A Study Of Body Language In Presidential Campaign From The Perspective Of Face Theory

Body language is an important part of communication. And it has caused theattention of scholars both at home and abroad in recent years. Body language canassist with verbal language to express the truly emotions and attitudes clearly andrealistically. It also owns the feature of highly context-sensitive; it can transmitinformation accurately, enhance expression intensely, express specific meaning, andpass the specific intention to achieve the purpose of communication. Face is personalimage that everyone protects actively. The study of body language based on FaceTheory is instructive to the participant of the debate.Compared with scripted speeches, television advertisements and televisionprograms, the presidential debates have contingency and the data are more real.Although candidates will practice or prepare in advance, they will encounterunexpected troubles and opponent, so the candidates‘body language and verballanguage largely reflect the true thoughts of the candidates, and then it could providemore realistic and deeper information to the audience. The research data are selectedfrom the Obama and Romney‘s presidential three presidential television debates.Each debate lasts90minutes, and270minutes in total. Based on the Face Theory, thisstudy combines quantitative with qualitative method, conducting a study on Obamaand Romney‘s body language in2012American presidential television debates. Thestudy is divided into two stages. The first stage is to explore the distribution, featuresand functions of body language in presidential debates. The second stage is based onresults of the first stage and under the guide of Face Theory to discuss the basic modeand the influencing factors.Following findings are presented in this thesis. Firstly, based on the analysis ofthe data, the distribution of body language used by Obama and Romney is figured out.And it is found out that both of them make full use of body language to save his own face and threaten the rival‘s face effect. In presidential debates, in order to defeat therivals and increase the chances of winning, participants will use more negative bodylanguage such as: headshake, shrug, frown, etc., and seldom use positive bodylanguage such as: nod and smile. Secondly, on the basis of a comprehensive analysisof the data and previous researches, it is found out that body language in presidentialdebates has the following four basic features: speech related, speech independent,environmental related and individual related. Thirdly, the study finds out that in thePresident Obama and Mitt Romney‘s presidential debates, the body language has thefunction of repetition, complement, accent and substitution. These four functions haveeffects on face saving and face threatening. Fourthly, there are two basic modes ofusing body language: face-saving mode and face-threatening mode in presidentialdebates. Finally, it is found out that features and functions of body language inpresidential debates are mainly influenced by televised debate contexts, individualdifferences, and social environment factors.The study of body language based on Obama and Romney‘s presidential debates,has provided some empirical data for the future research, as well as some help toexplore and understand body language well. And the study can promote participantsto recognize that applying body language timely and appropriately can achieve betterdebate results.