Movements Of The Body Parts example essay topic

Emotions and thoughts can be expressed non-verbally without using any words. Quintilian and Delsarte talk about the importance of the body language in communication. Their description of gestures involve both daily life and theatrical movement that makes the usage of words unnecessary. While Delsarte claims that movement itself is divided into classifications in terms of the relationship among the body parts, Quintilian considers the significance of the individual body parts as movement. As a result they end up with the same idea, even though they chose different paths to explain non-verbal language. The common point of both writers is the importance of the meanings of the gestures we make.

By saying, "there is nothing more horrible, or deplorable, than a gesture without meaning or purpose", Delsarte describes his thoughts about the meaningless gestures that do not express a feeling, an emotion, or have a purpose. .".. Even speechless animals show anger, joy, or the desire to please by means of eye and other physical indications" says Quintilian to show importance of the meaning of gestures. Animals, which have no other choice to express themselves, make gestures that have meanings all the time.

Their gestures are pure and reliable like a baby whose feelings reflect nothing but the truth. The gestures become more successful in meaning when more than one part of body is used. Quintilian gives the example of using the facial expressions with the tone of the speech, which will increase the effect on the receiver (listener). Delsarte describes a rejecting movement of hand and arm and adds that "using the hand and arm without any other movement in the body elsewhere, would be weak; but add to the movement of the hand and arm a strong opposed movement of the head and upper torso and you produce a stronger expression". Co-operation of the body parts in expressing ourselves increases the attitude of our response and make a strong affect. Delsarte classifies this under "oppositions" of his three great orders of movement.

The two writers approach to movements and gestures from different views. As known Delsarte classifies the movement in three categories: oppositions, parallelisms, and successions. Delsarte gives combinations of movement in terms of their order of moving to show if it is a strong or a weak expression, while Quintilian claims that every kind of co-operated movement of body parts is strong. For instance, according to Delsarte parallel movements of the body parts produce a weak expression. Unlike this claim, Quintilian would call any expression that is expressed by using more than one part of the body a strong expression. The difference between the "weak and strong movements can be best noticed in classic ballet and from the Egyptian wall paintings" The effect of the non-verbal language to our lives cannot be ignored.

Even though we often do not notice, we use gestures as much as words to make our expressions stronger and to express ourselves better. Delsarte and Quintilian focus on the importance of the meaning of the gestures for people to express their emotions and requests. Although their aim is to make us notice the power of gesture and how to use it, we see that they have different point of views in describing the power of the gestures. Their common idea is gestures and body language is expressive as much as the words or may be more than the words..