Language of silence

In Turkey there are a number of ways to convey “no.” You can say no with a simple tut or just by raising your eyebrows. You can also tut and raise your eyebrows together or tut and raise your eyebrows while throwing your head back. Each is more emphatic than the previous!

Oh, I nearly forgot; there is another way to politely refuse an offer: Put your flat palm on your chest (heart) to indicate “no, thank you,” e.g., when you are full.

By now you are probably wondering how to say “yes.” Just a simple nod of the head means yes.

Symbols like these are just as important to learn as the words when you study a language. It can get confusing if the same symbol is used in two different cultures but conveys a total opposite message. Tread carefully.

You’d be surprised if you stopped and thought about how many specific messages can be transmitted by the wave of a hand, eye contact, facial expressions and head nods.

Westerners are big on eye contact. Some believe if you look each other in the eyes you are being honest. Such intense eye contact can get you into trouble in another culture as it communicates a different message. You may be conveying that you are romantically interested.

Many Muslim females who go to study in the West find it unnerving when men look them in the eyes. A Turk studying in Chicago says she find the eye contact of American men very intense. She writes that sometimes it makes her feel naked and explains that it is as though they stare at her and can see right through her. Ayşegül in Chicago asks, “Why is eye contact so intense?”

Dear Ayşegül, eye contact can send different messages. I’ve always thought that Middle Easterners and Asians tend to break eye contact early to show subordination to authority, to differentiate roles and to indicate that staring is not proper behavior. Interestingly, Westerners tend to consider staring not simply looking you straight in the eye but looking fixedly with wide-open eyes at a person or an object. I remember when my foreign friends and I drove across Turkey in the late ‘70s that whenever we stopped for gas, the men would without fail walk around the car and just s-t-a-r-e at us.

Gestures are also used to communicate in Mediterranean countries -- Turkey included.

You may have seen a couple of Turks gesticulating a lot and wondered if they were arguing or not. Chances are they weren’t, but it is common to stand quite close and speak loudly while using forceful gestures.

What about touching? You may have noticed that people touch to emphasize a point. People from the Mediterranean and Middle Eastern countries tend to not mind sitting and standing closer to one another. You may also have noticed that Turks are emotional and resort to physical contact. Unlike in the West, it is more common for physical touching to be male-male, female-female. People of the same sex can stand very close together while people of the opposite sex are expected to stand further apart. People walk arm in arm or hold hands (even men with men); they sit closer than a visitor may be used to sitting.

Of course if you are not a person who tends to touch, you may be considered not a very warm person -- maybe even a bit standoffish!

If you are a visitor to Turkey or have not lived here for very long, here are a few ways to speak without saying a word:

* Shaking the head from left to right means you are not sure (so a salesman will keep on with his patter!).

* A shrug of the shoulders and raised hands expresses the feeling, “What can I do about it?”

* To express to the cook that the food was tasty, press your extended fingers together, with the tips pointing up, and shake your hand up and down.

* If you do not like someone or something or to say you’ve had enough, shake your collar.

* To call people to you, the simple motion of an outstretched hand, palm down, and bending your fingers forwards and backwards while saying “gel gel” will bring them to you.

* To ask “Are you in a relationship?” rub your index fingers together side by side.

* When you think someone is exaggerating, the act of rotating your hand with palm up while saying “o, O, oh” will let them know that you find it hard to believe what you hear.

“Hearing is one of the body’s five senses. But listening is an art.”

-- Frank Tyger