Last week saw two political exchanges on the world scene — Julia Gillard’s denunciation of misogyny in Australia, and Joe Biden’s performance in the US Vice Presidential debate.
The two exchanges were notable for their words, but also for their body language, as these politicians used gestures and facial expressions to show — or hide — their true feelings.
Linguist Daniel Midgley gets political on this episode of Talk the Talk.
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http://danielmidgley.com/talkthetalk/talk_classic.xmlShow notes
It’s unlikely that 93% of our communication is non-verbal.
http://changingminds.org/explanations/behaviors/body_language/mehrabian.htm
http://science.tumblr.com/post/11503975876/science-behind-the-factoid-93-body-language
Here’s the video of Julia Gillard’s speech.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ihd7ofrwQX0
Here’s the transcript:
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/political-news/transcript-of-julia-gillards-speech-20121010-27c36.html
and here’s a breakdown.
http://www.swinburne.edu.au/chancellery/mediacentre/media-centre/news/2012/10/gillards-misogyny-speech
The speech was pretty popular.
http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/-/breaking/15080447/pms-anti-abbott-smackdown-goes-global/
Political background
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Slipper
Joe Biden sure seemed to smile a lot at the debate.
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/10/laughing-joe-steals-the-show-at-vice-presidential-debate/
Democrats liked seeing “Joe being Joe”. Republicans didn’t.
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/12/bidens-facial-expressions-stir-up-debate/
Wouldn’t you like to be a “body language expert”? Then you could write things like this:
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/expert-analyzes-vice-presidential-candidates-facial-expressions-debate/story?id=17464567#.UHy2oGmwU-U
‘Malarkey’ (or ‘malarky’) is a word with a murky history.
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=malarkey
It burst into print very quickly.
Google Books link
If you want to call ‘malarkey’ on something, Joe Biden will malarkify it for you.
http://www.upworthy.com/malarkify
