OLET1115

(Im)Politeness in Global Society

Body language

Body language varies widely among cultures, and it can easily be a source of
misunderstandings.

A good example are the gestures for “yes” and “no.” In the English-speaking
world, and indeed in many non-English-speaking cultures, the body language for “yes” is
a nod, and the body language for “no” is some variation of shaking one’s head from side
to side. We have seen this all our life, and we may think it is universal. Well, it is not. Let
me tell you a little anecdote that exemplifies this.

Travelling for the first time in Sicily, in Southern Italy, a young man, a Swiss
friend of mine, stopped to buy cigarettes at a local shop. He stepped up to the counter
and asked, in the little Italian he knew, “do you have Marlboro?” The man looked at him
and raised his chin. After raising his chin, his head naturally came back down. The
customer took this as a nod, and waited for the shopkeeper to give him his cigarettes.
Nothing happened. Thinking he may not have heard, the young man asked again: “do
you have Marlboro?” The man nodded again. Except that he didn’t: he was raising his
chin, in a gesture that in Southern Italy means, “no.” This went on for a while, until the
customer, frustrated, just left the shop, thinking the guy must have been either very
rude or a little crazy.
The story may seem just funny, and indeed my friend was telling it as a
humorous tale. But it also demonstrates one important thing: that when we take for
granted the universal meaning of a gesture, we become unable to read it as different.
There was a small difference between the Sicilian shopkeeper’s head gesture and a nod.
But to my friend, they looked the same. He was expecting either a nod or a shaking of
the head. Between the two, the shopkeeper’s gesture looked clearly more like the
former.

Body language can be a source of more complex forms of miscommunication. A
person’s posture or their way of sitting can be perfectly acceptable in one culture and
very rude in another.

For example, in Indonesia, to stand with your hands on your hips is perceived as
arrogant. Similarly, sitting with crossed legs when talking to someone is considered
impolite in Arabic cultures. This is because crossing your legs is a sign that you consider
yourself superior to the interlocutor. Furthermore, in the Arab world, when you are
sitting down, your feet should never be pointed at anyone. This is partly related to the
fact that sole of the shoe is considered impure, because it is typically dirty. For the same
reason, people take their shoes off in the house and in some public places. Throwing a
shoe is the height of disrespect in the Arab world. In an interesting case of cultural
misunderstanding, during the second Iraq War, an Iraqi demonstrator threw a shoe in
the direction of President Bush, to show his extreme contempt. The American media
that reported on the episode did not get the high rudeness of the gesture, and the
intended offence got lost in translation.

The level of bodily contact is another important feature that varies between
cultures. For example, in Japan, when meeting someone for the first time, people
typically bow rather than shaking hands. Even between friends, when you meet up or
when you say goodbye, you don’t hug or shake hands or kiss, but simply express your
greetings verbally. Another variation of bodily greeting that does not involve touching
can be found in South and Southeast Asia, where you touch your heart when meeting
someone for the first time.
In the Arab world, it is socially acceptable to be quite touchy among close friends
of the same gender. Men walk arm in arm or even holding hands, women hug and kiss
each other on the cheeks when saying hello or goodbye. Holding hands between people
of the same sex is not coded as a sign of a gay romantic relationship. It is just a sign of
male-male or female-female friendship. Interestingly, this creates greater freedom for
gay couples than for heterosexual ones. In Egypt, for example, the legislation on public
act of indecency only applies to heterosexual couples. A man and a woman could be
fined for making out in public, whereas two women doing the same thing, in theory, are
not in breach of any law. More generally, according to social norms, for a husband to
kiss his wife in public is seen as disrespectful. By contrast, for two girls to hold hands in
the street is socially acceptable, since it is seen as friendly, rather than ‘indecent’. In
Muslim-majority Southeast Asian countries like Indonesia, on the other hand, it is
socially acceptable to shake hands with people of the opposite sex.

In all this, of course there are some universals: punching someone in the face
and causing them intense pain is a pretty clear hostile gesture. Spitting in someone’s
face is hostile for everyone. But spitting on the ground, for example, can mean different
things to different people. Once again, what is important is to remind ourselves that
body language can mean something very different from what it seems to us initially. We
will discuss more strategies to handle these issues in the last module.