Body Language

Do you think couples use body language solely to communicate with themselves,, or are they trying to send messages out to others around them? Edward and Mildred Hall, the authors of The Sounds of Silence, say, “This language includes your posture, gestures, facial expression, costume, the way you walk, even your treatment of time and space and material things (Hall and Hall 100). One can tell a lot more about someone by observing theses things than by listening to the words that come out of someone’s mouth. After all, a picture is worth a 1000 words. When couples choose to show public displays of affection, sometimes it is not merely because they want express their desire for other person, but it is for an underlying ulterior motive. We like to think that PDA is intended to show affection between the couple. However, many times the public display of affection is actually intended to communicate other messages to outsiders.
For example, my friend, Aaron, had a group of all his friends come over to see his new apartment. However, Aaron’s new girlfriend, Megan, was not to happy about Aaron’s ex girlfriend, Kylie, showing up over there. Megan sat down very close to Aaron almost as if she was trying to sit in his lap. Her physical proximity showed she was comfortable being in an intimate zone with Aaron. She also kept glancing up, smiling at Aaron while trying to pull him in closer to her. The Halls say, “How a person handles space in dating others is an very obvious and very sensitive indicator about how he or she feels about the other person” (106). Because she sat so close to him and kept trying to pull him in even closer, it implies that she is possessive and territorial. Aaron was turned slightly away from Megan and towards Kylie. Since he was not responding to his girlfriend’s attempts to show their affection publicly, but he was turned toward Kylie, showing a possible interest in her, Megan crossed her arms and legs, tightly clenched her teeth, and turned her legs away from Kylie. Her body language shows that she felt threatened by Kylie’s presence in the apartment. She was pulling herself in and away from Kylie. Megan wanted to establish an intimate distance with Aaron and bring him into her bubble so that others, like Kylie, would get the message to back off ; Megan and Aaron are a couple. She was not sitting that close to Aaron simply because she had feelings for him, but so that others would know they were together or had that they had an official title to their relationship. Megan had a motive to show others that Aaron was taken, and that he was her’s only.
I believe people resort to using body language because it makes them uncomfortable to say how they feel in a certain situation. It would have been awkard if Megan had just shouted out, “Hey, he is mine! Back off!”