high degree of social engagement, as expert as dogs when it comes to reading body language, since we rely on such clues to help us understand what we only partially glean from the combination of sounds, lipreading, and context clues.
Eye-bugging, like most body language (BL) signals can have more than one meaning, depending on the context and, at least in most cases, the person whose BL we are interpreting.
For example, the evidently honest character of Jimmy Carter would prevent us from reading his recurrent eye pops as signs of deception. In his case we would probably say he either has a stylistic tic in which he pops his eyes for emphasis or, and this is more likely, a physical tic of pathological origin. I know several people with such minor tics (throat clearing, eye popping, deep-snorting {a particularly gross tic, I might add, with its wet snot sound}), and for most of them, the reason is pretty clearly physiological rather than psychological/emotional. Some do increase their tic frequency under psychological or physical stress, but most do not.
Since Tourette Syndrome derives from brain lesions caused by untreated strep infections, I suspect that many people, especially older people who experienced strep infections from insect bites or strep throat, but who had to get over it on their own before antibiotic treatment was available to prevent longterm damage, ended up with such brain lesions. For most who survived a strep infection, the brain lesions would probably be few and not particularly significant, but they could still produce a minor tic, or perhaps even a small cluster of related minor tics.
I suspect that Jimmy Carter's eye-bugging is such a tic, but that since it already exists as part of his physical pattern, he naturally increases the movement when he is speaking emphatically. Watch him in a video of an interview sometime. You will see him emphasize points by stretching his eyes that way. Carter's frequent smiling in odd places as he speaks is, I believe, another such tic. Dan Ackroyd captured the Carter smile tic in his impersonations, but did not imitate the eye bulging tic.
Now, eye bulging can mean the speaker is trying to deceive the listener by forcefully NOT overblinking, but it is just as likely that the speaker is unconsciously using the expression as a form of emphasis. Try it yourself. Imagine you are standing in front of an audience. Begin talking about something you consider extremely important. At key points you should experience physiological tension in various parts of your body. Your eyebrows might rise and thus tighten your forehead into a contracted wrinkling, which is often a sign of insincerity, but in this case would just be emphatic expression of important points.
As you raise your brows and contract your forehead, notice how your eyes bulge out. See? It is part of the BL consequences of speaking forcefully for emphasis. Probably you pushed your face slightly forward and began to gesture with your arms and hands at the same time, as HRC did whenever her eyes bulged, and your voice volume increased, as hers did.
IOW, she was speaking emphatically, so her entire face and body tensed up as a natural consequence of doing so--as would anyone's. If you watch the other candidates at moments of emphasis, you will see them engage in facial expressions and BL that could also be interpreted as negative signs if the observer is not sympathetic to the speaker. I support Bernie, but if I did not, I could misread his typical emphatic mouth clench as evidence of anger and an ugly temper. His typical double-hand/palm downward gesture is, when used by some people under some circumstances, a sign of contempt, dominance, and control.
IOW, BL signals can have more than one meaning. Dogs and deaf/hearing impaired people have *a LOT* of practice reading the signals in various contexts, so we are less likely to take one gesture or expression out of context and assume it has only one possible meaning in every circumstance.
= new reply since forum marked as read
