An Ethnological Study of Body Communication

尽管社会中的人类是有身体的生物，但迄今为止，作为一种交流手段的身体几乎只从实验心理学家的角度进行了研究。在这项研究中，我们调查了世界上不同文化社会的自然社会环境中身体交流的基本条件，重点是触摸、身体合作和相互作用的共鸣。我们试图研究见面时的问候行为，我们发现日常生活中的问候并不普遍，在意大利和希腊这样的社会，当触摸问候是强制性的时，甚至在熟人之间也有避免触摸的倾向。这一事实表明，触摸对于人类的交流是必不可少的。另一方面，我们证实了身体的相互作用和同步是无处不在的。在我们研究的每一个社会中都有它们的存在，但我们也发现它们不是简单的生理现象。它们的产生在很大程度上取决于文化决定的语境，随着世界范围内文化的根本变化，它们有时会失去交际功能和意义。但我们仍然对世界各地互动同步的频率和深度印象深刻。由于身体的共同作用和同步是文化的，它们可以被视为身体技术。在我们的调查中，我们还对来自不同文化的专业表演者进行了观察和视觉记录，以寻找人体交流的逻辑和可能性。

Althoug humans in society are creatures with bodies, the body as a means of communication has been studied hitherto very little and almost only from the experimental psychologist view point. In this study we investigated the fundamental conditions of body communication in natural social envinonnments of culturally diverse societies in the world, focusing on the touching, bodily coactions and interactional syuchrony. We tried to study the greeting behavior on encounters, and we discovered that the greeting in everyday life is not universal and that in such societies as Italyand Greece when the greeting by touch is obligatory there is a tendency to avoid touching even among acquantances. This fact implies that touch is essential to the human communication.We confirmed on the other hand that the he bodily coaction and synchronization are on the other hand ubiquitous. They are found in every society we studied, but we found out also that they are not simple physiological phenomena. Their occurrence depends very much on culturally determined contexts, and as culture changes radically worldwide there are cases in which they lose communicational function and meaning. But still we are impressed by the frequency and depth of interactional synchrony over the world.As the bodily coaction and synchroy are cultural, they can be seen as body technique. During our investigation we also made observations and visual documentation of professional performers belonging to various cultures in order to find the logic and possibilities of human body communication.