EDWARD T. HALL

Born in 1914, Hall's most famous work was done on his innovation of the proxemic theory (Brown, 2001). In The Hidden Dimension, Hall explains his thoery of proxemics and how we use space to communicate.

As Hall describes each of the four zones of proxemics, he finds that each zone has a close phase and a far phase. Because of his work, Hall's colleagues have been able to focus on other parts of nonverbal behavior that relate to proxemics. For example, researchers have begun to study the idea of territorality (Prabhu, 2010).

One of the most notable findings that Hall repeats multiple times in The Hidden Dimension was the cultural differences of proxemcis. For example, Americans tend to be very protective of our personal space. Our social space is about 4-7 feet. This is by no means a universal distance. In Europe and other parts of the world, the social space is about half of that. In the Egyptain culture, it is considered pleasant and desirable to talk close enough to smell the other person's breath (May, 2000).

Hall was criticized for his findings because they were sterotypical and generalized about the American culture. Because of this, Hall deepened his research into further levels of proxemics (Prabhu, 2010). These levels are the infracultural level, precultural level, and the microcultural level.