Nonverbal behavior and nonverbal communication

Attempts to (a) articulate some of the suppositions implicit in different approaches used to study nonverbal behaviors as communication, (b) reemphasize a conceptual distinction between nonverbal behaviors which can be considered as communications and other nonverbal behaviors, (c) reformulate some issues in the study of such behaviors, (d) establish definitions and criteria which can make possible empirical investigations of nonverbal communication, and (e) indicate how these definitions and criteria can be applied to the study of hand and arm movements as communicative gestures. It is hoped that the availability of the conceptualization, along with some means for operationalizing the concepts, will make it possible to initiate systematic empirical investigations of nonverbal communication in general. (45 ref.)