Abstract
This chapter looks at the physiological and emotional effects of love from a semiotic perspective. The changes in facial expression, body language, etc. are physical manifestations of how the body-mind-culture continuum is shaped by the emotional power of love. Our semiotic representations of the “body-in-love,” from portraits to clothing and facial decorations, tell us a lot about the meaning of love itself. This nonverbal dimension of the love-versus-sex opposition thus provides a semiotic inroad to understanding love and its role in everyday life. The use of cosmetics, grooming codes, and specific types of clothing to enhance the romantic persona is, in effect, part of the game of love, and is of enormous importance to the courtship practices of every culture. In fact, if any of the relevant romance codes are violated in amorous contexts, the chances of courtship success are virtually nil. The nonverbal behaviors connected with love seem “natural” because they are acquired unreflectively in cultural context. But they are actually a product of “communal sense,” and are thus intertwined with culture-specific perceptions of gender codes that define sexuality within a tribe or society. For this reason, they guide the presentation of the sexual persona in public. Changes in romantic interactions brought about by the Internet are, however, having concrete implications for the enactment and perception of love. The implications of this development are of great importance to the ever-evolving “history of love.”
For male and female alike, the bodies of the other sex are messages signaling what we must do—they are glowing signifiers of our own necessities.
—John Updike (1932–2009)
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Notes
- 1.
The relevant research can be found in Sheril Kirshenbaum, The Science of Kissing: What Our Lips Are Telling Us (New York: Grand Central, 2011).
- 2.
Desmond Morris, Peter Collett, Peter Marsh, and Marie O’Shaughnessy, Gestures: Their Origins and Distributions (London: Cape, 1979).
- 3.
See Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality (London: Allen Lane, 1976).
- 4.
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Charles Darwin, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (London: John Murray, 1872).
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See Silvan Tomkins and Carroll E. Izard, Affect, Cognition, and Personality: Empirical Studies (New York: Springer, 1965).
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Stephen R. Peck, Atlas of Facial Expression (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987); Mark Simon, Facial Expression (New York: Watson-Guptill, 2005).
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Desmond Morris, The Human Zoo (London: Cape, 1969); Desmond Morris, Peter Collett, Peter Marsh, and Marie O’Shaughnessy, Gestures: Their Origins and Distributions (London: Cape, 1979).
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See Aram Vartanian, La Mettrie’s “L’homme machine:” A Study in the Origins of an Idea (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1960).
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Helen Fisher, Anatomy of Love (New York: Norton, 1992), pp. 253–254.
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William Rossi, The Sex Lives of the Foot and Shoe (New York: Dutton, 1976).
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Roland Barthes, Système de la mode (Paris: Seuil, 1967).
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Foucault, The History of Sexuality, op. cit.
- 32.
Ted Greenwald, Rock & Roll (New York: Friedman, 1992), p. 53.
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Robin Wood, Hollywood from Vietnam to Reagan (New York: Columbia University Press, 1979), p. 23.
- 34.
See Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, trans. by G. C. Spivak (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1976); Michel Foucault, The Archeology of Knowledge, trans. by A. M. Sheridan Smith (New York: Pantheon, 1972).
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- 37.
See Carl G. Jung, The Essential Jung (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983).
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Anthony Paik, “Adolescent Sexuality and the Risk of Marital Dissolution,” Journal of Marriage and Family 73 (2011): 472–485.
- 40.
See, for example, Jay Teachman, “Premarital Sex, Premarital Cohabitation, and the Risk of Subsequent Marital Dissolution Among Women,” Journal of Marriage and Family 65 (2003): 444–455.
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Justin J. Lehmiller, Laura E. Vanderdrift, and Janice R. Kelly, “Sex Differences in Approaching Friends with Benefits Relationships,” Journal of Sex Research 48 (2011): 275–284.
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Danesi, M. (2019). The Body in Love. In: The Semiotics of Love. Semiotics and Popular Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18111-6_2
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