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Filosofická Fakulta Masarykovy Univerzity Masaryk University Faculty of Arts Department of English and American Studies English Language and Literature Petra Tövišová Projecting Identity in Non-verbal Aboriginal Communication Bachelor’s Diploma Thesis Supervisor: PhDr. Jitka Vlčková, Ph. D. 2012 I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography. …………………………………………….. Petra Tövišová I am heartily thankful to my supervisor PhDr. Jitka Vlčková, Ph. D. for initiating me into this interesting subject, and mainly, for providing critical and insightful commentary, and for her encouragement, guidance and support. Table of Contents Introduction…………………………………………………………………..…………5 1. Aboriginal Identity ……………………………………………………….…………8 1.1. Alinta: the Flame……………………………..………………..….………11 2. Nonverbal Communication …………..………………………………….…………13 3. Body Communication (Kinesics)……..…………………………………….………15 4. Facial Communication…………………………………………………..….………18 5. Eye Communication……………………………………………………..….………23 6. Artifactual Communication…………………………………………………………27 7. Tactile Communication (Haptics)…………………………………………..………36 8. Smell (Olfactics)………………………………………………………….…………39 9. Silence………………………………………………………………………………41 10. Spatial Communication (Proxemics)………………………………………………47 11. Territoriality………………………………………………………….…….………50 12. Temporal Communication (Chronemics)…………………………………….……55 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………..…………58 Works Cited……………………………………………………………………………63 Résumé..……………..………………………………………………..…………..……65 Introduction “Communication refers to the process of human beings responding to the symbolic behavior of other persons” (Adler and Rodman 2). Communication plays an essential role in shaping identity, because it is the only way people learn who they are. “Each of us enters the world with little or no sense of identity. We gain an idea of who we are from the way others define us. …Deprived of communication with others, we would have no sense of identity” (Adler and Rodman 8). “Identity is at the heart of the person, and the group, and the connective tissue that links them. People need psychological anchor” (Edwards 2). According to Edwards, personal identity is the summary of individual traits and characteristics that make each human being a unique one. It signifies the „sameness‟ of an individual at all times or in all circumstances” (Edwards 19). At a group level, an important identity marker is language. “Accent, dialect and language variations reveal speakers‟ membership in particular speech communities, social classes, ethnic and national groups” (Edwards 21). However, personal and group identities are not shaped solely by the use of verbal communication. People use two major signal systems to interact with each other- the verbal and the nonverbal. Both of these systems serve series of social functions and according to Adler and Rodman, one important social function of nonverbal communication involves identity management. People sometimes behave in ways that will present their identity, instead of projecting themselves verbally (146). From this it follows that identity can be projected by the use of verbal, as well as nonverbal communication. This communication is governed by culture, for “although we seldom recognize the fact, our whole notion of the self is shaped by the culture in which we have been reared” (Adler and Rodman 45). Every culture provides its own set of rules 5 that determine how members will behave and “these rules, therefore, form the group identity” (Adler and Rodman 258). Because of the fact, that particular cultures and societies sometimes acknowledge completely different rules, the clash of cultures is often inevitable. “One problem that hinders intercultural communication is the tendency to see others and their behaviors through your own cultural filters. Ethnocentrism is the tendency to evaluate the values, beliefs, and behaviors of your own culture as being more positive, logical, and natural than those of other cultures” (DeVito, “Human Communication” 372). One of the best known cases of clashes of cultures was the one between Australian Aborigines and the first European colonizers, whose “cultural and physical differences created basic misunderstandings and a lack of sympathy between the two groups” (Broome 92). The first Europeans to arrive in the continent considered the natives to be savages. “Nakedness was equated with primitiveness, as was the lack of houses, villages, cultivation or any apparent system of chiefs, government or land tenure” (Flood 28). This was largely due to a lack of understanding about the culture of the Aborigines. The Aboriginal culture was too complex for the colonizers to understand. “Aboriginal society was not „primitive‟ as Europeans claimed, but simply different” (Broome 93). Even though, the Europeans gradually learnt and started using some of the native languages, they still could not fully understand the natives because, as Edwards claims, understanding someone is not only the matter of the verbal but also the nonverbal communication (55). Unfortunately, the traditional Australian Aborigines still remain one of the least understood people in the world. Most people perceive them as a primitive culture, because there are not many ways for people to find out the truth about the traditional 6 Aborigines. The majority of authors prefer to deal with contemporary events rather than with earlier historical occurrences, therefore many books have been written about the post-colonization life of the Aborigines but general studies focusing on Aboriginal traditional life and culture remain few in numbers. And the few publications dealing with the traditional Aborigines that have been published examine the Aboriginal life mainly from the verbal perspective. Therefore the intent of this thesis is to illustrate the connections between various areas of nonverbal communication and Aboriginal identity to help understand and therefore being able to appreciate the traditional pre-colonial Aboriginal society. The first chapter defines Aboriginal identity and examines its play in different aspects of everyday life, and presents the concise summary of the film Alinta: the Flame which is used in the thesis to help illustrate various aspects of Aboriginal nonverbal communication. The second chapter explains and defines the concepts and principles of nonverbal communication. The third to twelfth chapters represent ten major nonverbal variables which impinge on, and influence, the process of communication regarding the Australian Aborigines. The thesis mainly draws on the books The Original Australians by Josephine Flood (2006) and The World of the First Australians: Aboriginal Traditional Life: Past and Present written by Catherine Helen Berndt and Ronald M. Berndt (1988) that focus on the life of traditional Australian Aborigines; and on the books Nonverbal Communication Workbook by Joseph A. DeVito (1989) and The Complete Idiot„s Guide to Body Language by Peter A. Andersen which concentrate on the theoretical approach to language of nonverbal behavior. 7 1. Aboriginal Identity Australian Aboriginal People are the original inhabitants of the continent who “have been here for more than 50,000 years and it may in the future be found to be anything up to 120,000 years” (Broome 14). “The Australian Aborigines have sometimes been called Australoids, but they are not a separate human species. Isolation over a long period led to the development of certain local characteristics which marked them off to some extent from other peoples” (Berndt and Berndt 1). These common threads made up their identity called Aboriginality. Traditional Australian Aborigines had a “different way of living, a different outlook [and] different values” than other societies (Berndt and Berndt 6). However, they not only differed from other peoples, there were significant differences in social, cultural and linguistic customs between various Aboriginal groups as well. For example, “it is impossible to generalize about the physical characteristics, life, customs, material possessions, languages, and religious beliefs of the Australian Aborigines” (Reed 5). Berndt and Berndt state that despite the differences between particular Aboriginal groups, there is enough common ground, that when compared to the rest of the world, they can be seen as one (22). One of the aspects of Aboriginal life which was common to all the Aborigines and was a significant part of their identity was kinship and the social organization. Berndt and Berndt suggest that kinship was the major integrating element of social organization which held the society together (90). “The basis of the kinship system was that the Aborigines regarded their whole group as a family” (Broome 20). Their relationships were far more extensive than the Western method of identifying the relatives as mother, father, brother and others. These terms for family members “were extended to everyone in the tribe” (Broome 20). Reed says that there were specific rules that had to be observed in speech and mutual attitudes in every kinship relationship. 8 “When two people met, their first obligation was to discover their degree of kinship so that they would know how to act towards each other” (Reed 132). Australian societies were characterized by living in small groups called bands and clans. Flood reports that bands comprised of one or more extended families and “were „land-using residence groups‟, whereas clans were „country groups‟ with a common identity, often based on
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