Expectancy Violations Theory - Essay Example

However, the scholar argues that personal space is continually reflective of the compromise present between conflicting approach needs that are intact with human beings in relation to having affiliation and privacy (Griffin 85). It is worth mentioning that personal space emanated from an anthropologist, Edward Hall from the Institute of Technology in Illinois. In his argument, he coined proxemics as a study in which people utilise space as special elaboration of culture. Furthermore, he argues that America had four zones that were related to proxemics: intimate distance, personal distance, social distance and public distance.

In essence, the four zones range from 0 to 10 fits depending on the zone. In his works, Hall gives clear instances where Americans have continually being insensitive towards the cultures of other people. In response to such behavior, Hall argues that people should be enlightened on nonverbal behaviours that go in line with the communication rules from other people. For instance, he argues that people should not cross-boundary in any of the four proxemics zones without an invitation from the concerned person.

Similarly, poem author Auden echoes the arguments of Hall insisting that one can only violate the personal space at his or her own peril (Griffin 86). In contrast to the expectation of many, Burgoon’s non verbal expectancy violation model counters the arguments of both Hall and Auden on the fact that people have specific expectations pertaining to invasion of privacy. In fact, her argument point to the fact that at times it is necessary to go against rules that have been put forward. Apparently, the application of this theory is mostly not assumed by the ‘culprit’ who invade the privacy of concerned individual, but the individual who gauge the zone in which the ‘culprit’ invaded in relation to their purported level of closeness and personal communication (Griffin 86).

Of importance to note is that Burgoon at some point wanted to dismiss the entire model although she had no intentions of abandoning the concept of expectancy violation as an important concept in human interaction and as such gave an idea that the basic assumptions might have required testing and re-evaluation (Griffin 87). As a result, it was evident that the theory needed to be revised from a ‘convoluted model to an elegant theory’. For instance, in her previous writing Burgoon argued that people would automatically have physiologically arousal when their personal space was invaded.

However, after re-evaluation she argued that a person would have mental alertness that would focus on the attention of the violator. In light of this, Burgoon new theory was able to incorporate other crucial nonverbal variables such as facial expression, face to face interaction, and body lean. Additionally, the theory is currently used to solve emotional, marital and intercultural communication (Griffin 88). In the general sense, the works of Burgoon have played a huge role in giving the necessary analysis of interpersonal communication and why people perceive its misuse as violation of personal space as per the limits of emotions and intercultural communication.

As such, expectancy violation theory has three core concepts that revolve around it to ensure that its applications are valid.