So there is an invisible line that surrounds a person. If a stranger crosses the line, you would feel uncomfortable; they get too close for comfort. In David Lewis" book, The Secret Language of Success, he points out the preferred distances for different encounters. Distance also plays a role in signaling the beginning and the end of a conversation. When you are talking to someone, and he or she is starting to move away from you it means that she needs to go, or she wants to leave. It also signals something about how intimate, and how personal the relationship is between two people. The intimate space is reserved for making love, embracing, comforting, and protecting (98). This distance is stay within six inches or less. There is the far zone for the intimate distance and that is between six to eight inches. This is for the relatives, spouse, children, lovers, and friends. Then there in the personal distance which is 18 to 36 inches. This is reserved for close friends. The third is social distance, and it is seven to twelve feet. This is for small groups like meetings or interviews. And finally is the farthest one which is public distance, and it is 12-25 feet, and this zone is for strangers.
The hands are probably used the most for sending nonverbal signals (Axtell 80). Hand gestures are used to insult, explaining, point to something, and many more. Sometimes a hand gesture can mean something positive in one country and mean the total opposite in another. An example of this is in Roger Axtell's book, Gestures: The Do's and Taboo's for Body Language Around the World:.
An American teenage was hitchhiking in Nigeria. A carload of locals passed him. .
The car screeched to a halt. The locals jumped out and promptly roughed up the visitor. Why? Because in Nigeria, the gesture commonly used in America for hitchhiking is considered a very rude signal (7).
When you ask someone to describe a piano, at least 9 out of ten people will use their hands to describe the object.