CONSISTENT COMMUNICATION IN THE PUBLIC SPACE: DRESS CODE CUES AND NON-VERBAL MESSAGES
CONSISTENT COMMUNICATION IN THE PUBLIC SPACE: DRESS CODE CUES AND NON-VERBAL MESSAGES

Summary/Abstract: A dress code is a set of formal rules stating the adequate outfit people should wear under certain public circumstances. It reflects social perceptions and norms, and varies with purpose and events. Societies and cultures imposed dress codes with symbolic hints to social ideas, social class, cultural identity, and attitude towards comfort, tradition, and political or religious affiliations. In addition to this, dress codes enable interlocutors to interpret each other’s behaviour as good or bad from the choice of clothes which reflects their identity. Nonverbal communication is the transmission of signals by nonverbal means such as eye contact, facial expressions, gestures, posture, and body language. It includes the use of social cues, of kinesics, proxemics, and physical environments/appearance, but also of voice and of touch (haptics). It may further encompass the use of time and of eye contact as well as monitoring acts of looking while talking and listening, the frequency of glances, the patterns of fixation, and the blink rate.

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