An Ethnological Study of Body Communication

虽然社会上的人类是有身体的生物，但迄今为止，人们对身体作为交流手段的研究很少，而且几乎只是从实验心理学家的角度来研究。在本研究中，我们探讨了在世界多元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、身体互动和互动的同步性。我们试图研究相遇时的问候行为，我们发现日常生活中的问候并不是普遍的，在意大利和希腊这样的社会中，通过触摸问候是强制性的，即使是熟人之间也有避免接触的倾向。这一事实表明，触摸对人类交流至关重要。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。我们研究过的每个社会都存在这种现象，但我们也发现它们不是简单的生理现象。它们的出现在很大程度上取决于文化语境，随着世界范围内文化的急剧变化，它们在某些情况下失去了交流功能和意义。但我们仍然对世界各地互动同步的频率和深度印象深刻。由于身体的配合和同步是文化的，它们可以被看作是身体技术。在调查过程中，我们还对来自不同文化背景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.