The Application of Teachers’ Body Language in English Teach(4)

(name of author) 4 divided nonverbal communication roughly into four categories: “body language, paralanguage, object language and environment language”. [5] It means that body language divided from nonverbal communication. Based on Fast‟s (1970) definition of nonverbal communication, Hu Wenzhong (1995) defined body language as those appearance and actions that transmit communicational information. [6]Although there are other definitions of body language according to different scholars, in general, they are most alike.

ii. Classification of body language

There are kinds of classification because of different scholars in different periods in the development of body language study. In later studies, Jenkins & Johnson (1977), Miller (1998), He Daokuan (1998) and Liu Qin & Pan Mingwei (2010) provided more typical and clearer classifications of body language. Jenkins & Johnson (1977) stated that there are seven types: proxemics, speech, eye contact, facial expression, posture, hand movement, and body rhythms. Miller (1988) gave eight categories: facial expression, eyes, vocal intonation, touching, body posture and movements, dress, use of space. He Daokuan divided body language into seven types based on the source of communicating information: eye contact, touching behavior, posture, gesture, facial expressions. In Liu Qin & Pan Mingwei‟s study, they divided body language into five aspects: eye contact, hand movement, gesture, facial expression and the naturalness of expression. From the above categories, some aspects are similar, such as eye contact, gesture and posture. It is revealed that these aspects are very important in body language study. In this paper, it just discusses the use of body language in English teaching from the aspect of facial expression, gesture, posture and dressing.

iii. Distinction between body language and verbal language

First, Body language is both social and biological, but verbal language is only social. In 1960s, there are three American researchers who had done an extensive research in New Guinea, Brahman, America, Brazil and Japanese about the use of body language in different countries. They found that although in different culture environment, they use the same body language in their daily life. They came to the conclusion that it is because of heredity. From the research, they proved that a part of body language is congenital and biological, whereas the other parts are learned from postnatal environment in different culture and different context. Second, body language is more authentic than verbal language. Due to body language is biological, some behaviors are subconscious and uncontrolled. When people want to lie, what he said is inconsistent with what he expressed. Psychologist Sigmund Freud said: “he that has eyes to see and ears to hear may convince himself that no mortal can keep a secret. If his lips are silent, he chatters with his ginger tips; betrayal oozes out of him