"Trying to get people together" is his reason for teaching, Laurence W. Wylie, Dillon Professor of the Civilization of France, told an audience of about 150 people at the Cambridge Forum last night.

Wylie, who teaches the popular Soc Sci 160, "Nonverbal Communication," said "we communicate with everything at our disposal," including sounds other than voice, gestures and the rhythm of our speech.

"If you don't speak with your whole body, you are dull." There was "nothing more dull than the Carter-Ford debates," he said, adding that both participants were afraid to make some nonverbal mistake.

His interest in nonverbal communication, Wylie said, was increased after he spent a year at a French mime school. "I learned a lot about the way people use their bodies; by observing them, you can tell their nationalities."

Damn Yanks

"In Paris, you can recognize an American 200 to 300 yards away," he added.

Wylie, who also teaches courses on French civilization and language, said he never dreamed as a child that he would study or teach French. "Upwardly mobile Methodists studied Latin," he said.

Wylie criticized present foreign language teaching, saying "We've stressed pronunciation, spelling and grammar. It would be better to teach rhythm" of the language, he added.

Wylie is the author of "Beaux Gestes," a book on French nonverbal communication, which was the first book to be published by the Harvard Undergraduate Press, a student-run publishing firm.

Students trained in a language's rhythm "won't be boring and they'll get across" their meaning, he said.

The Cambridge Forum, which is sponsored by local religious groups, is offering a series of lectures this fall focusing on specific undergraduate courses at Harvard.