The relevance of body language to evolution of language research

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World Scientific

Abstract

The heterogeneous category of phenomena covered by the term body language (roughly equivalent to nonverbal communication, NVC), although essential to human day-to-day communication, is also largely dissociable from human verbal behaviour. As such, it has received little attention in the area of evolution of language research. In this paper we point to an important factor – signal reliability (honesty) as an elementary constraint on communication as an evolutionarily stable strategy (ESS) – which shows promise of restoring the relevance of broadly construed body language to the evolution of language.

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Long abstract for Evolang 8 conference

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body language, nonverbal communication, language evolution, evolution of language, protolanguage

Citation

The Evolution of Language. Proceedings of the 8th International Conference (EVOLANG 8), 515–516

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