Chapter 6
Mastering Lip Reading
In This Chapter
Reading and revealing unspoken thoughts, feelings and attitudes
Differentiating 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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