Distances Talk, and Sound Levels Talk
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Notes to Edward T. Hall's Proxemic Theory
Below are some influential social-anthropological estimates that were developed by the US anthropologist Edward T. Hall. Basic things he shows, can be easily identified, measured, or surveyed in daily life. This etched out knowledge should be good for you. Yet one is to allow for individual differences and peculiarities and cultural ones too in this field.
| No. | DISTANCE | SOUND LEVELS WITH INTIMACY DEGREES |
| 1 | Very close (ca. 7.6 to 15 cm) | Soft whisper; top secret |
| 2 | Close (20 to 30 cm) | Audible whisper; very confidential |
| 3 | Near (30 to 50 cm) | Indoors, soft voice; outdoors, full voice; confidential |
| 4 | Neutral (50 to ca 92 cm) | Soft voice, low volume; personal subject matter |
| 5 | Neutral (92 cm to 1.5 m) | Full voice; information of non-personal matter |
| 6 | Public Distance (1.75 to 2.4 m) | Full voice with slight overloudness; public information for others to hear |
| 7 | Across the room (2.4 to 6.1 m) | Loud voice; talking to a group |
| 8 | Stretching the limits of distance (0 to 7.3 m indoors; up to 30.5 m. outdoors) | Hailing distance; departures. |
Source: Edward T. Hall: The Silent Language, p 163-64.
Much communication is nonverbal, and comfortable distance, loudness of voice, and degree of intimacy band together fairly well, much as the table shows.
Hence, if anyone shouts at you, perhaps like an army sergeant, at very close range, or on purpose throws a firecracker that explodes next to your ear without even warning you, a decent moral or code of conduct seems severely violated, or perhaps urgency is involved somehow, as during warfare.
Dr. Hall's proxemic ideas no doubt work best cum grano sale, with some reservation, for (a) there are cultural differences in the uses of space, and (b) individual ones. But as a rule of the thumb with somewhat flexible boundaries, it works.
"People in various cultures utilise both time and space as well as body positions and other factors for purposes of communication. Hall's "silent language" of nonverbal communications consists of such culturally determined interactions as the physical distance or closeness maintained between individuals, the body heat they give off, odours they perceive in social situations, angles of vision they maintain while talking, the pace of their behaviour, and the sense of time appropriate for communicating under differing conditions.
"Kinesics and proxemics may also, in certain instances, involve vocalizations as accompaniments to nonverbal phenomena or as somehow integral to them.
"Some anthropologists claim that within the vocabularies of kinesics and proxemics are the virtual building blocks of spoken language," says Encyclopaedia Britannica. [Ebu "communication"].
Dsd: Hall, Edward. Den skjulte dimension. (The Hidden Dimension) København: Nyt Nordisk Forlag, 1973.
Fp: Mertvago, Peter. Dictionary of 1000 French Proverbs. New York: Hippocrene Books, 1996.
Op: Simpson, John, and Jennifer Speake: The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs. 3rd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.
Pf: Möller, Ferdinand tr: Proverbes francais. Dtv. München, 1979.
Tsl: Hall, Edward. The
Silent Language. New York: Doubleday, 1981.
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