The Silent Lenguaje

Also by Edward T. Hall
BEYpND CULTURE (Anchor Books) THE HIDDEN DIMENSION (Anchor Books) THE DANCE OF LIFE: The Other Dimension of Time (Anchor Books) HIDDEN DIFFERENCES: Doing Business with the Japanese (with Mildred Reed Hall) (Anchor Books) HANDBOOK FOR PROXEMIC RESEARCH THE FOURTH DIMENSION IN ARCHITECTURE: The Impact of Building on Man's Behavior (with Mildred Reed Hall)

THE

If SILENTLANGUAGE
EDWARD T. HALL

ANCHOR BOOKS
DOUBLEDAY NEW YORK LONDON TORONTO SYDNEY AUCKLAND

то ту friends and colleagues from foreign cultures who taught me so much about my own culture.
AN ANCHOR BOOK PUBLISHED BY DOUBLEDAY a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc. 1540 Broadway, New York, New York 10036 ANCHOR BOOKS, DOUBLEDAY, and the portrayal of an anchor are trademarksof Doubleday, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc. Tbt Silent Language was originally published in hardcover by Doubleday in 1959. The Anchor Books edition is published by arrangement with Doubleday Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to use excerpts from copyrighted material as follows: From. "A Case of Identity" in The Complete Sherlock Holmes by Sir ArthurConan Doyle Reprinted by permission of the Trustees of the Estate of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and John Murray, Ltd. From: Language, Thought and Reality, Selected Writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf, published jointly by the Technology Press and John Wiley & Sons, Inc , of New York. Copyright © 1956 by The Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Reprinted by permission. Library of CongressCataloging-in-Publication Data Hall, Edward Twitchell, 1914The silent language / Edward T. Hall, p cm Includes bibliographical references. 1 Intercultural communication. I. Title. HM258.H245 1990 90-164 303.48'2—dc20 CIP ISBN 0-385-05549-8 Copyright © 1959, 1981 by Edward T. Hall
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA ANCHOR BOOKS EDITIONS: 1973, 1990

CONTENTS

Introduction 1. 2. j. 4. TheVoices of Time What Is Culture? The Vocabulary of Culture The Major Triad

VII

20
33

59

J. Culture Is Communication
21

94

29

28

27

26

25

24

23

22

6. /.

The Pervasive Set The Illusive Isolate

8. 9. 10. 1 1.

The Organizing Pattern Time Talks: American Accents Space Speaks Loosening the Grip Appendix I Schema for Social Scientists
^v~~

137158

181

INTRODUCTION

i86

Appendix II A Map of Culture Appendix III Three Examples of Change Appendix IV Selected Bibliography

188

195

203 205

Index

thirty years have elapsed since 71>e Silent Language first appeared. In this interval, many things happened to validate the basic tenets of this book. However, when it was published I was so closely involved in my own workthat I failed to fully appreciate the magnitude of the need for cross-cultural insights and observations. Actually, The Silent Language is a translation not from one language to another, but from a series of complex, nonverbal, contexting communications into words. The title summarizes not only the content of the book, but one of the great paradoxes of culture It isn't just that people "talk" to eachother without the use of words, but that there is an entire universe of behavior that is unexplored, unexamined, and very much taken for granted. It functions outside conscious awareness and in juxtaposition to words. Those of us of European heritage live in a "word world" which we think is real, but just because we talk doesn't mean the rest of what we communicate with our behavior is notequally important. While there can be no
VI!

VIM

INTRODUCTION

INTRODUCTION

IX

doubt that language molds thinking in particularly subtle ways, mankind must eventually come to grips with the reality of other cultural systems and the pervasive effect these other systems exert on how the world is perceived, bow the self is experienced, and how life itself is organized. We must also...