Abstracts Language, Literature, and Linguistic

Sources of the communicative body

by Mark Wagner

This study provides evidence for the warranted assertion that classroom practices will be enhanced by awareness of how non-linguistic modalities of the face, hands and vocal intonation contribute to cohesive and cooperative strategies within social groups. Both the history and observations of non-linguistic communication presented by this study suggest that visual, kinesic, and spatial comprehension create and influence social fields and common spaces, yet our language for these fields and spaces is impoverished. This knowledge has been submerged and marginalized through history. At the same time, through time, despite this submersion and marginalization, interrelational and intrarelational synchrony and dis-synchrony, centered on and by the communicative body, occur in social settings in ways that can be considered from both historical and observational perspectives. Buildi ng on recent theory by Damasio, Donald, Noddings, Grumet, Terdiman, and Nussbaum, the historical concepts and classroom observations presented here evidence that social values such as caring, loyalty, and generosity are sometimes understood, implicitly and explicitly, through the exchange, perception, and interpretation of non-linguistic signs. By understanding how the face and hands and rhythm and pitch of the voice create cohesive and cooperative social values in learning spaces - separate from racial, ethnic, and intellectual differences - this investigation recovers a submerged knowledge in order to offer a new logic for understanding social process. In turn, this new logic hopes to further transformational practice in the learning and teaching arts and sciences.