PROXIMICS OR LANGUAGE OF PERSONAL SPACE

PROXIMICS OR LANGUAGE OF PERSONAL SPACE

Animals, birds, and fish guard their territories rather aggressively and so do the nations. Within a nation, there are well-defined boundaries among different smaller communities. People living within these territories have an allegiance to it and protect these territories even ferociously

American anthropologist, Edward T Hall, concluded that every human being has a territory that it considers to be it's own. The area or the space delineated around the body is claimed to be his own like the air space around him. Edward T Hall called it „Proxemics‟ – the study of the spatial needs of human beings.

Personal space around each one of us has a critical implication for communication and interaction with others and consequently on our behavior and relations with them. Like all other living beings, humans carry a kind of air envelope around them all the time. However, the size of the air-envelop can vary among different cultures. It can also vary between a villager and a city dweller. Besides, the status of a person also influences the distance at which a person stands with respect to that person.