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Body Language For Dummies, 3rd Edition
book

Body Language For Dummies, 3rd Edition

by Elizabeth Kuhnke
June 2015
Beginner content levelBeginner
344 pages
9h
English
For Dummies
Content preview from Body Language For Dummies, 3rd Edition

Chapter 6

Mastering Lip Reading

In This Chapter

arrowReading and revealing unspoken thoughts, feelings and attitudes

arrowDifferentiating smiles

Read my lips,’ said former President George H.W. Bush when running for office way back in 1988. Although your lips are the doorway to verbalising messages, they’re equally adept at revealing thoughts, feelings, and intentions without uttering a word.

In this chapter you discover how the various lip positions, including a snarl, a pout and a lop-sided grin, tell the true story behind the spoken word.

Revealing Thoughts, Intentions and Emotions

The lips are made up of a complicated series of muscles running over, under, in and around the sides of your mouth (see Figure 6-1). Because the muscles are able to work independently of one another, they can pull and twist your mouth into weird and wonderful positions. One side of the mouth can mirror the other so that the whole mouth conveys the same message, such as when the sides of your lips turn up in a genuine smile of happiness or when they pull downward in disappointment or sadness. Your lips can also stretch in opposite directions, one side going up, the other side going down, indicating mixed emotions. The upper lip can rise in a sneer. The lower lip can tremble in fear.

Figure 6-1: The muscles ...

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Publisher Resources

ISBN: 9781119067399Purchase book