Bernhard Streck

It was extremely late in the history of anthropology, that the culture of speaking and the field of rhetoric actions has been discovered. But the problems of style, of formal communication and of cultural expression implying outward messages or appeals are quite traditional themes among ethnographers and cultural historians. The aim of my paper concerns such traces of approaching nonverbal and sensual communication, as far as it can be summarized under the term aura. There are different fields of such a demonstrated and double loaded culture, by which people confirm themselves their sameness and for others their difference. Aesthetic anthropology has been used the term "form language" for such rather irrational and not very conscious actions and in the case of costumes this was one of the first subjects in early anthropology. As spoken words do reveal and hide contents in the same moment, other cultural elements do wrap up something and show an other thing to participants and spectators. Aura is then the suggestive aspect of culture, which blinds "speakers" and "hearers" in form language communication without reaching a remarkable level of consent.