Courts and cops rely on Psychological pseudoscience all the time. Treating nonverbal language as if it were a fixed language with one reading looks exactly the same to me. There's a reason you will not find it taught in linguistics departments.

I would be interested, though, if there were any studies on the predictive powers of "body language;" particularly in those areas where verbal communication is ambiguous.

Its easy enough to declare the body language self-evident after the verbal language ends ambiguity. But if there actually is a fixed language ( rather than a series of "ink-blot-tests" being interpreted to conform to the tester's readings ) then we should be able to predict what was ambiguous in the one language to perhaps overlap with what wasn't ambiguous in another "language."

"Their lawyer said, 'We'll take it under consideration' to the American delegation in English, and then said 'when Hell freezes over' to his clients in Japanese."

"On the other hand, if she seduces you without ever saying, "Let's fuck," we can reasonably assume she wants to fuck. Capiche?"

You might, but I wouldn't. Without explicit assent, I will ask for explicit assent. But hey, that's just me. I'm the guy who was the buzz-kill for an adult lover with a "rape fantasy" until we worked out the safe-words whereby she could say "yes" with her body and be as ambiguous or contradictory as she wanted with her verbal cues.

But a rape fantasy is just that. And the person wanting to be ravished is usually the one setting the parameters of the encounter.

I would never assume anything that conformed with what I wanted to hear until I heard it. The Antis already do that to those they wish to disempower, or worse yet, advocate on behalf of.

But in the long run, I agree that we ought to pay attention to bodily cues whether or not their meaning is fixed or varied and whether or not their interpretation has predictive power.

And even if we don't agree with Psychologists and their search for a "truth serum," we ought to keep in mind what practices they invest with their faith. Failure to understand an authority's religiously grounded beliefs will get you in trouble around the globe.

On an unrelated note, someone pointed out that the pseudomystical "Profiler" beloved of serial-killer Films and TV series has no better a track record than those detectives who make no claim to understand the criminal mind from within. Old fashioned casework and statistics on file produce the same pronouncements without the attempt to use Psychology as a basis for "mind-reading."

Dante