”, “a nod of consent”, “to bow one’s head”, “to give a wink”, “to give the screw-loose sign”, etc) and symptomatic (“to roll eyes”, “to stamp one’s foot”, “to bite lips”) [Крейдлин 2004:99]. To the emblematic gestures, he refers kinemes nearing information, which the person who gesticulates, deliberately provides to the addressee in a communicative act.

Symptomatic gestures should be discussed in more detail. Symptomatic gestures convey emotional state of the person who gesticulates. They reflect relatively objective changes in a person’s appearance under the influence of emotions [Апресян 1995:373]. It is emotion that signifies all symptomatic gestures, not its physiological manifestations (that means, for instance, grief and not tears). Symptomatic gestures may be performed not only in the presence of the interlocutor, but also when a person stays alone [Крейдлин 2004:114].

A few words should be said about reflecting gestures in speech. A problem of ways of reflecting kinetic behaviour has been continually described by scientists. Any verbal reflection of kineme is called locution. Thus, locution is a generalization; it is a generic term for any unit of language or speech, which has meaning oriented to extra linguistic reality [Верещагин и Костмаров 1981:37]. Vereshagin and Kostomarov gives various ways of verbalizing non-verbal behaviour of a person; one and the same kineme can be expressed by various locutions, and vice versa, one and the same locution can be expressed non-verbally in different ways [Верещагин и Костомаров 1981: 37–40].

The structure of a certain communicative act is a result of interaction of verbal and non-verbal means. In the course of conversation, the relationships between a word and a gesture cannot be described as unilateral, and gestures are relatively independent. Any event can be reflected in and described by verbal language, and kinemes are not exceptions. Gestures play an important part in speech acts. They can either accompany spoken language, or be part of it. Sometimes gestures can express more than words.

Thus, verbal or nonverbal communicative behavior is a set of rules and traditions governing the situational conditions of communication. This includes facial expressions and gestures and the positional relationship of interlocutors.