Indexing social distance through bodily visual practices in two languages

This paper explores the multimodal indexing of social distance in two unrelated languages/cultures: Korean and Catalan. Participants performed several tasks: once with a status superior (“socially distant” condition) and once with a friend (“socially close”). Catalan speakers exhibited more body movements but were less consistent in modulating them according to social distance. The frequency of head nodding increased in the socially distant situation for both languages, and haptics never occurred with superiors. Only Korean speakers consistently reduced their rate of head shaking with the superior, and also reduced their use of adaptors. Gaze aversion showed weak results only for Catalan. The results add to a growing body of evidence that social distance is marked multimodally in similar ways across cultures.