Body language can be a clear giveaway of where you're from. People can tell whether you're from Australia or the UK by the way you smile. They can tell whether you're from China or Egypt by the way you count using your fingers. And they know whether you're American or German depending on how you express sympathy.
But when it comes to expressing negative emotions, our body language might be much more universal than we realize. The proof is in a single facial expression that crosses over cultures and languages around the world: the“not face”.
Researchers at Ohio State University coined the term after analyzing video recordings of conversations with 158 native speakers of English, Spanish, Mandarin Chinese and American Sign Language. The team, led by Aleix Martinez, focused on negative statements — like“that's not a good idea” or “I don't like that”— and used computer algorithms to map the corresponding facial movements. The looks proved identical across all study subjects, in every language: a furrowed brow, pressed lips and raised chin. In other words, the“not face”.
The “not face” is a combination of the facial expressions we use to demonstrate disgust, anger and contempt.“Language didn't just happen from nothingness. It had to come from somewhere,” said Martinez. “This facial expression has a grammatical function. It's a nonverbal expression of the word‘not'.”
“This gives us an explanation of how language might have developed through facial expressions, which is one of the big unknowns in science,” he added. Over time, the“not face”probably developed from a basic, reflexive facial expression to a grammatical marker with a specific meaning. Before we learned to say the word “not”, we simply made the face.
如需转载，请注明出处。
