Study of body language in Nahj al-Balaghah

Abstract

Language is one of the most important means of human communication through which understanding and relationships are established between members of society, and it has an important role in the transmission of concepts and feelings. People have taken body language into consideration since a long time now and they are using it spontaneously and silently without any knowledge of body language. This kind of relationship, which is inspired by ancient Greece, was known and received great attention in the late 1920s and became an absolute science. Jahiz is considered among the Arab civilization the first person to find body language, but not separately, but during his research in the science of rhetoric and was used in most of the literary texts such as the collection of poetry and religious collections such as the Qur’an, the hadiths of the Messenger (may God bless him and grant him peace) and Nahj al-Balaghah. In this research, the author tried to study the body language in Nahj al-Balaghah with possession of the descriptive analytical approach. The realization of this research indicates that Imam Ali () accepted to summarize speech through the use of body language. In this research, it is useful to use body language in his sermons, messages and words of value to more viewers. We conclude that most of the use of body language was in the sermons of the Imam (PBUH), and the tongue often had hesitation in terms of its use in relation to the rest of the organs.