What is the body language of your inhabitants like?

[BloodyHellSausage]

I'm not speaking from personal experience, but I read more or less that if you travel to different places in the world and observe the people there, you may notice a general difference in how the people "express" themselves with their face and bodies. Some people may have very animated expressions, while some people barely express their emotions visibly at all.

Maybe it's not as important when you're just writing text, but if you're making, say, a graphic novel, it could help the readers or viewers feel immersed into a different world, even if they may not be conscious of it.

 

[pmmg]

Body Language says it all. I cant say as I give this specific thought, as I am just kind of writing people like me, but I do stop to describe the body language frequently. Its part of who the characters are. And they all have their language just as in the things they say.

 

[elemtilas]

This is something I've given thought to for The World.

Almost everyone uses body language to communicate extralinguistically. Like shrugging your shoulders to indicate "I don't know". Men (very similar to humans) certainly do this. I haven't worked out much specific for them, though. Daine (they are folks with long wings) have a very complex body language.

For example, when a Daine's left index finger wanders up and is placed behind the left upper canine, this means she's kind of anxiously curious about something. When that same index finger is pointed up into the air and the other fingers are touching the thumb, that means she finally gets what you're going on about. If she brings her right wing out in front of her body, that means she's frightened by your approach.

But press the matter at your own peril! Daine are levocentric. She might just bring that left wing around and give you what's coming!

Daine languages have a very complex and deep system of grammatical evidential marking. While there are a large number of oral markers, quite a lot more can only be ascertained by knowing the attitudinal markers of the body. The set of the head & shoulders, the way the speaker's eyes or wings are moving, the positions of hands and feet.

Other folks communicate linguistically or at least partially linguistically with their bodies. Werepigs have an oral-signed language. Certain grammatical function words are handled by manual signs or attitudinal positions. If you only know the spoken words, but not the hand signs, you can completely misunderstand what the speaker is saying. It's like, if you know the words "man" "bite" & "dog", but you don't the signs for "agent" and "patient", in the end you don't know whom's biting who.

At the far end of the spectrum are the Polupodes. They are obligate body language communicators, seeing as they are cephalopods living in the sea. They use skin colour changes, body attitude and tentacle signs to talk.