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These are excerpts and elaborations from my book "The Nature of Consciousness"
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Emotions as Communication Emotions are also the
fastest way that we can communicate with members of our group, another activity
that is critical to survival. The US psychiatrist Allan Hobsonthinks that emotions are
signals between animals of the same species that communicate one's brain state
to another. Emotions may predate
language itself as a form of communication.
The US anthropologist Ray Birdwhistellcoined a term,
"kinesics", for paralinguistic body communication, such as facial
expression (Introduction to Kinesics, 1952). Birdwhistell thought that all
movements of the body obey some kind of meaning. Non-verbal behavior has its
own grammar, with a "kineme" being the kinesic equivalent of the
phoneme. Kinesics is about emotions.
It may well be that body communication existed before language was invented,
and that it was the main form of communication. Facial expression is
inevitable like language and universal like language. Back to the beginning of the chapter "Emotion" | Back to the index of all chapters |
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