The Silent Language
In the everyday but unspoken give-and-take of human relationships, the "silent language" plays a vitally important role. Edward T. Hall, a leading anthropologist, has analyzed the many ways in which people "talk" to one another without the use of words.
The pecking order in a chicken yard, the fierce competition in a school playground, every unwitting gesture and action - this is the vocabulary of the "silent language." According to Hall, the concepts of space and time are tools with which all humans beings may transmit messages. Space, for example, is the outgrowth of an animal's instinctive defense of his lair and is reflected in human society by the office worker's jealous defense of his desk, or the guarded, walled patio of a Latin-American home. Similarly, the concept of time, varying from Western precision to Eastern vagueness, is revealed by the businessman who pointedly keeps a client waiting, or the South Pacific islander who murders his neighbor for an injustice suffered twenty years ago.
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The Hidden Dimension
"Today, when all of us are overwhelmed with data from many sources, it is easy to understand why people feel that they are losing touch, even in their own field. In spite of television, or possibly because of it, people feel a loss of relatedness to the world at large. Information overload increases the need for organizing frames of reference to integrate the mass of rapidly changing information. The Hidden Dimension attempts to provide such an organizing frame for space as a system of communication, and for the spatial aspects of architecture and city planning...In writing about my research on people's use of space - the space that they maintain among themselves and their fellows, and that they build around themselves in their cities, their homes, and their offices - my purpose is to bring to awareness what as been taken for granted. By this means, I hope to increase self-knowledge and decrease alienation. In sum, to help introduce people to themselves." - Edward T. Hall
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The Dance of Life
The Dance of Life deals with the most personal of all experiences: how people are tied together and yet isolated from each other by invisible threads of rhythm and hidden walls of time. Time is treated as a language, as an organizer of activities, a synthesizer and integrator, as well as a special message system revealing how people really feel about each other.
Important chapters are devoted to the Americans and the Japanese as mirror images of each other. Even as such diverse cultures as these, time sets the stage for everything else. Other sections of the book deal with how time influences relations among people in West European countries, as well as among Latin Americans, Anglo-Americans and Native Americans.
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Beyond Culture
"In this penetrating analysis of the culturally determined yet 'unconscious' attitudes that mold our thought, feeling, communication and behavior...Hall makes explicit taken-for-granted linguistic patterns, body rhythms, personality dynamics, educational goals...Many of Hall's ideas are original and incisive...[and] should reward careful readers with new ways of thinking about themselves and others." - Publishers Weekly
Written in 1976, Beyond Culture is a proud celebration of human capacities. For too long, people have taken their own ways of life for granted, ignoring the vast, international cultural community that surrounds them. Humankind must now embark on the difficult journey beyond culture, to the discovery of a lost self and a sense of perspective.
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Hidden Differences
More than a million people have learned about nonverbal communication from Edward T. Hall's classic The Silent Language. A world-renowned anthropologist, lecturer and consultant on international business relationships, he and Mildred Reed Hall present fascinating and straight-forward examination of the unstated rules of Japanese-American business relations.
Hidden Differences explains not only how the Japanese think, but why they think that way, and identifies the major cultural patterns that Americans must be aware of to avoid the hidden traps of intercultural communications.
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Understanding Cultural Differences
"For the past thirty years we have conducted research in the field of intercultural communication: designing programs for the selection and training of people working in foreign cultures, consulting to international business, and writing books and articles on the intercultural process. We specialize in identifying the nonverbal components of intercultural communication - the unspoken signals and assumptions that flow from human psychology and national character, elements critical to success in business." - Edward T. Hall
Human resource management, at home and abroad, means assisting the corporation’s most valuable asset - its people - to function effectively. Edward T. Hall and Mildred Reed Hall explain the cultural context in which corporations in Germany, France and the United States operate and how this contributes to misunderstandings between business personnel from each country. Then they offer new insights and practical advice on how to manage day-to-day transactions in the international business arena.
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The Fourth Dimension in Architecture
This study of how the architecture of a building influences the people who work in it is of interest to architects, behavioralists, and management personnel as well as fans of architecture in general.
"The Halls are sharp observers who write very well; it is fascinating to read their anthropological views..." - ATA Journal
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