Nonverbal kommunikation og intimitet - En opgave om nonverbal kommunikation og intimitet i face-to-face interaktion

Abstract

This paper examines the contrasts between experimental social psychological approaches and ethnographic, interactionist approaches to nonverbal communication and intimacy in face-to-face interaction. In the first part I present four oppositions in philosophical principles. The first three oppositions are metatheoretical and concern whether behavior in interaction is considered as reaction vs. performance, guided by biological mechanisms vs. social norms, and as initiated by automatic, reflexive or prereflexive processes. The fourth opposition is the methodological opposition between a universalistic and experimental vs. a contextual and observational paradigm of research. Combinations and integrations of the oppositions are also discussed. In the second part of the paper I use the presented oppositions to analyze and compare three empirical studies on touch and intimacy: an experimental study on touch, communality and dominance, an ethnographic study on touch and intimacy in families, and an ethnographic study on touch and intimacy at electronic dance music events. One of the major differences between the studies is the degree to which they analyze the context of each action in the interaction. This is also a communality between the four philosophical oppositions – that they have implications for the degree to which context is considered in empirical investigations. Since no scientific study can include a holistic account that encompasses all aspects of the context, I conclude that this difference is a matter of degree, and that the social psychological and the ethnographic approaches are not essentially irreconcilable. It is not possible to integrate all aspects of both approaches in one empirical study, but it makes sense to lend inspiration from both approaches in the developing field of nonverbal and multimodal communication.

Bedømmelse: 10