Speaking to Silence:Toward Queering

Nonverbal Communication

Karen E. Lovaas, PhD

San Francisco State University

SUMMARY. The majority of nonverbal communication research and ped-agogy reproduces heterosexist and sexist ideologies, normalizing and natu-ralizing gender and sexual binaries, and sanctioning an exceedingly narrowrange of gendered and sexualized subjects, practices, and relationships. Thisessay proposes that nonverbal communication scholarship and pedagogyneed to address these issues. First, I provide a brief summary of the historyof the field of nonverbal communication. Second, I critique the conspicuousabsence of the queer subject, the rigid essentialism, and the pervasiveheterosexism in nonverbal communication textbooks in particular. Finally, Idiscuss three examples of communication research that avoid these pitfallsand herald what queering nonverbal communication might look like. [Ar-ticle copies available for a fee from The Haworth Document Delivery Service:1-800-HAWORTH. E-mail address: <docdelivery@haworthpress.com> Web-site: <http://www.HaworthPress.com> © 2003 by The Haworth Press, Inc. Allrights reserved.]

Correspondence may be addressed: Department of Speech and CommunicationStudies, San Francisco State University, 1600 Holloway Avenue, San Francisco, CA94132 (E-mail: klovaas@igc.org).

The author greatly appreciates the care taken by two reviewers who supplied help-ful feedback on an earlier draft of this paper.

[Haworth co-indexing entry note]: “Speaking to Silence: Toward Queering Nonverbal Communication.”Lovaas, Karen E. Co-published simultaneously in Journal of Homosexuality (Harrington Park Press, an im-print of The Haworth Press, Inc.) Vol. 45, No. 2/3/4, 2003, pp. 87-107; and: Queer Theory and Communica-tion: From Disciplining Queers to Queering the Discipline(s) (ed: Gust A. Yep, Karen E. Lovaas, and John P.Elia) Harrington Park Press, an imprint of The Haworth Press, Inc., 2003, pp. 87-107. Single or multiple cop-ies of this article are available for a fee from The Haworth Document Delivery Service [1-800-HAWORTH,9:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m. (EST). E-mail address: docdelivery@haworthpress.com].

http://www.haworthpress.com/store/product.asp?sku=J0822003 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved.

10.1300/J082v45n02_04 87

KEYWORDS. Communication, heteronormativity, heterosexism, non-verbal communication, queer theory, sexual identity

Whatever is unnamed, undepicted in images, whatever is omitted frombiography, censored in collections of letters, whatever is misnamed assomething else, made difficult-to-come-by, whatever is buried in thememory by the collapse of meaning under an inadequate or lying lan-guage–this will become, not merely unspoken, but unspeakable.

–Adrienne Rich (1976, p. 199, author’s italics)

Silence can have a variety of functions, such as creating interpersonaldistance, showing respect for others, punishing others, and avoiding em-barrassment for others.

–Virginia P. Richmond and James C. McCroskey (2000, pp. 323-324)

Silences also clearly function to mark episode and position boundaries,often closing topics participants are no longer interested in pursuing.

–Judee Burgoon, David B. Buller, and W. Gill Woodall (1996, p. 352)

If all communication were limited to the linguistic, the body, aside from thevocal sounds and hand movements recognized as constituting symbol systems,would be considered a silent realm. But we do understand the body as speakingvia other means as well, through nonverbal messages. And silence itself, as thelast two quotations above, taken from two textbooks used in many undergradu-ate courses in nonverbal communication, assert, may convey a wide range ofmeanings and perform assorted functions.

The field of nonverbal communication has been largely silent regardingsexualities other than heterosexuality. How should we read these silences onqueer subjects, queer relationships, queer discourses? With the words ofAdrienne Rich in mind, we may ask whether queer realities are left “merelyunspoken” or if they are, within the ways of knowing that constitute most non-verbal communication scholarship, “unspeakable.”

In this essay, after describing my interest in writing on the subject of queer-ing nonverbal communication, I provide a short summary of the history of thefield of nonverbal communication, critique the conspicuous absence of thequeer subject, the essentialism, and the pervasive heterosexism in nonverbaltextbooks in particular, and look at a few excellent examples of communica-tion research that avoid these pitfalls. I conclude with some thoughts on futurepossibilities for research and teaching in nonverbal communication from acritical and queer perspective.

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ENTERING NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION TERRITORY

While working on a master’s degree in Speech and Communication Studiesat one of my alma maters, San Francisco State University, in the late 1970s, Itook the Nonverbal Communication course taught by Sally Gearhart and PatHunt. My primary focus in the program was gender and communication; I tookthis particular undergraduate class more from of a desire to work with theseprofessors than from a strong interest in the subject matter. What has remainedwith me from that class, aside from the fine model of co-teaching–an optionthat, sadly, is rarely available to professors these days–was the opportunity af-forded us in that academic setting to reflect on, better appreciate, and talkabout our experience of our bodies.

One memorable day our assignment was to come to class having clad our-selves and otherwise arranged our appearance so as to be unlike how our class-mates and instructors had previously seen us, an activity that may now becommon in introductory courses in nonverbal communication. Both in theprior decision-making, planning, and preparation process, and as we appraisedand interacted with each other in the classroom, I remember feeling playful,nervous, curious, serious, and surprised by turns. What was I opening up inmyself and revealing to others? What would we newly see in each other andhow might the others respond to this version? Though most of us, as I recall,did not make overt shifts between presentations of gender or sexuality, I no-ticed that gender seemed to shift in some ways, regardless of the transforma-tion enacted. I had heard of “female impersonation” shows in San Franciscobut had never before considered that various ways in which I assembled anddis-sembled myself constituted a drag performance. It was all wonderful. Theclassroom, I concluded, might be a place where mind and body worked–and,more radical, played–in synchrony, furthering understanding and opening pos-sibilities.

Fast forward to spring 2000 and I was about to teach nonverbal communica-tion, in that very department. Though nonverbal communication was not a spe-cific focus of my master’s or doctoral work, my research, teaching, andconsulting work have dealt with several subjects related to nonverbal commu-nication. For example, my dissertation, entitled Waging Hormones (1993), an-alyzed the surge in public attention to the “premenstrual syndrome” in the U.S.in the 1980s; it included studying decades of menstrual cycle research and thecontemporary popular discourses on PMS, as well as interviews with womenregarding their experiences of their menstrual cycles. I was, and am, fascinatedby the ways that we talk about the role of hormones in our lives and the rela-tionships we see between hormones, emotions, behaviors, gender, and sexual-ity. Some of these are continuing themes in my research program. It was mysense that I might bring some of the thinking and work I had done related togender, culture, sexuality, and critical theory to the nonverbal communicationcourse in our department. So when the customary professor for the nonverbal

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communication course, Pat Hunt, was on a richly deserved leave, I offered toteach the class.

I began searching for materials, first to substantially update and enrich myknowledge of the field, and then to select course readings. I was excited aboutthe prospects of applying feminist, critical, multicultural, queer perspectivesto the subject. I searched eagerly to see what had been happening within thecommunication discipline and who was doing critical work in nonverbalcommunication. These efforts included posting to Crtnet News, the NationalCommunication Association’s listserv, asking if listserv participants knew ofanyone doing critical work in nonverbal communication. A couple of peoplequickly responded, asking that if I find anything I share the wealth with them.Then, fortunately, I heard from Eric Peterson at the University of Maine. Dr.Peterson, whose published work has focused on media consumption, sexism,racism, and personal narrative, also has been striving to integrate critical ap-proaches in his undergraduate course in nonverbal communication. In a seriesof e-mails, he told me about using semiotics as the theoretical foundation forthe class; we agreed that there is a need for more work from critical, queer, andmulticultural perspectives. Aside from his helpful advice, I found nothing onapproaches to teaching nonverbal communication that diverge from the as-sumptions and methodologies of traditional social science, and a total of threearticles in communication journals that consider nonverbal communicationfrom a queer field of vision.

If a nonverbal communication class is a popular offering in departments ofcommunication, it is also widely perceived as a lesser light or distant, slightlyembarrassing relative. Richmond and McCroskey speak to this: “Nonverbalcommunication is the area of communication that simultaneously receives themost positive response from students and the most negative response fromsome professors in other areas of the field and some outside the communica-tion discipline” (2000, p. xi). They surmise that the main culprits for this stateof affairs are, first, that popularized versions on mass market bookshelves “of-ten over-generalize research findings, and such generalizations too often findtheir way into nonverbal communication classrooms” (2000, p. xi).

Among the popular works on nonverbal communication, most cited is Jul-ius Fast’s immensely popular Body Language, which appeared on the NewYork Times bestseller list for twenty weeks after first being published in 1970and is out in a new edition in 2002. Following it have come many others withtitles such as How to read a person like a book (1973); Signals: How to usebody language for power, success, and love (1984); Secrets of sexual body lan-guage (1996); Reading people: How to understand people and predict theirbehavior–anytime, anyplace (1999); and, Male body language that attractswomen (2000). Numerous Internet sites offer nonverbal solutions to sales peopleand men seeking women, for example, see http://nonverbal-sales-seminars.com for a “Nonverbal Sales Seminar” that “can help increase sales, boost yourclosing rate, improve productivity and give you an edge” (Gant & Donald

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Communications, Inc.) and http://www.sosuave.com for “Using Body Lan-guage to Attract Women” where one may “Learn how to use body languageand nonverbal communication to meet, date and attract women” (The DonJuan Center). Second, Richmond and McCroskey concede that “many nonver-bal communication classes were developed as virtually content-free experien-tial courses” (2001, p. xi). I am not privy to the evidence on which they basethis observation but can confirm that one may readily locate a plethora of exer-cises and activities for use in the nonverbal communication classroom, none ofwhich, as I recall, acknowledge queer subjects.

I come to the task of considering how nonverbal communication currentlyaddresses the queer subject and how queer theory might inform nonverbal re-search without extensive training in quantitative social science methods ingeneral, or in nonverbal communication theory and research in particular. Af-ter reflecting on my experience in teaching an undergraduate class in nonver-bal communication and conducting a modest survey of nonverbal texts, books,and journal articles from within the field of communication as well as fromother disciplines, I am dismayed by and deeply concerned about the absence ofthe queer subject in this research and the impact this “silent message” sends toour students. As Sally Gearhart eloquently recalls (Foreword, this volume),and Heinz (2002) and Yep (this volume) succinctly summarize, we have beenasking and have asked for some twenty years to take account of sexual diver-sity in our work, to account for ourselves, our colleagues, our students. Howfar have we come? I am also optimistic about what may be learned from exist-ing critical and queer exemplars, only a few of which are found in contempo-rary communication scholarship but a rapidly expanding number of whichexist in several sister fields.1

THE HISTORY OF THE STUDYOF NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION

If one includes the early elocutionists, the study of nonverbal communica-tion dates back to the work of Roman orators Cicero and Quintilian. The notionthat one’s physical delivery should be highly calculated for maximum effect isa continuing theme in some areas of communication and given the most atten-tion in speaking and performance classes, though the subject is now addressedin less elaborate and uniform fashion. A contemporary textbook for either a“hybrid” class introducing the student to the field of communication or a classfocusing on public speaking will typically have a single chapter devoted towhat are considered important elements of presenting oneself to and engagingone’s audience through use of one’s voice and body.

Texts and classes in nonverbal communication are more likely to trace thefield back to studies of animal behavior, often as far back as Darwin’s 1872study, The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals, through human ethol-

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ogy, biology, primatology, zoology, sociobiology, and evolutionary psychol-ogy. Similarities between human and animal species are highlighted, with thesource of most nonverbal human communication often explained as arisingfrom more primitive, instinct-based parts of the brain. Other disciplines ofstudy prominently featured in capsule summaries of the field’s development arefrom anthropology (e.g., Birdwhistle, 1952, 1970; Hall, 1959, 1960, 1966, 1976,1984), psychiatry (e.g., Ruesch & Kees, 1956), psychology (e.g., Mehrabian,1971, 1972; Ekman, Friesen, & Ellsworth, 1972; Ekman & Friesen, 1969,1975), and sociology (e.g., Goffman, 1959, 1963a, 1963b, 1967).

There are two extremely disparate foundations for the field, then, which re-flect very different assumptions about the human subject. In Burkean terms,these are: our nonverbal communication is largely unconscious motion,emerging from our animality, versus our nonverbal communication reflectshuman symbolic action and may be highly calculated for maximal persuasiveeffect (Burke, 1966). Animality appears to have won out in much of the non-verbal research. The only scholarly journal devoted to research on nonverbalcommunication is the interdisciplinary Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, whichbegan as Environmental Psychology and Nonverbal Behavior in 1976 andchanged to its current title in 1979. The journal

presents original theoretical and empirical research on all major areas ofnonverbal behavior. Specific topics include paralanguage, proxemics, fa-cial expressions, eye contact, face-to-face interaction, and nonverbalemotional expression, as well as other subjects which contribute to the sci-entific understanding of nonverbal processes and behavior. (http://www.kluweronline.com/issn/0191-5886)

Human Communication Research, which publishes a broader scope ofpositivistic communication research, frequently includes nonverbal communi-cation; otherwise, articles on this subject appear more often in the journals ofother fields, such as social psychology.

There is no nonverbal communication division or interest group in eitherthe National Communication Association (NCA) or the International Commu-nication Association (ICA). Programs regarding nonverbal communicationmost often appear within interpersonal communication or language and socialinteraction, and, occasionally, within semiotics. NCA is the larger of the twoorganizations, with about twice as many members. Each year NCA hosts anannual convention, an event described on its Website as “the leading outlet forthe discipline’s scholarship” (National Communication Association). Asearch of the 2002 NCA convention program found that out of a total of 1,163program sessions (not including business meetings), there were sixteen entriesincluding the term “nonverbal,” six of which are entire program sessions.Three of these programs deal with teaching nonverbal communication, onediscusses applications of nonverbal communication to reducing communica-

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tion apprehension, another involves analyzing the use of nonverbal cues in avideotaped portion of a meeting. The last of these six appears to stand out as aless traditional example of research on nonverbal communication within thecommunication discipline; sponsored by the Religious Communication Asso-ciation, this session considers “The Role of Non-Verbal ‘Rhetoric’ in Reli-gious Worship Practices.” The entries in this program are some of the few thatdeal in some fashion with nonverbal aspects of communication between mem-bers of different racial/ethnic, linguistic, and religious communities. Using thesearch terms “space” and “body,” for two topics subsumed by nonverbal com-munication, yields very different results, including, at last, this entry that joinsnonverbal communication with sexuality: Mardi Gras and Communication: Is-sues of the Body, Sexuality, and Public/Private Spaces.

It would take a far more thorough review of the literature to ascertain thetrends within the field, including the quantity of research overall, variationswithin and between disciplines, new directions, interests, and approaches.2 Myimpression, based on preparing to teach a nonverbal communication class in2000 as well as database searches and looking through issues of Journal ofNonverbal Behavior and Human Communication Research of the last fewyears in preparation for this article, is that while the sex of participants contin-ues to be included as a factor in quite a few studies published in scholarly peri-odicals such as the Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, there seem to be manyfewer studies focusing on gender than in the 1970s and 1980s. The terms gen-der and sex are still used interchangeably and constructed as binaries arisingfrom immutable biological foundations, established on the basis of anatomicaland genetic differences at birth. Sexuality is almost entirely absent–a search ofthe empirical research on nonverbal communication in the last decade yieldedtwo studies (Ambady, Hallanan, & Conner, 1999; Le Poire, 1994). The viewfrom the world of nonverbal communication textbooks is even less encourag-ing.

THE STRAIGHT AND NARROW:GENDER AND SEXUALITY IN NONVERBAL

COMMUNICATION TEXTBOOKS

Although I have not systematically surveyed the popular texts used in otherundergraduate communication courses, I have been teaching long enough tohave seen the texts related to gender and communication, intercultural com-munication, and the introductory communication courses begin to acknowl-edge that not all same-sex relationships are friendships, not all cross-sexrelationships are sexual, not all people identify themselves, their communities,or their practices as straight; further, that as one’s sexuality always “intersects”with other social identities, every grouping based on sex is diverse rather thanhomogeneous. Since I was a student in a nonverbal communication course, I

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have seen the coverage–and sometimes the integration–of cultural and sexualdiversity and the incorporation of critical approaches to scholarship expandsubstantially. Julia Wood’s texts, Communication in our lives, for a fundamen-tals communication course, and Gendered lives, for example, have been ex-panding in each new edition in their integration of culture, gender, and, moreslowly, sexuality, and class. For classes in intercultural communication, Mar-tin and Nakayama’s Intercultural communication in contexts (2000) and theaccompanying anthology with Flores, Reading in intercultural communica-tion (2002), stand out among the textbooks in this area because they discuss thecentral roles of power and history in communication, integrate critical and inter-pretive research as well as functionalist, and include representations of reciprocalrelationships between sexual orientation and other identity formations. Culturesand identities are not conceived of as static possessions that influence communi-cation processes; rather, they are understood as constructions produced withinspecific sets of historical conditions, sites of shifting subjectivities and multiplediscourses.

If the first contact that a college student has with the subject of nonverbalcommunication is in the communication classroom, it is extremely likely thatshe or he will leave that classroom with the impression that all nonverbalscholarship is empirical and that queer subjects, bodies, gazes, spaces, and re-lationships either are unknown to nonverbal researchers or have been inten-tionally discursively erased by them. The textbooks used in nonverbalcommunication courses typically make not one reference to any variety of per-son or experience other than heterosexual. Not surprisingly, the word hetero-sexual rarely appears either; heterosexuality is the unmarked, presumed to beuniversal category of sexuality. I first noted this absence, and by its absence,message, when I was previewing texts to use in teaching nonverbal communi-cation. In preparing this essay, I went back to take another look at and reviewthe popular nonverbal communication texts published within the last ten years:Burgoon, Buller, and Woodall (1996), Leathers (1997), Remland (2000),Richmond and McCroskey (2000), and Knapp and Hall (1997, 2002), as wellas the only reader on the subject, edited by Guerrero, DeVito, and Hecht(1999).3

Assessing the field of nonverbal communication solely on the basis of thecoverage of queer subjects and relationships in the textbooks used in the ma-jority of classes within communication departments, it is difficult to imagine amore egregious example of heterosexism within the discipline. As Eric Peter-son pointed out to me, the index of the latest edition of the Knapp and Hall(2002) text has two listings for “sexual orientation,” one summarizing researchmeasuring one’s skillfulness in identifying others’ sexual orientation and theother reporting on a 1965 study on pupil dilation of male homosexuals lookingat photos of men. This doubles the previous edition’s (Knapp & Hall, 1997)single listing for a discussion of whether men–read straight men–avoid mostsame-sex touch because of “homophobic attitudes and the fear that touching

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will be seen as homosexual” (p. 302). The terms “lesbian,” “gay,” “bisexual,”“transgender,” “queer,” and “homosexual” do not appear in the index of eitheredition.

Some of the articles in The Nonverbal Communication Reader (Guerrero,DeVito, & Hecht, 1999) specify that research participants are heterosexual andone (Guerrero & Andersen, 1999) also acknowledges that “social norms mayprevent [gay and lesbian couples] from touching each other as much [as het-erosexual couples] in certain public environments” (p. 209). The authors go onto express their feeling that “It would also be interesting to see how touch initi-ation is accomplished in gay and lesbian relationships,” hypothesizing that incontrast with heterosexual relationships, in which “social rules dictate that theman should initiate the first tactile move,” “a more symmetrical pattern oftouch initiation may occur” in gay and lesbian relationships (p. 209).

Nonverbal textbooks do consider other social identities such as culture, aterm which may be used to designate groupings such as races, continents, andnationalities; an inset “applications” box in Burgoon, Buller, and Woodall(1996, p. 225), headed “East Meets West,” contrasts nonverbal behaviors ofJapanese with those of U.S. Americans and Western Europeans. Perhaps gen-der and cultural identities are assumed to be more easily and accurately dis-cerned by others than are sexual identities, an important consideration forresearch methodologies involving “neutral” observers.

If sexual identity is not perceived as immediately visible, it is no less essen-tial a category than sex, as the example from Guerrero and Anderson (1999)above indicates. When referenced, gay and lesbian subjects behave in particu-lar ways due to their sexual orientation. While sex is sometimes considered inthe context of other status relationships and culture, sexuality alone may besufficiently powerful to drive “homosexual” behavior.

“Sex differences” in nonverbal communication is a subject addressed in ev-ery nonverbal communication textbook, whether in a separate chapter on “fe-male-male” communication (Andersen, 1999; Hickson, III, & Stacks, 1993;Leathers, 1997; Richmond & McCroskey, 2000) or discussed in relation tospecific nonverbal channels or functions (Burgoon, Buller, & Woodall, 1996;Knapp & Hall, 1997, 2002). In discussing how gender is discussed in nonver-bal communication texts, I make three main points:

1. There are two sexes and they are defined as opposites.2. Sex determines gender.3. Gender (and, therefore, also sex) determines sexual behaviors.

The phrase “the opposite sex” is ubiquitous in all of these texts, is not usedin quotation marks, and is not qualified in any way. It appears to map a humanverity but instead masks an evolution in meaning, a set of moves supported bythe sciences that established the belief that women and men are antithetical andmales superior (Laqueur, 1986; Lovaas, 1993; Martin, 1987). Historian

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Thomas Laqueur demonstrates that the emphasis on differences between thesexes occurred as a result not of breakthroughs in science but of “new ways ofrepresenting and indeed of constituting social realities” (1986, p. 4). “You maythink that differences between men and women are too obvious to require dis-cussion,” is the opening sentence of a section on gender identity in one text(Burgoon, Buller, & Woodall, 1996, p. 232). The same text labels a discussionof “some effects of gender differences in nonverbal communication” (p. 239)as “Applications: Nonverbal Battle of the Sexes” (p. 240). The informationcontained therein begins with the statement that “Gender differences are inter-esting and often humorous, but in actual practice, they can cause tension inmale-female conversations” (Burgoon, Buller, & Woodall, 1996, p. 240). Notehow the discourse of incommensurability of the sexes is linked in these exam-ples, slyly and simultaneously, to notions as disparate as “battle” and humor. Ihear echoes of the comic’s hackneyed refrain, “Women: you can’t live with’em, you can’t live without ’em.”

Also note how the terms sex and gender are often used interchangeably. Ac-companying the term gender in the subject index of one text is simply the note“See Sex” (Knapp & Hall, 1997, p. 494). Some texts define the two terms (e.g.,Andersen, 1999; Richmond & McCroskey, 2000) along the lines of the widelyused “sex is biology, gender is culture”:

Sex is the biological and genetic difference between girls and boys, menand women. In other words, this is the biological sex we are born with.Anatomically, sex is expressed in the sexual organs of men and women,which are distinct for each.

Gender is the psychological, social and cultural manifestationsof what people perceive to be the appropriate behaviors of females andmales. These manifestations may or may not be representative of a per-son’s biological sex. In other words, not all men exhibit the stereotypicalcues of the masculine men. Not all women exhibit the stereotypical cuesof the feminine woman. Some men will have a feminine or responsiveside and some women will have a masculine or assertive side.

Therefore, this chapter will focus upon the nonverbal, possiblybiological, sex differences between females and males; this chapter willalso focus on the nonverbal gender differences and similarities betweenfemales and males. (Richmond & McCroskey, 2000, p. 237)

If you look up sex differences in the subject index of this text, you will find thepage numbers coinciding with the length of the entire chapter, which is titled,by the way, “Female-Male Nonverbal Communication.” Under gender differ-ences in the index, it says, “See specific topics” (p. 353). I chose the topic “fa-cial behavior” and found two entries for gender differences, related to publicexpression of grief (p. 82) and perception of TV spokesperson trustworthiness(p. 88). These then are presented as examples of differences related to social

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messages regarding behavioral expectations of women and men. But under sexdifferences in facial behavior, we are referred to pages within the “Female andMale Nonverbal Communication” chapter, a section titled “Face and Eye Be-havior” that begins with a discussion of cultural messages about appropriatefacial expressions for men and women. The section ends with “In summary,women and men differ in their use of eye behavior. The differences in largepart are due to the cultural stereotypes of how males and females should be-have” (Richmond & McCroskey, 2000, p. 246). I am confused. Though I havebeen informed that the “three theoretical explanations for why males and fe-males develop different nonverbal behavior . . . are genetics, modeling, andconditioning or reinforcement” (p. 237), no evidence of “sex differences” hasbeen provided here.

Despite the tension caused by gender differences mentioned previously,and the statements above that gender manifestations are not always congruentwith sex, this text warns that straying far from traditional norms is not advis-able:

Some individuals . . . find these [sex role] norms to be an impediment totheir full development as men or women. They see each of the stereotypedgender roles as representing only half a person. Unfortunately, the solutionadvanced is as bad as the problem. Females sometimes attempt to assumethe behavior role of males or males that of females. All that is accom-plished in such attempts is to exchange one half a person for the other half,and the new half usually does not work as well as the old one did.

There are situations that call for the male to be responsive andsituations that call for the female to be assertive. One should rememberthat the traditional roles developed because they were functional in someways. There will remain situations where males should be assertive andfemales should be responsive. (Richmond & McCroskey, 2000, p. 258)

Though the authors “hasten to note that [they] are not advocating the desirabil-ity of such stereotypical gender-role identifications (after all, the senior authorof this book is female!)” (p. 240), and while they stop short of explicit condem-nation of individuals who do not conform to behaviors maintaining traditional,conservative prescriptions of sex, gender, and sexuality, the message is clear:females and males are inherently different and deviations from this naturalcondition are abnormal. What do the authors believe to be the “behavior role”best suited to a male or a female? What functions do the authors believe the tra-ditional roles were developed in order to support? What meanings spin outfrom the logic of an “assertive” vs. “responsive” dichotomy in the contexts offamily roles, workplace roles, roles in sexual interactions?

Numerous statements in all of the texts convey the assumption that sexand/or gender leads to specific nonverbal behaviors, often without reference toany context: “For a woman, smiling is an interactional phenomenon, whereas

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for a man, it is an emotional expression” (Burgoon, Buller, & Woodall, 1996,p. 236). A newspaper article selected for inclusion in The Nonverbal Commu-nication Reader (Pothier, 1999) asserts that in the case of this particular behav-ior, nothing could intervene as, “Women smile regardless” (p. 80). Despite–orperhaps because of?–this eternal visage, the psychology professor who pre-sented the research meriting this conclusion at an International PrimatologicalAssociation meeting notes that a potential application of this study is “that youcan change the behavior of males in all-male groups–which is often boorish,crude, and insensitive–by adding the presence of a woman” (Pothier, 1999,p. 80). Besides this sounding like a heavy responsibility to place on a woman’sshoulders, one should perhaps be concerned about the sexual tensions likely toarise in this scenario.

Richmond and McCroskey open their chapter on “Female-Male NonverbalCommunication” with a description of two four-year-old children of similarsize walking down a street, one of whom “moves with a swagger,” while theother “sways down the street” (2000, p. 236). If we have surmised that the sexof the former is male and the latter child is female, it is because we are awarethat “males tend to exhibit a typical male walk and females tend to exhibit atypical female walk” (2000, p. 236). Here the authors link a belief that anatom-ical differences produce styles of movement unique to each sex with comple-mentary adult gender role prescriptions.

Towards the end of the same chapter in a table summarizing “some of themore important distinctions” (2000, p. 251) between the nonverbal communi-cation of females and males, behaviors “performed primarily by the female”are listed across from those “performed primarily by the male” (2000, p. 251).(No corollary table of important behavioral similarities is provided.) The onlyinformation regarding the context in which these behaviors occur is provided inthe title of the table: “Nonverbal Behaviors in Female-Male Communication”(2000, p. 251). Examples include: “lowers eyes” vs. “stares”; “smiles” vs.“frowns”; “moves out of the way of his space/yields space” vs. “moves in on herspace”; “accepts touch” vs. “initiates touch”; “bats eyelashes” vs. “initiateslooks”; “cuddles” vs. “strokes”; and “leans into” vs. “leans over” (2000, p. 251).Clearly, the sexes are defined both in relation to one another and in presumedrelationship with one another. Combining the behaviors in each list creates acomposite picture of stereotypically gendered individuals in a stereotypicallyheterosexualized dance.

All of the coupling by couples, with the exceptions noted above, is hetero-sexual. Fortunately for heterosexual men, “females are comparatively uncon-cerned with the attractiveness of men,” at least according to the 1970s studiescited in one article (Daly, Hogg, Sacks, Smith, & Zimring, 1999, p. 57). Rela-tionships are long-term or failed: “Interpersonal relationships do not material-ize instantly; they develop gradually. Some remain stunted, some grow tomaturity, some stagnate, and some dissolve” (Burgoon, Buller, & Woodall,1996, p. 298; see Elia, this volume, for an analysis of the sexual relationship hi-

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erarchy reproduced in interpersonal communication textbooks). Long-term re-lationships are marriages. Terms that continue to be used in much of thenonverbal research on relational communication are “courtship,” “courtshipbehavior,” “courtship ritual.” Courtship is the prelude to marriage, the only orat least the primary form of committed relationship. This is not said in so manywords, it is in the absence of counterexamples (Hickson, III, & Stacks, 1993)and the presence of other clues. For example, wedding and engagement ringsare key “tie-signs” for couples (Hecht & Guerrero, 1999, p. 37). Courtship rit-uals may fail to provide adequate information to lead to heterosexual coupleswho are well-matched in terms of physical affection and desire for sex. Ac-cording to Richmond and McCroskey (2000), “Women may engage in moreself-touching in order to fulfill their need for touch. Women who marrytouch-resistant men will often engage in sexual relations in order to be heldand cuddled” (p. 156).

The textbooks examined here all, to varying degrees, reinforce notionsthat sex, gender and sexuality are natural binaries, leaving no room for queersubjectivities and relationships to even be imagined. What would nonverbalcommunication scholarship look like if gender categories and the homosexu-ality/heterosexuality binary were de-naturalized? How might researchersconceptualize queer identities and express queer desires? In the next section,I discuss three examples of communication research de-centering hegemonicheterosexuality.

QUEERING NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION

To queer nonverbal communication does not mean simply to include sub-jects who identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, transsexual, orintersexed in the same kinds of studies presently done, treating them as mem-bers of homogeneous groups whose sexuality is a factor influencing their com-munication practices:

Broadly speaking, queer describes those gestures or analytical modelswhich dramatise incoherencies in the allegedly stable relations be-tween chromosomal sex, gender and sexual desire. Resisting thatmodel of stability–which claims heterosexuality as its origin, when itis more properly its effect–queer focuses on mismatches betweensex, gender and desire. . . . Whether as transvestite performance oracademic deconstruction, queer locates and exploits the incoherenciesin those three terms which stabilise heterosexuality. Demonstrating theimpossibility of any “natural” sexuality, it calls into question even suchapparently unproblematic terms as “man” and “woman” (Jagose, 1996,p. 3)

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As we have seen, the vast majority of nonverbal communication scholarship isbased on a stable model of sex, gender, and desire, with heterosexuality as theunmarked ground of the “normal.” Queer nonverbal communication chal-lenges these heteronormative assumptions, interrupts the systematic silencingof the queer, and presents gender and sexual identities as complex, contingent,and political constructions.

When I found that the three articles in communication journals that studiedsome aspect of nonverbal communication from a queer perspective were allpublished in Text and Performance Quarterly, I was a little surprised. The de-scription of the journal found on the Website of the National CommunicationAssociation, which publishes it along with five other journals, does not includethe word nonverbal:

Text and Performance Quarterly invites scholarship that explores andadvances the study of performance as a social, communicative practice;as a technology of representation and expression; and as a hermeneutics.Manuscripts addressing performance and the performative from a widerange of perspectives and methodologies, including the historical, rhe-torical, feminist, ethnographic, psychological/psychoanalytic, political,and aesthetic are welcome. Likewise, all sites of performance from theclassical stage to popular culture to the practices of everyday life, criti-cally and interpretively engaged, are appropriate for consideration.

It does not mention “queer” either, but of the sixty-six articles included in the“Bibliography of Articles and Books of Relevance to G/L/B/T Communica-tion Studies” (Corey, Smith, & Nakayama, 2001), 23 of them came from thisone communication journal, over twice as many as in the next closest journal,Critical Studies in Media Communication. The observant reader will have no-ticed the word “performative” in the journal’s charge, the key to why the queerand the nonverbal may find a warmer reception here than elsewhere to date.Though utilizing different methods and theoretical foundations, these articlesby E. Patrick Johnson (1995), Frederick C. Corey (1996), and Dan Brouwer(1998) all deal with gender and sexual identities as performative (Butler,1990), as fluid, political, discursive productions.

E. Patrick Johnson’s article, “SNAP! Culture: A Different Kind of ‘Read-ing,’” explores the meanings and uses of a particular nonverbal practice in theform of a series of hand movements, including, as the first word of the titletells, one or more instances of “snapping” one’s fingers. At the time of writing,this was a popular form among African American gay men and African Ameri-can women, and had been featured in documentaries as well as a popular tele-vision comedy. His texts are popular culture, interviews, and participantobservation. One of the qualities that sets this study apart from much of the re-search, not only in nonverbal communication but in much of the discipline ofcommunication, is its analysis of an everyday practice as it is performed within

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a variety of contexts and within and between members of different communi-ties linked by sexuality, gender, and race. The language of semiotics is em-ployed in this examination of the SNAP! as a contested signifier. “Snapping’svalue,” says Johnson, “is contingent on the set of socially and culturally con-structed value systems of a particular group of people” (1995, p. 139). Thus,

Heterosexuals, black or white, do not necessarily harbor the same valuesystems as gays or experience the world from the same subject position;hence, their use of snapping might bear striking differences, uses that mayor may not reflect homophobia, racism, and misogyny. (1995, p. 140)

Johnson concludes that snapping’s meaning cannot be stabilized either asliberatory or oppressive sign and looks forward, invoking the “persistence ofAfrican-American gay men to devise new technologies for self-assertion”(1995, p. 140).

In “The Precarious Visibility Politics of Self-Stigmatization: The Case ofHIV/AIDS Tattoos” (1998), Dan Brouwer considers the use of HIV/AIDS tat-toos as “the conscious and willful marking of oneself as ‘tainted’–as a particu-lar communicative and performative strategy grounded in visibility politicsand practiced in the context of AIDS activism” (1998, p. 115). Building onErving Goffman’s (1963b) notion of stigma, the article explores both the po-tentialities and constraints of a permanent, visible, nonverbal marker of one’sseropositive status and the strategies individuals choose to conceal and/or re-veal their HIV status. The choice of a nonverbal means of disclosure is less dis-criminate than verbal, says Brouwer, and has the effects of mobilizing andtextualizing the body. He is interested in the claims that the wearers ofHIV/AIDS tattoos make, specifically regarding being visible as a politicalstatement, and not in terms of locating or fixing a particular meaning of the tat-toos. This performative communication contests meanings and practices ofmainstream society as well as practices within gay communities, such as preju-dice against those who are HIV positive. Like Johnson, Brouwer ends on a for-ward-looking note, referring to the possibility of conditions “under which thetattoo can be considered a liberating, empowering gesture” (1998, p. 130).

Finally, in “Performing Sexualities in an Irish Pub” Frederick Corey (1996)employs the nomadic science of Deleuze and Guattari (1987) in an explorationof how queer identities are enacted in a Dublin pub. Corey elicits the socialpractices and meanings associated with spaces and periods of time within thepub via the concept of the rhizome, a structure opposed to the hierarchicalmodel of the root-tree system. He wants to “decenter verbal script as the princi-pal artifact of textuality,” instead looking at “space-as-text in which refrainsexpress both identity and history” (1996, p. 148).

In traditional nonverbal communication research, the subject of space is stud-ied as territoriality, or how humans, like animals, attempt to own, control, anddefend objects and regions; sex is understood to be a central, often determining

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factor in all perceptions and responses to spatial arrangements. Contrast thiswith Corey’s argument “that while we do not know what ‘causes’ same-sex de-sire, we do know that public and private semiologies construct realities withinwhich cultural space is de- and reterritorialized and identities are performed”(1996, p. 147). As Brouwer probed the textualizing of the body, Corey asks how“Dubliners textualize a space in which sexuality, . . . informs identity” (1996,p. 147). Through participant observation, he elicits the social practices and mean-ings associated with both spaces and periods of time within one particular pub.

Johnson (1995), Brouwer (1996), and Corey (1998) all provide new in-sights into communication practices in this scholarship. All proceed from con-structionist and performative assumptions about gender and sexual identitiesand relations, rejecting notions of immutable subjects and spaces. All de-cen-ter the verbal as the only or primary text for study. These qualities make themgood nonverbal, queer, communication studies.

CONCLUSION

To date, most nonverbal communication scholarship and pedagogy haveproceeded from assumptions of a seamless “natural” and social world built onstable binary divisions of sex, gender, and sexuality determined by biologicaldifference. In this essay, I have examined the field of nonverbal communica-tion, considering its emergence as a discrete focus of study and critiquing itsfailure to represent queer subjects. Whatever the intentions of those doing suchwork within the field of nonverbal communication, it results in the mainte-nance of oppressive, heteronormative structures that silence and punish thequeer and the nontraditional. As Steven Seidman implies, simply adding sex-ual identity to a list of influences to be factored into a schema will not confrontand liberate this system:

Queer theory is less a matter of explaining the repression or expres-sion of a homosexual minority than an analysis of the hetero/homo-sexual figure as a power/knowledge regime that shapes the orderingof desires, behaviors, and social institutions, and social relations–in aword, the constitution of the self and society. (Seidman, 1997, p. 150)

Therefore, I have also highlighted three rich examples of recent scholarship innonverbal communication that lay out new paths of inquiry with greatertransformative potential.

We must not underestimate the challenge. Claims of innate biological differ-ences between people hold tremendous sway. Books such as The mismeasure ofman (1996), The mismeasure of woman (1993), and The mismeasure of desire

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(1999) all chronicle efforts made in the scientific community over the years tolocate and quantify evidence of superiority and inferiority, whether “racial,”gender, or sexual, in biological “fact.” As Jeffrey Weeks says, “appeals to na-ture, to the claims of the natural, are among the most potent we can make.They place us in a world of apparent fixity and truth. They appear to tell uswhat and who we are, and where we are going. They seem to tell us the truth”(1991, p. 87).

I may have future opportunities to teach nonverbal communication. If so, Iwill remember the promise I saw as a student of nonverbal communicationyears ago of embodied praxis. I will turn my students’ attention not only to thequeer, critical, and feminist work pertaining to the nonverbal that is being donein other fields but also to the three communication articles discussed here, andhopefully by then many more, within my own discipline. I will invite all of thestudents, as they reflect on this work, to consider their own embodiment, iden-tifications, and movements through and around variously gendered and sexu-alized spaces. As we enter the silences and speak.

NOTES

1. It was not possible to do justice within this article to the wonderful work that maybe considered nonverbal that is being done within and across a variety of disciplines.Nor is it possible in a note to do more than to point the reader to a few examples of thiswork in the form of books on rethinking the body and space. This division is some-what arbitrary as some of the listed items address space and the body.

On the body, see Bordo (1999); Conboy, Medina, and Stanbury (1997); Davis(1997); Longhurst (2001); Nast and Pile (1998); Prosser (1998); Shildrick and Price(1998); and Williams and Bendelow (1998). On space, see Boone et al. (2000); Duncan(1996); Hemmings (2002); McDowell (1999); McDowell and Sharp (1997); Munt(1998); and Soja (1989).

2. As I was completing this article, Journal of Communication published an issuefocusing on the relationship between verbal and nonverbal communication that of-fers a far more integrated view than is found in any of the textbooks I have seen oftwo fields that, with few exceptions, have supported separate threads of research andcurriculum since the 1960s. See the introduction (Jones & LeBaron, 2002) for a sum-mary of the history of the differences and similarities in assumptions and methods ofverbal and nonverbal communication and an interesting argument regarding the pos-sibilities of using quantitative and qualitative research methods in concert in futureresearch.

3. In generalizing about some pertinent areas of these texts, I do not wish to ap-pear to lump them all together. There is, in fact, wide variance in terms of the de-gree of sophistication in articulating epistemological assumptions underlying theapproach taken by a given text, defining nonverbal communication and discussingits relationship to verbal communication, and contextualizing and qualifying re-search findings.

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