Similarly you cannot look at a developing child and say you don't have language yet but let me teach you just one more syntactical construct and three more vocabulary words and boom you now have language.
(ASL Linguistics: Nonlinguistics Communication)
Body
Language
What is body language, and is
body language linguistic or nonlinguistic communication? Body language, as
indicated by Mehrabian, is "nonverbal communication." Communication
isn't the same thing as language. Many hearing people automatically consider
body language to be nonlinguistic. Many people in the signing world tend to
think of body language as being linguistic because they obviously using their
bodies to produce language independent of their voices. There is a difference
between sign language and body language. Just as there is a difference between
using your body to produce ASL and using your body to produce mime. Both ASL
and mime allow you to communicate. Of the two, only ASL qualifies as language.
Mime is nonlinguistic. Two people of different languages can communicate using
mime. Mime is defined as, "the art of portraying characters and acting out
situations or a narrative by gestures and body movement without the use of
words, (American Heritage, 2000). In contrast, ASL uses gestures and body
movements to create signs. Signs are the visual equivalent of words. A sign can
be broken down into phonemes, (cheremes actually). Those signs are combined
according to grammar rules to describe the thoughts and ideas of the signer
more efficiently than can be accomplished via mime.
Paralanguage is the nonphonemic
properties of speech that people use to inflect the meanings or their verbal
language. Speaking faster, using a lower tone of voice, raising the pitch of
your voice at the end of a sentence are all examples of paralanguage. (American
Heritage, 2000).
Nonverbal
Communication
The term "verbal" has
two common meanings: using words, and spoken. If I say that someone is using
nonverbal communication, does that mean he is communicating without words? Or
does that mean he is communicating without speaking. Popular usage tends to
interpret the term "nonverbal communication as meaning communicating
silently without words." American Sign Language is nonverbal in the sense
that it is gesturally produced. But it is certainly "verbal" in the
sense that it uses words, or rather signs. Words are the lexemes of spoken
languages. Signs are the lexemes of signed languages.
A gesture is a body or limb
movement that you use to express a thought or feeling (Websters, 2001). A
cognitive scientist might say that a person using a gesture is employing
language in that the gesture is a symbol that outwardly represents a thought or
idea. A linguist would counter however that just because a symbol represents a
thought or idea doesn't qualify it as language. Most adult Americans recognize
dozens of gestures. For example, they recognize the shrugging of the shoulders
as meaning "I don't know." Gestures are not the same as words or
signs. Deaf people use signs as lexemes and use gestures to inflect the
meanings of their signs. Gestures have meaning but are not organized into a
language. Gestures are to language like spice is to food. One could argue that
spice is a type of food and he would be right in that spices have calories and
are consumable, but spice, in and of itself, is not considered to be food
because it is used differently. People sit down and eat food. No body sits
down, pours himself a bowl of pepper, and digs in.
Language is sort of like the
freeze drying and packaging process. Why do people freeze dry food? Freeze
drying makes it easier to preserve and transport food. Once the food arrives at
its destination it can be reconstituted. What freeze drying and packaging does
for food, language does for thoughts and ideas. Via language I can package my
ideas into a few words and then transport them to your mind where you will
(hopefully) reconstitute them. Just as a fresh banana is not freeze dried
food--gestures and facial expressions are not language. Neither is mime.
