Nonverbal Communication as a Course in Classical and Modern Philology Programs

Abstract

The current interdisciplinary development of Nonverbal Communication Studies justifies the curricular implementation of a course which would realistically enrich the linguistic, literary, artistic and socio-cultural perspectives in the teaching of Modern or Classical Philology. Each of its branches studies the history of its language and its phonetic and morphological development and different speech areas, but without considering the possible changes and geographical distribution of its paralinguistic and (more traceable) kinesic repertoires, amply described or implicit in its literature or literatures. They also study the civilization, the culture and the arts covered by each language, yet without benefiting from its rich sources of nonverbal communication, especially (besides painting in Classic Philology) in the Baroque, Realistic and Naturalistic periods and contemporary Social Realism, with visual representations of postures, gestures and manners described in the literary texts of each period (confirmed particularly by graphic illustrators contemporaneous with their writers). But the literary realm in Modern Philology is also enriched by the photographic social realism of each culture. As an interdisciplinary specialist in Nonverbal Communication, the author offers (in due order and referring to the needed resources) all the topics for the proposed course, summarizing (with literary illustrations) its core areas and itemizing the ones that are also socio-culturally indispensable within linguistics and literature, namely: the exhaustive identification of nonverbal elements contained in a text; the deep levels of personal and environmental interaction, explicitly or implicitly shown in the different literary genres, particularly novel and theater; the structure of conversation shown in the latter two; the ‘reading act’ and the sensory and intellectual interaction with the printed book (vs. electronic devices); the semiotic-communicative itinerary of characters and their environment between writer (creator) and reader (re-creator) and their personal and cultural conditioning; the perception of the characters’ nonverbal repertoires by native or (as linguistic- cultural translation) foreign readers; and the fruitful synchronic and diachronic approaches afforded by ‘literary anthropology’.