Retired Comm. professor dies

Ray Birdwhistell, a former professor of communications and folklore in the Annenberg School for Communication and a prominent scholar in the field of non-verbal communication, died recently of liver cancer at his home in New Jersey. He was 76. Although Birdwhistell retired in 1988, his advances in the field of kinesics -- the study of body movement as part of the communicative process -- remain prominent, according to Communications and Sociology Professor Charles Wright, who is also dean of graduate studies at Annenberg. "I myself didn't do research with him, but we were colleagues," Wright said. "He was an excellent teacher, with graduate and undergraduate students alike." Wright said Communications Professor Paul Messaris, who teaches Visual Communication at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, worked closely with Birdwhistell during his tenure here. "Professor Birdwhistell also made significant contributions to the use of visual media in naturalistic research, to the psychiatric application of kinesic methodology and to the general theory of social communication," Messaris told Almanac earlier this week. Communications Professor Joseph Cappella, who will be teaching a course entitled "Non-Verbal Communication" next semester, said Birdwhistell developed two ground-breaking approaches to the analysis of non-verbal communication. "He had a firm belief that the emotion people display non-verbally is culturally-specific," Cappella said. "And he developed a linguistically-based theory of non-verbal behavior, analogous to structural theories of language." Cappella added that while he does not agree with all of Birdwhistell's theories, he presents them in the classroom because they have an undeniable impact on the discipline of communications. Much of Birdwhistell's knowledge and expertise came from his extremely precise data-gathering methods, including the frame-by-frame analysis of film to detect minute human behavior changes. "[Birdwhistell] in many ways is one of the founders of non-verbal communication," Cappella said. "The University of Pennsylvania and the Annenberg School were lucky to have a 'founding father' of this discipline as a member of the faculty for so many years." A memorial service for Birdwhistell will be held on Nov. 1 at Richard Stockton College in Pomona, N.J., where Birdwhistell's wife, Anne, is a professor. University spokesperson Barbara Beck said she did not know when or if a similar service would take place on campus.