Ray Birdwhistell

Ray L. Birdwhistell (1918 - 1994) is a Anthropologue particularly versed in the study of the Communication.

Biography

Graduate of the University of Philadelphia, it taught with Toronto (Ontario), Louisville (Kentucky), Buffalo (New York), and finished his career in prestigious the Anneberg School off Communications of the Université of Pennsylvania.

Work

For a kinesthetic analysis

Birdwhistell tried scientifically to build the analysis “Kinésique”, that of the body language, by proposing " Kinèmes " on the model of the " Phonemes " for the word. It used the filmic support lengthily to observe the interaction of the participants in the communication: body movements, gestures, postures, mimicry… With its opinion even, the attempt was not covered with success, for reasons at the same time of complexity (the 6 film seconds decoding took several hundreds of pages to him) and of fundamental reductionnism.

Taking again the method initiated by Birdwhistell, the anthropologist Gregory Bateson deciphered a film recalling the interaction between a Balinese mother and his child. On a short sequence, he noticed several occurrences of the same interaction: the mother attracts the child by the word, and pushes back it by the gesture. He will speak about Schismogenèse then of " Double constraint " (Double bind) to indicate this type of paradoxical communication.

Against the reductionnism of the communication

Lucid on the risk to reduce the communication to a mechanical process (one speaks about the risk of reductionnism), Birdwhistell made fun readily of the " nonverbal Communication ": " I do not make simply a spirit when I say that to speak about nonverbal communication is like speaking about noncardiac physiology, when I say that physiology, not the anatomy, is the essential model. The liver is a liver only on the table of dissection of the anatomist. It is the part of a corpse, insufficient for a function vitale." ! (quotation extracted from the new communication . Paris: Threshold, 1981)

In the same way, it replaçait the communication in a " tout" social and anthropological: " An individual does not communicate; he takes part in a communication or he becomes an element about it. He can move, to make noise… but he does not communicate. He can hear, feel, taste and touch, but he does not communicate. In other words, he is not communicating party, he there participe." (quoted by Watzlawick and Al, 1972, page 68, in a logic of the communication . Paris: Threshold)

However, the wisdom of Birdwhistell which pushed it to give up the illusory search for a universal repertory of the gestuality did not make school. Many consultants engulfed themselves in the breach, with blow of and lucrative meeting best-seller of personal Développement: PNL, the Synergologie and the Gestuologie make a broad use of kinesthetic, without precaution, and guarantee of scientificity.

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