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The Ar t Of Bowing The degree to which a bowing or lowering of the body is emphasized varies from one culture to another . In many cultures today the full bow or other dramatic lowering of the body is generally reserved for formal occasions such as greeting a head of state or monarch. For example, British commoners standing before the queen or being honored by royalty in a ceremony of knighthood would be expected to bow, curtsey, or kneel. As part of their religious practices some Christians kneel, Catholics genuflect, and Muslims kowtow3 , an extreme form of body lowering in which the forehead is brought to the ground. Although bowing, as a worldwide phenomenon, has been on the decrease in recent decades, it has survived in German culture and exists to an even greater degree in modern Japan, where bows are an integral part of everyday social interaction . In the United States, however, bowing or any type of submissive body posture is particularly irritating, for it tends to connote undue formality, aristocracy, and a nonverbal denial of egalitarianism. Nowhere is bowing more important to the process of communication today than in Japanese society. As an indication of how pervasive bowing is in present-day Japan, some experts point out that some female department store employees have the sole function of bowing to customers at department store escalators and that many Japanese bow repeatedly to invisible partners at the other end of a telephone line. Bowing initiates interaction between two Japanese , it enhances and embellishes many parts of the ensuing conversation, and it is used to signal the end of a conversation. Although Westerners, in a very general | 
