AN ALPHABET FOR MOVEMENT
view, or a sign that you are insecure and want to defend yourself. Now these and a few others are valid interpretations, but when we come to the direction of the cross, left over right or right over left, we are on tricky ground. Cross your arms without thinking. Some of you will put your left arm outside, some your right arm outside and, most important of all, you will always cross your arms the same way. Crossing them the other way just 'feels wrong'. This is because the way in which we cross our arms, left over right or right over left, is a genetic trait, an inborn trait, in the same way that using your left or right hand to write with is genetic. Folding the hands and intertwining the fingers is also genetic. Is your right thumb or left thumb on top? Taking these points into consideration, we may be on safe ground when we use the gesture itself as a signal, but we are on uncertain ground when we speak of direction. Most serious studies of body language have concerned themselves with the emotions transmitted by movement, not with the innate nature of the person transmitting the message. At best, the signal sent out, the body language, has been used to make a person understand himself. When it is used to try to determine personality or character rather than behaviour, it seems fraught with contradictions. The ABC of Body Language In an attempt to outline certain aspects of body language and unify the science, or perhaps make body language into a science, Dr Ray Birdwhistell has written a preliminary research manual on the subject, a manual he calls An Introduction to Kinesics. Basically, he has 155