Usage I: Words have diverse uses as labels for objects (e.g., "walnut"), directions ("west"), and activities ("walk"). Some words (e.g., "the") have linguistic uses rather than referential or conceptional meanings. Words are spoken, signed, or written in the sequential order governed by cultural rules, syntax, and grammar.

Usage II: A great deal of our verbiage is about artifacts (e.g., Big Macs, blue jeans, and shoes), i.e., about items in the ever-growing stockpile of material goods we possess or dream of owning. The partnership between consumer products and words may be as ancient as Oldowan stone tools and the likely labels our ancestors used to articulate knowledge of their design. (N.B.: Echoing prehistory, artifacts and brand names form a natural partnership in the mind--and in the media--today.)

Usage III. Words themselves may become consumer products: "Protecting English against the erosion of time has been a recurring theme in attempts to save the language from decay. The time capsule entombed by Westinghouse at the 1939-40 New York World's Fair was an attempt to preserve Anglo-American civilization for a time when the language would be as dead as Sumerian" (Bailey 1991:223).

Anthropology. "To know the 'true name' of a thing was thought to be a source of power over it in many traditions" (Deacon 1997:321).

Animal behavior. Studies of apes, dogs, parrots, and sea lions have "demonstrated that other animals can acquire and use words" (Lieberman 1991:113). Studies of chimpanzees have shown that humans are "not, after all, the only tool-making animals" (Goodall 1990:5).

Astronomy I. "At its 17th general assembly in 1979, the IAU [International Astronomical Union] decided that, except for one high mountain already named for Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell, only feminine names will identify Venusian surface features" (Lupfer 1993:3).

Astronomy II. "In general, neither the names of politicians, philosophers or military figures of the last two centuries, nor the names of people associated with any still-practiced religion, are accepted [as names for newly discovered comets]" (Lupfer 1993:3).

Author's note: When asked about the irony of using words to study nonverbal communication, I answer that words help raise nonverbal issues to a more conscious awareness. (N.B.: As Joseph Conrad prefaced in The Nigger of the "Narcissus": it is "by the power of the written word, to make you hear, to make you feel--it is, before all, to make you see.")

Evolution. The earliest words may have been nouns. A noun (Middle English name, from Indo-European no-men-, "name") is used to label persons, places, animals, plants, qualities, actions, and things.

Gesture origin. "We take the view that language is based in gesture--that is, bodily movement to which human beings attach meaning" (Armstrong et al.1995:3). [Author's note: Words themselves are produced by articulated body movements of the vocal tract.]

Infancy. At ca. 18 months, toddlers display a keen interest in naming things, and their vocabulary of nouns rapidly grows.

Literary criticism. "The very act of naming something is an attempt both to define it and possess it" (Cohen 1993:3).

Literature. ". . . words clothed in reason's garb . . . ." --John Milton (Paradise Lost, Book II; 1667)

Media. In the beginning was the Pause, which became the Real Thing. 1929: "The Pause that Refreshes." 1961: "Things go Better with Coke." 1969: "It's the Real Thing." 1982: "Coke is it!" 1993: "Always the Real Thing." 1995: According to a Gallup Organization poll, over 60% of the Chinese population say they have heard the brand name, Coca-Cola.

Odd object words. 1. The word "chad," of unknown origin, is the name for a small, circular piece of paper or cardboard produced by a paper punch (source: The American Heritage Dictionary). 2. The word "gry," for a measurement which is the equivalent of 0.008 inches, comes from the Greek word for a speck of dirt beneath a fingernail (source: The Dent Dictionary of Measurement). 3. "Jun," the name of a single star located in the constellation Cepheus, belongs to movie star Johnny Depp, according to the International Star Registry in Ingleside, Illinois (Cohen 1993:3). 4. Some 1,474 other names for "crayfish," including, Danish signalkrebs, Mayan bab, and two Aboriginal Australian manual signs for the arthropod, have been compiled by C. W. Hart, Jr., in his 1994 Dictionary of Non-Scientific Names of Freshwater Crayfishes (Washington, D.C., Smithsonian Institution).

PET imaging. 1. "In this positron emission tomography study we examined the pattern of neural activation associated with performance on number-letter sequencing [NLS], a purported measure of working memory included in the new Wechsler scales for memory and intelligence. After controlling for basic audition, verbalization, and attention, areas of activation were observed in the orbital frontal lobe, dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, and posterior parietal cortex. This is highly consistent with reports from the literature on activation patterns associated with working memory. More activation peaks were observed in the right hemisphere, suggesting the participants utilized visualization of the verbal information" (Haut et al. 2000; italics added by D. Givens to emphasize the neural link between verbal and nonverbal). 2. Activation was demonstrated in the right posterior temporal lobe, right orbital frontal region, right posterior parietal cortex, right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, right posterior premotor cortex, right posterior parietal cortex, and the precuneus midline; regarding the precuneus midline, slightly greater on the left) (Haut et al. 2000). 3. "In conclusion, this study provides support for NLS as a task with a working memory component. Beyond basic verbal attention span, participants used areas of the brain associated with temporary storage, active maintenance, and organization of information. Despite the verbal nature of the task, there was a large degree of right hemisphere activation, which may have been a result of utilization of visuospatial components of working memory. At this point, clinicians should be cautious with interpretations regarding laterality of deficits when observing deficient performance on NLS, despite its apparent verbal nature" (Haut et al. 2000; italics added).

U.S. politics. Are verbal statements more precise than nonverbal ones? In the following cases the answer is no: On August 17, 1998, in answer to a grand jury question about the Monica Lewinsky affair, President Bill Clinton said, "It depends on what the meaning of 'is' is." On July 17, 2018, in answer to why he disagreed with U.S. intelligence officers about Russian meddling in U.S. politics, Donald Trump said, "In a key sentence in my remarks, I said the word 'would' instead of 'wouldn't'." On July 18, 2018, in answer to a reporter's question posed at his Cabinet meeting as to whether Russia was still meddling in U.S. elections, Trump said "No." After the meeting, the White House press secretary claimed that Trump had used his "no" word not to answer the question--but to decline to answer the reporter's question.

Neuro-notes II. At the highest level, word order is overseen by circuits of the prefrontal cortex, which guides the sequential processing needed to build an artifact or utter a phrase. Regulating speech sounds is the inferior frontal gyrus (Brodmann's areas 44/45). Controlled by the frontal lobes, our fingers and speech organs follow the correct sequences required to produce oral statements and material tools.

Neuro-notes III. The supplementary motor area of the neocortex is involved in sequential processing, as well, both for verbal and some nonverbal (e.g., mime-cue) articulations. "We have found a group of cells in the cerebral cortex of monkeys whose activity is exclusively related to a sequence of multiple movements performed in a particular order. Such cellular activity exists in the supplementary motor area . . . . We propose that these cells contribute a signal about the order of forthcoming multiple movements, and are useful for planning and coding of several movements ahead" (Tanji and Shima 1994:413).

Neuro-notes IV. 1. "Object-naming is unique to man because the anatomical basis of the ability [the angular gyrus] is also unique to man" (Lancaster 1968:454). 2. As reported in the November 17, 1994 issue of Nature, word recognition resides in the anterior fusiform gyrus of the inferior temporal lobe, according to Gregory McCarthy and colleagues at Oxford University. 3. "In both studies, generation of color words selectively activated a region in the ventral temporal lobe just anterior to the area involved in the perception of color, whereas generation of action words activated a region in the middle temporal gyrus just anterior to the area involved in the perception of motion" (Martin et al. 1995:102 [Science]).

Neuro-notes V. "Scientists at the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, Md., have found that knowledge about the names of animals and tools--two broad categories of objects--gets handled by largely separate networks of brain regions" (Bower 1996:103).

Neuro-notes VI. Concrete words are processed more efficiently than abstract words (Kiehl et al. 1999). According to fMRI data, word processing involves the bilateral fusiform gyrus, the anterior cingulate gyrus, the left middle temporal gyrus, the right posterior superior temporal gyrus, and the left and right inferior frontal gyrus (Kiehl et al. 1999). Abstract and concrete word processing both involve the right anterior temporal cortex (Kiehl et al. 1999). "The results are consistent with recent positron emission tomography [PET] work showing right hemisphere activation during processing of abstract representations of language. The results are interpreted as support for a right hemisphere neural pathway in the processing of abstract word representations" (Kiehl et al. 1999).

Neuro-notes VII. Using fMRI, neuroscientists identify three areas of the left side of the brain that play key roles in reading alphabetical words: the left inferior frontal gyrus, left parieto-temporal area, and left occipito-temporal area. The first produces phonemes, the second analyzes words, and latter automatically detects words.

Neuro-notes VIII. Mirror neurons: Mirror neurons play a critical role in reading. "It is as if mirror neurons help us understand what we read by internally simulating the action we just read in the sentence. Lisa's [Lisa Aziz-Zadeh] experiment suggests that when we read a novel, our mirror neurons simulate the actions described in the novel, as if we were doing those actions ourselves" (Iacoboni 2008:94-5).

Neuro-notes IX. Mirror neurons: "Aziz-Zadeh . . . and her colleagues show us that the understanding of words that refer to bodyparts [sic] may also be embodied [i.e., mediated by mirror neurons]." (Source: Keysers, Christian, and Luciano Fadiga (2008). "The Mirror Neuron System: New Frontiers," in Social Neuroscience, Vol. 3, Nos. 3-4, pp. 193-98.)

JARGONICS

Academic categories. Scholars have spawned an assortment of rather odd-sounding words not often found in standard dictionaries. In college classrooms the following suffixed "-ics" forms, modeled after the English word, phonetics, are used to classify a proposed nine subfields of human nonverbal communication:

Suffix "-ics" origin. The suffix -ics is of ancient Greek origin, meaning "of or pertaining to." As it bears an auditory resemblance to the English words, of unknown origin, "ick" and "icky"--"disgusting," "distasteful"--the -ic suffix may be unpleasant to the ear (see TASTE CUE).

Chronemics. This field studies the nonverbal role of time (see TIME, WAITING TIME). In the 1970s Radford University communication professor Thomas J. Bruneau introduced chronemics as the study of time and tempo in human communication. The focus of chronemics is upon the tempo of nonverbal communication.

Gustorics. Gustorics studies the role of taste (see TASTE CUE).

Haptics. This subfield studies touch (see TOUCH CUE).

Kinesics. Kinesics is the linguistic-like study of body movements and gestures (see KINESICS).

Objectics. This field studies artifacts and products as nonverbal cues (see, e.g., CONSUMER PRODUCT).

Occulesics. Occulesics studies visual signs, signals and cues (see VISION CUE).

Olfactics. This field studies olfactory and smell signs (see AROMA CUE).

Proxemics. Introduced by the American anthropologist, Edward T. Hall, proxemics is about space and territoriality (see PROXEMICS).

Vocalics. Vocalics is about voice qualities and paralanguage (see TONE OF VOICE).

Analysis. A strength of these predominantly academic words is their clear focus on the primary subfields of nonverbal communication. A weakness is that they are neither pleasantly euphonic nor all-inclusive (see, e.g., ART CUE, AUDITORY CUE, BALANCE CUE, ENTERIC BRAIN, IMMEDIACY).

See also VERBALIZED NONVERBAL.

POETIC WORDS

When words are presented in emotionally imaginative ways, they are said to be "poetic." Alicia Puglionesi's poem, "The Nonverbal Dictionary," is a most wonderfully imaginative take on The Nonverbal Dictionary:

Alicia Puglionesi

Excerpt, "The Nonverbal Dictionary"

AGNOSIA

I worry more than a little bit about equestrian settings

I am more than a little bit mediocre

most days are disappointing in that they chip and crack around the rims

this is how I know they're cheap and have been used before

and improperly run through the dishwasher.

Think of the finest leaking thing you've ever seen

and don't ask me

to take comfort in half-measures

I know when something has been

irrevocably damaged.

AKINESIA

What's more, some of us will be slapped

with fishes, while others will do the slapping.

Special gloves, laced with transparent rubber

grips, for holding your fish by the tail

while its front end delivers wrath

to the faces of your enemies.

AMYGDALA

There can be no doubt as to the

trustworthiness of Mrs. R. F. G.

She is a dog like the rest of us.

I can see that you're not satisfied.

You feel ugly. You feel miserable

right now it might never change.

This way to the entrance. We hypothesize

that many states may coexist. This is

the front of the building, here is the door

a habit, a pattern, of which you

were previously unaware. You feel

undifferentiated. That's ok. We are all

a community of habit. We are all

guessing. What's more, there may be damage.

Someone on the other side is drowning.

The rush of the sea, hairdrier, mousse,

a variety of creams. She wanted

critique, and she got it. She was acting like an

old lady, and we said so. This is no way

to treat a customer.

ANGER

Expert appraisers were baffled by the senselessness.

Subtle hostility dogged them on the route to work

or on weekends at the laundromat. The idea of value

entirely in the mind; the dumb profundity of animal life;

the loyalty clause bundled into their contract with the immaterial.

AQUATIC BRAIN & SPINAL CORD

Next month

I will devour turf and arcade game

joysticks. We were

trekking across the parking lot to some

obscure destination. An obscure day in spring

or fall that passed quietly, it will be

vaguely missed.

I would like to make it to the customer service desk.

That greed is an apple is the wrong interpretation

and I would like to exchange it for the correct one

please [a polite expression of vestigial powerlessness].

A lot of things are difficult. Right now

is a misnomer, we've been here before

for quite some time.

But how to call it then? How to politely decline

to be present to eternity, which was a stupid idea

to schedule that to begin with.

CONFERENCE TABLE

If you are really looking

for control, spread your legs and let it

place its notebooks, pens, manuals

and anything else it brought along

inside your territory

a horizontal flatland

in which

a great

battle

of messages

cuffs bracelets wristwatches cut-off hairstyles

neckwear

your mission-sub-mission

hesitation, disfluencies

colleagues

securely masked below the tabletop

secretly in the territory

a smooth flat

express

slop

or, palm-slap

to the shared surface

where we shit status and power

up your territory

palm-down

close-quarters interaction

shoulder expanse

across the territory, shoulder-to-shoulder, advance

a stature over your supine

defenses

To assert in military

affairs, with listeners

fluttering, sleeping, eating

the territory,

to burst

their territorial bubble

the gentlest

needling

prick draws the puss

cascading fluid dominance cues.

DISGUST

More things than ever are extremely

palatable, Mr. Yuck sighs. Boundary violations,

inappropriate sex, poor hygiene. The more time

passes, the more he desires. Something stuck

in his teeth, Mr. Y probing with a fingernail

now is the time to look away. Even death,

he remarks, flicking a bit of salad.

SIGNATURE

Name sign. A usually hand-written, cursive string of alphabetical signs expressive of one's legal and personal identity. Signatures stand at the curious intersection of our verbal and nonverbal worlds (see NONVERBAL WORLD).

Usage. 1. Signatures may be used variously to sign autographs, baseballs, certificates, checks, contracts, credit cards, documents, letters, loyalty oaths, pledges and tax returns.

Penmanship: "The art, skill, style or manner of handwriting: calligraphy" (Soukhanov 1992, p. 1339). The ability to sign one's name is an incredibly gifted neurological skill that involves a uniquely human hand grip (see PRECISION GRIP). One's signature combines both verbal and nonverbal features.

Verbal or nonverbal? Just as a word may be verbal while its paralinguistic expression may be nonverbal (see TONE OF VOICE), a written signature may combine both forms of communication in the same sign. In this respect, signatures are like type fonts. While a printed word itself is verbal, the selected typeface may be nonverbal. Consider, e.g., such typefaces as Times New Roman, Bradley Hand and Herculanum. The use of serifs in the former type does not affect a word's meaning, yet may express a nonverbal style. The nonverbal appearance of one's written signature, as well, may be indicative of, e.g., age, education, emotion, gender, health and nationality.

Personality. Arguably, signatures may also reflect personality. A classic case in point is the ornate, larger-than-life signature of John Hancock (1737-1793) on the U.S. Declaration of Independence (1776). Many decode the bold signature as a nonverbal sign of egotism.

In biology, calling attention to oneself, announcing "I am here," is a widespread message encoded in diverse nonverbal "signature displays," such as the lizard's head-bob, the lion's roar and the gorilla's chest-pound (see CHEST-BEAT). Instead of written cursive, had all of the Declaration signatories been printed in Helvetica, the least nonverbal of modern fonts, John Hancock's signature would have been verbal but nonverbally devoid of its "signature."

See also BAUHAUS, Helvetica.

VERBALIZED NONVERBAL

Verbal sign. A written or spoken word or phrase with the same meaning as the nonverbal sign it labels.

Usage. English "browbeat," "close to the vest," "cross your fingers," "handwriting on the wall" (see SIGNATURE), "heavy-handed" (see PALM-DOWN), "green light," "white flag" and other verbalized nonverbals are used in writing and speaking to mimic the actions of visual nonverbal signs.

Red flag. A classic example is the English phrase, "red flag." Visual referents of red-flag phrases include the often rectangular, reddened cloths waved or emplaced as visual warning signs of impending danger. A flag's flapping movement and vivid hue attract notice to such issues as high fire danger, lane closures and riptides. Early red flags include the crimson streamers of 14th-century Norman ships, flown as warnings to possible enemies.

Verbalization. Not only does a colloquial red flag refer to the material scarlet cloth itself, but also may signal impending danger in an economic, medical or legal sense. The "red flag laws" enforced in some U.S. states are cases in point. These laws enable states to temporarily seize the firearms of likely dangerous people.

See also COLOR CUE, Red.

See also HUMAN BRAIN, NONVERBAL WORLD, VERBAL CENTER.