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2024年4月12日发(作者：淘宝在线代码生成器)
The Secret Language of Barrier Signals
People feel safer behind some kind of physical barrier. If a social situation is in
any way threatening, then there is an immediate urge to set up such a barricade.
For a tiny child faced with a stranger, the problem is usually solved by hiding
behind its mother's body and peeping out at the intruder to see what he or she will
do next. If the mother's body is not available, then a chair or some other piece of
solid furniture will do. If the stranger insists on coming closer, then the peeping
face must be hidden too. If the insensitive intruder continues to approach despite
these obvious signals of fear, then there is nothing for it but to scream or flee.
This pattern is gradually reduced as the child matures. In teenage girls it may
still be detected in the giggling cover-up of the face, with hands or papers, when
embarrassed. But by the time we are adult, the childhood hiding, which decreased
to adolescent shyness, is expected to disappear altogether, as we bravely stride
out to meet our guests, hosts, companions, relatives, colleagues, customers,
clients, or friends. Each social occasion involves us, once again, in encounters
similar to the ones which made us hide as scared infants and, as then each
encounter is slightly threatening. In other words, the fears are still there, but their
expression is blocked. Our adult roles demand control and suppression of any
primitive urge to withdraw and hide ourselves away. The more formal the occasion
and the more dominant or unfamiliar our social companions, the more worrying
the moment of encounter becomes. Watching people under these conditions, it is
possible to observe the many small ways in which they continue to "hide" behind
their mother's skirts. The actions are still there, but they are transformed into less
obvious movements and postures. It is these that are the Barrier Signals of adult
life.
The most popular form of Barrier Signal is the body-cross. In this, the hands or
arms are brought into contact with one another in front of the body, forming a
temporary "bar" across the trunk. This is not done as a physical act of fending off
the other person. It is done, usually at quite a distance, as a nervous guest
approaches a dominant host. The action is performed unconsciously and, if asked
about it immediately afterwards, the guest will not be able to remember having
made the gesture. It is always disguised in some way, because if it were performed
as a primitive fending-off or covering-up action it would obviously be too
transparent. The disguise it wears varies from person to person. Here are some
examples:
The special guest on a ceremonial occasion is getting off his official limousine.
Before he can meet and shake hands with the reception committee, he has to walk
alone across the open space in front of the main entrance to the building where
the function is being held. A large crowd has come to watch his arrival and the
press cameras are flashing. Even for the most experienced of celebrities this is a
slightly nervous moment, and the mild fear that is felt expresses itself just as he is
halfway across the "greeting-space". As he walks forward, his right hand reaches
across his body and makes a last-minute adjustment to his left cuff-link. It pauses
there momentarily as he takes a few more steps, and then, at last, he is close
enough to reach out his hand for the first of the many hand-shakes.
On a similar occasion, the special guest is a female. At just the point where a
male would have fiddled with his cuff, she reaches across her body with her right
hand and slightly shifts the position of her handbag, which is hanging from her left
forearm.
There are other variations on this theme. A male may finger a button or the
strap of a wristwatch instead of his cuff. A female may smooth out an imaginary
crease in a sleeve, or reposition a scarf or coat held over her left arm. But in all
cases there is one essential feature: at the peak moment of nervousness there is a
body-cross, in which one arm makes contact with the other across the front of the
body, constructing a barrier between the guest and the reception committee.
Sometimes the barrier is incomplete. One arm swings across but does not
actually make contact with the other. Instead it deals with some trivial
clothing-adjustment task on the opposite side of the body. With even heavier
disguise, the hand comes up and across, but goes no further than the far side of
the head or face, with a mild stroking or touching action.
Such are the Barrier Signals of the greeting situation, where one person is
advancing on another. Interestingly, field observations reveal that it is most
unlikely that both the greeter and the greeted will perform such actions.
Regardless of status, it is nearly always the new arrival who makes the body-cross
movement, because it is he who is invading the home territory of the greeters.
They are on their own ground or, even if they are not, they were there first and
have at least temporary territorial "rights" over the place. This gives them an
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