Non-Verbal Cues in Politics: An Analysis of Gestural Signals sent by American and European Politicians

• Authors: Marta Rominiecka
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

"Speech is accompanied by an intricate set of gestural signals which affect meaning, emphasis and other aspects of utterances" Argyle (1972: 245). They are at least as influential as the verbal content of the message in determining how an individual is perceived (Rosenberg et al. 1986). Kopacz (2006) claims that non-verbal behaviours play an immense role in forming people's judgements and may be used in political persuasion to elicit positive reactions from voters. The objective of this paper is to analyze some of the most popular body signals sent by American and European politicians and show which of them are considered positive and strengthen the verbal message and which are said to be negative and make the performer look unprofessional and untrustworthy. The next purpose is to determine which non-verbal channel such as eyes, face, hands, posture, legs is the strongest and attracts the greatest attention.

Keywords

EN

political communication; non-verbal communication; steeple; American Four; mouth guard gesture

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Journal: Poznań Studies in Contemporary Linguistics
• Year: 2008
• Volume: 44
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 247-263

Dates

published

2008-06-01

online

2008-07-11

Contributors

author

Marta Rominiecka

• Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań, Poland

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Identifiers

DOI

10.2478/v10010-008-0012-0