I’VE always thought that body language was the one lingo, aside from English, which I was pretty fluent in.
I might have no idea what the Spanish/Italian/virtually-any-other-nationality-you-care-to-pick bartender is actually saying when I try to explain that I think he has short-changed me, but his folded arms speak volumes - he is clearly on the defensive
.
And when he yawns openly and glares as I continue my futile attempt to get my point across, I understand that he is now both bored and irritated by my little tourist tantrum.
But, according to social psychologist Dr Peter Collett, there is a lot more to body language than meets the eye.
Every second of the day our actions are giving us away without our knowledge or control, belying countless thoughts and desires which we would not want to say out loud - and which we might not even realise we had.
Scarily, these so-called "tells" apparently include everything from touching your nose to the position of your elbows and the way you move your feet.
But, thankfully some might feel, while we might all like to think we can read the signs, we are often not actually that good at it.
For example, Prince Charles is the king of the anxiety tell. Look for him fiddling with his cufflinks when he arrives at a public event to displace his nervousness.
Other famous figures like former United States President Bill Clinton are less transparent at first glance.
The philandering politician touched his nose repeatedly when he was lying about having "sexual relations" with intern Monica Lewinsky.
To his accusers and the public at large it probably seemed an innocuous, irrelevant gesture.
But psychologists say the action is a lying tell - explaining that by effectively covering his mouth, Clinton was hiding the source of his lies.
Collett, who is probably most famous as the resident psychologist on Channel 4’s Big Brother, has just written a new book on the subject called The Book of Tells.
He uses a gambling analogy to explain tells to me, saying: "If you and I were playing poker and you scratched your nose every time you had a good hand, and I spotted that, I would know that it was your signature tell - an unconscious sign peculiar to you that told me that you had a good hand, so when I saw you scratch your nose I would know better than to take you on.
"It is an unconscious tell, you are not trying to tell me that, but you are giving yourself away in spite of yourself.
"These unconscious tells are a form of emotional leakage."
Referring to Clinton, he explains: "It’s not actually about nose touching, it is about mouth covering. Often when people lie they cover their mouths to conceal the source of their deceit."
Collett’s book is divided into a number of different tells, including dominant tells where the elbow comes into its own.
Collett explains: "To appear dominant, people need to create an impression of physical strength, to look calm and to appear unconcerned about any threats from others. One way to achieve this is by placing the hands on the hips."
But it’s not as simple as that. There are, according to Collett, several varieties of hand-on-hip postures with different meanings.
For example, there is the "fingers variant", where the fingers face forward, thumb facing back, and palm downward. It is favoured by men because they feel better prepared for attack with their fingers forward. It is also used as a gesture of defiance, notably used by rock star Mick Jagger. Other types of hand-on-hip stance include the fist variant, where the fist is in contact with the hip. This is the most threatening of the postures, for obvious reasons.
If ordinary tells weren’t hard enough to interpret, there are also false tells, or double bluffs, of which politicians are masters.
"These deliberate tells are actions carried out by people to try and make others believe something about them, for example, politicians are always trying to persuade the public that they are trustworthy, or tough, etc.
"Clinton is the champion of the false tell. He was very good at concealing what he was really on about [in the Lewinsky case].
"For example, he will bite his lower lip in order to try and convince us that he is unconsciously attempting self-restraint because he has very strong emotions about something. Actually he is consciously attempting to manipulate our perception of him. He does 14 or 15 of these during his confession, the: ‘I have sinned, forgive me,’ etc."
Other politicians are less good at faking it. "Politicians are always faking it but Gordon Brown’s smiles, for example, are patently fake."
Returning to true tells, Collett explains that some seemingly obvious signs are not that straightforward.
Take yawning, for example. Generally, it is a sign of boredom.
But in some circumstances it can be used by people to assert their dominance, as a threatening act - the baring of the teeth being a primitive way of intimidating your enemies.
In his book, Collett says: "In human as well as animal societies, dominant individuals produce threat yawns. If there were a ‘Yawning Olympics’, baboons would be the outright winners.
"This is not because baboons are tired or bored, it’s because life in baboon society is so threatening.
"A large proportion of baboons’ yawns are designed to assert dominance and to threaten potential rivals.
"If you observe dominant people you’ll find that they often yawn at those moments when they need to assert themselves - for example, when they’re feeling threatened and it looks as if someone else might try to usurp their position.
"This suggests that, for humans, the threat yawn is a relic tell, left over from a time in our evolutionary past when our ancestors had larger canines and used them to intimidate each other."
Other tells used by human males suggest that we have not come very far at all down the evolutionary trail.
Collett also refers to the Crotch Yank - as displayed by the likes of Michael Jackson and Robbie Williams, as a public reminder of their "masculinity".
Other tells reveal that people’s actions are not always as friendly as they seem. Patting someone on the back while embracing is not a gesture of affection, but a signal that the person wants to be released.
And when talking, if the person listening is vigorously nodding their head, it usually means they’ve stopped listening and want to take over talking.
But if they nod slowly, it’s a sign of encouragement for the talker to continue.
And if you wear your glasses on the top of your head, it’s a sign of honestly - as you’re revealing your eyes. Though it’s a hard one to pull off if you’ve got 20/20 vision.
Not all body language experts agree with Collett’s viewpoint on tells, however.
William Benedict is an expert in psycholinguistics and a trainer in body language and other skills at the Relationship Academy, based in Royal Overseas House in Princes Street.
He says: "I am personally a little sceptical. The most reliable body language comes from autonomic responses, things which we are not conscious of and have no control of. On a believability scale, I would say sweating and blushing, things that we have no voluntary control over, are the most reliable signs.
"The next most reliable signs would be what you do with your legs and feet, because you are not as conscious of them."
Benedict stresses that the Relationship Academy’s approach to body language is to teach people how to use knowledge of what the signs mean to improve their lives. Feet are particularly important, he says, in job interview situations.
And it really is best to keep them on the ground apparently.
"It is always dangerous if you sit cross-legged in an interview because you will lose control of your feet and start fidgeting, which will make you look uncomfortable and could make you look as though you are lying.
"So it is best to keep your feet firmly on the ground."
Which sounds like very good advice, all things considered.
Peter Collett’s The Book of Tells is published by Bantam, priced £7.99
