Silent language.

In the everyday but unspoken give-and take of human relationships, the "silent language" plays a vitally important role. Here, a leading American anthropologist has analyzed the many ways in which peo ple "talk" to one another without the use of words.

The pecking order in a chicken yard, the fierce competition in a school play ground, every unwitting gesture and action -this is the vocabulary of the "silent lan guage." According to Dr. Hall, the con cepts of space and time are tools with which all human beings may transmit mes sages. Space, for example, is the outgrowth of an animal's instinctive defense of his lair and is reflected in human society by the office worker's jealous defense of his desk, or the guarded, walled patio of a Latin-American home. Similarly, the con cept of time, rying from Western pre cision to Eastern vagueness, is revealed by the businessman who pointedly keeps a client waiting, or the South Pacific islander who murders his neighbor for an injustice suffered twenty years ago.

THE SILENT LANGUAGE, illuminated by many striking examples, is a provocative and stimulating excursion into anthropol ogy and day-to-day living in America and abroad.