Introduction

1. T h e pioneers' reactions to the traditional shortsightedness about

speech

About twenty years ago m y dissatisfaction with the traditional constraints

of language studies led m e to acknowledge the reality of speech as the triple
structure language-paralanguage-kinesics simply because I saw myself and
others using the three channels simultaneously and therefore I could not
understand their 'scholarly' dissociation. I began to discover the various
aspects of paralanguage not addressed by the pioneers in the field, which
spurred m y attempts to identify whatever sounds w e utter beyond words
proper. I was inspired in that endeavor both by what I found and what I dis-
covered as missing in the work of specialists such as Bell (1867), Sweet
(1906), Russell (1931), Chiba and Kajiyama (1941), Weaver (1942), Pike
(1943, 1946), Trager (1949), Smith (1952), Smith (1953), Trager and Hall
(1954), Trager (1955, 1956), Trager and Smith (1956), the psychiatrist Pit-
tinger (1956), Pittinger and Smith (1957), M c Q u o w n (1957), Hill (1958,
after having coined 'paralanguage' [1952] to include also body movement),
Trager (1958, 1960), Kaplan (1960), Pittinger, Hockett and Danehy (1960),
Birdwhistell (1961), Crystal (1963), Catford (1964), Crystal and Quirk
(1964), Sebeok, Hayes and Bateson (1964), Austin (1965), Catford (1968),
and Pei's (1966) dictionary of linguistics (which included a number of
paralinguistic and kinesic terms). They represented not only a continued
effort to identify those audible phenomena they reckoned as indispensable
in speech, but a fruitful unhappiness about the rather unmoveable,
shortsighted and obscuring stand of traditional linguistics and phonetics.
Pike (1943) said, "phonetic systems have not been based upon the total
number of sounds which are k n o w n to occur in speech" (31), as "Phoneti-
cians [...] usually start with the assumption that [phonetics] does not
include sounds apart from speech" (34-35), although they "cannot afford to
overlook them" (36), besides the fact that "sounds which are nonspeech
2 PARALANGUAGE

from the point of view of one language may be phonemic in another" (37).
Twenty years later Catford (1964) would still complain that "phoneticians
have always been primarily concerned with setting up descriptive categories
for phonemic features which are utilized phonologically in languages [and
therefore] no great delicacy of description or classification has seemed to be
called for", and that there was no attempt "to set up a systematic
framework of categories for the description or classification of different
kinds of voice quality" (29).
A more insightful attempt to see verbal language and paralanguage
together in the speech stream had been the book by the psychiatrist-lin-
guist-psychiatrist team of Pittinger, Hockett and Danehy (1960), a trans-
cription-analysis of The First Five Minutes of a psychotherapy interview.
That allowed them to keep a more faithful record, not only of what the
patient would say, but h o w he would say it, a method that would culminate
in The Natural History of an Interview, by M c Q u o w n et al (1971) (unfortu-
nately still in microfilm form), which already acknowledged what I was then
discussing both at conferences and in some papers as the unquestionable
'triple structure' language-paralanguage-kinesics, as the speaker 'sounds'
but 'moves' what he says. However, the pervasive disagreement and limita-
tions as to what to include under paralanguage incited m e to m a k e some
classifications of categories and phenomena (e.g., Poyatos 1975, 1976a,
1979), as I recognized the m a n y gaps in the theoretical literature and the
m a n y needed applications in various fields. A t the same time, amidst a pro-
liferation of kinesic studies, there was still a typical neglect of the fact that
those very kinesic acts cooccurred with paralanguage and verbal language
in various combinations and that a knowledge of paralinguistic behaviors
was a prerequisite for any realistic study of language or kinesics or, for that
matter, of the structure of conversation. In other words, m y initial identifi-
cation and classification of paralinguistic and kinesic phenomena (e.g,
Poyatos 1977a) responded to m y thoughts concerning what I later found
Abercrombie (1968) had referred to as the "unfortunate separation of the
visible and the audible" (58), naturally agreeing with him that "fact-finding,
not theorising, is what is wanted at this juncture" (58). In fact, I realized
the great need for both simultaneously in view of the misconceptions (e.g.,
that language was cognitive, paralanguage emotional) and understatements
(e.g, that paralanguage was marginal to language, m a d e only of affects and
effects) which relegated paralanguage to the most ambiguous state of what
I saw as a perfectly established vocal system shunned through ignorance of
the communication processes.
 INTRODUCTION 3

2. The 1973 IXth I C A E S and a state-of-the-art article

It was then that the IXth International Congress of Anthropological and

Ethnological Sciences (Chicago, 1973) and some of its pre-congress confer-
ences afforded serious discussions of paralanguage, later contained in vol-
umes edited by K e n d o n , Harris and Key (1975) and M c C o r m a c k and
W u r m (1976). W u r m summarized the severe criticism undergone by the
transformational-generative approaches for their "artificially restrictive
nature in dissociating the subject matters which they study from their social
and cultural background" (363). H e cited Kendon's discussion of the ses-
sion 'Language and M a n , ' in which "The notion of language as an abstract
system, as 'a thing in itself to be studied apart from the utterances of live
individuals in interactional situations no longer appeared tenable to m a n y
of them" (364). K e n d o n explicitly quoted "Crystal, Poyatos, Slama-Cazacu
and von Raffler-Engel as being all quite explicit in their dissatisfaction with
the scope of linguistics as currently conceived" (365), that is, the treatment
of "any information linguists could not describe with their present theoreti-
cal and notational apparatus as nonlinguistic" (365), adding that one defin-
ition of language could be that it is "a communication system which is capa-
ble of transmitting new information" (365) (both ideas expressed by Lieber-
m a n [1972 and 1975]), and that language was n o w being defined in terms of
its function or functions. H e added that Crystal (1976) and Poyatos (1975),
though in different ways, "point out that what has hitherto been disre-
garded by linguists in the vocal output of people has as m u c h structural and
functional claim to be incorporated into language as words do, and von
Raffler-Engel and, particularly, Slama-Cazacu m a k e the same point for
body motion" (365). Finally, Slama-Cazacu's discussion affirmed that the
papers presented reflected an "état d'âme which is symptomatic of the pre-
sent crisis" (369). O n e could then link the earlier statements by Pike (1943)
and Trager (1958), already seeking the linguisticness of m a n y paralinguistic
features, to others m a d e at that time, such as Crystal's (1975), saying that
"observations of people's everyday reactions to language suggest that
paralinguistic phenomena, far from being marginal, are frequently the
primary determinants of behaviour in an interaction" (164), and that
"paralanguage cannot be given anything other than a central role". Lieber-
m a n (1975), complained about lack of adequate transcription systems and
about the artificial "rigid dychotomy wherein certain semantic constructs
are 'paralinguistic' and others 'linguistic'" (279), and it was becoming obvi-
4 PARALANGUAGE

ous that, as Crystal (1975) would point out, "just because this area of
behaviour is difficult to describe and quantify, it does not m e a n that it lacks
systems altogether" (169).
Further proof of the état d'âme noted by Slama-Cazacu were Crystal's
(1974) masterful state-of-the-art paper and a paper (Poyatos 1975) and a
book (Poyatos 1976a) of mine, as they contained m a n y interesting coinci-
dences of thought with respect to the kind of development needed in
paralinguistic studies, the lack of some of which would still be criticized
m u c h later by Scherer (1982): (a) Crystal advocated a phonetic criterion
(i.e., not a phonemic one from the standpoint of English or any particular
language) to allow for crosscultural comparison, actually in keeping with
Catford's (1968) efforts to show man's anthropophonetic possibilities, while
Poyatos (1975) worked in that direction in his I C A E S paper "to elaborate
a realistic phonemic chart of a culture or subculture beyond what is pro-
vided by the International Phonetic Alphabet", applying it to the analysis
of paralinguistic 'alternants' (299-311); (b) Crystal referred to the need for
functional definitions, so far insufficient, while Poyatos' (1977b) functional
classification for kinesic behavior could be applied to paralanguage; (c)
Crystal complained about the lack of serious research for structural or
denotative functions and a potential structural function, while Poyatos
(1975,1976a, 1976b, and earlier) claimed for paralanguage not only a struc-
ture in its o w n right, but its costructuration with language and kinesics
within the 'basic triple structure' and within the structure of interaction; (d)
Crystal referred to the lack of descriptive studies, especially outside English,
while Poyatos suggested phonetic descriptions of a number of constructs,
trying to encourage further systematic study; (e) consequently, Crystal
complained also about the absence of a "systematic survey of paralinguistic
effects [as a] routine part of [the fieldworkers'] investigations" (276), and
the few attempts to transcribe utterances, while Poyatos' (1975, also in 1976b)
suggested at least transcriptions and n e w symbols (echoing Pike's complaint
[1943:39]) for s o m e sixty paralinguistic constructs of our daily repertoire
and expressed the great need for n e w labels for m a n y of them, as they func-
tion as true dictionary items but cannot be referred to by verbs and nouns;
which in turn agreed also with (f) Crystal's plea for normal data;,(g) Crystal
encouraged the search for the functional roles of paralanguage, away from
the purely 'emotional' or 'affective' types of information usually mentioned
in the literature, and m o r e in relation to social function, while Poyatos
(1975, 1976b) emphasized precisely social functions, socioeducational
 INTRODUCTION 5

stratification of paralanguage (along with language and kinesics) and

crosscultural research, discussing its interactional context and the kind of
interactivefluency(not just linguistic) one must achieve, while suggesting
the elaboration of paralinguistic and/or kinesic atlases (cf. Morris et al,
1979).

3. T h e contributions of phonetics and psychology and the public discus-

sion of nonverbal communication issues in the 70s and 80s.

It was obvious that no conspicuous systematic efforts resulted from those

attempts to m a k e linguists and phoneticians more aware of the relevance of
paralanguage, nor from the extremely insightful manuals of phonetics by
Abercrombie (1967) and, ten years later, by Catford (1977), although Mary
Ritchie K e y (1975a, 1975b, 1986, 1987) has been an inspiring force for
many years. T h e exemplary exception was finally the book The Phonetic
Description of Voice Quality, by John Laver (1980), w h o in 1977 spoke at
the VIIIth International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, where I had
organized a session on paralanguage (and where Konrad Koerner with
m u c h perspicacity first suggested this book), similar to the one I had had in
1972 for the Northern Modern Language Association, to which I invited
Philip Lieberman after reading his book on the speech of primates (Lieber-
m a n 1972). Laver's book on voice qualities was a great incentive for m y
ongoing work, as have been two more papers by him (Laver 1972, Laver
and Hanson 1981). In addition, I had been aware for a long time of what
Crystal (1975) had critically referred to as the inaccuracy of the traditional
psychological view that "verbal language communicates 'cognitive' m e a n -
ing, whereas the non-verbal code [...] communicates 'affective' meaning'
[...] an important role for paralanguage [...], but by far not the only one"
(165). A whole interdisciplinary panorama was rapidly unfolding before
m e , but also the awareness of the difficulties that would confront anyone
trying to study paralanguage systematically.
While speaking about the needed interdisciplinary approach to
paralanguage and nonverbal communication in general at m a n y confer-
ences and in lectures during the 70s and early 80s, which I also discussed in
several papers and two books (Poyatos 1976a, 1983), I was aware — and
acknowledge it in m y nonverbal communication courses — of the various
applications of voice type analyses in psychological studies of personality
6 PARALANGUAGE

(notably Scherer 1972, 1973, 1978, 1979a, 1979b), age (e.g., Helfrich 1979),
emotions (Scherer 1979b, Scherer and E k m a n 1984,), etc., in which some-
times, as should be expected, experimental control would impede a realistic
knowledge of m a n y subtle paralinguistic behaviors and features. There
appeared then excellent state-of-the-art treatments and other discussions
and compilations, mainly Harper, Wiens and Mattarazzo's (1978), Weitz's
(1979); Scherer's (1982; 1984, analyzing the shortcomings and needs in this
area), all with very useful bibliographies, as well as very helpful voice
analyses in the field of voice disorders and speech therapy (e.g., Travis
[Ed.] 1971). A t the same time, the field of nonverbal communication had
been gaining m u c h m o m e n t u m through a rapidly growing serious literature,
by its frequent discussion at interdisciplinary congress sessions and sym-
posiums (many of which I organized myself within anthropology, linguis-
tics, applied linguistics, psychology, applied psychology, crosscultural
psychology, psycholinguistics, sociology, semiotics, etc.), and through a
number of very useful textbooks (e.g., K n a p p and Hall 1992; Malandro and
Barker 1989; Burgoon, Buller and Woodall 1989), all with ample bibliog-
raphies, yet typically lacking references to, for instance, the fields of litera-
ture, theater, film-making, architecture, etc., thus missing some very
important perspectives for lack of sufficient interdisciplinarity.

4. T h e definition of paralanguage and the contents of this book

Having at least outlined the development of paralinguistic studies — but

purposely avoiding a lengthier state-of-the-art chapter on the work of other
students in the field — one can still wonder what exactly should be right-
fully included under the term 'paralanguage'. Fig. 0.1, Taralanguage', rep-
resents the 'categories' and 'forms' of what is understood as paralanguage
in this book: the nonverbal voice qualities, voice modifiers and independent
utterances produced or conditioned in the areas covered by the supraglottal
cavities (from the lips and the nares to the pharynx), the laryngeal cavity
and the infraglottal cavities (lungs and esophagus), d o w n to the abdominal
muscles, as well as the intervening momentary silences, which w e use con-
sciously or unconsciously supporting or contradicting the verbal, kinesic,
chemical, dermal and thermal or proxemic messages, either simultaneously
or alternating with them, in both interaction and noninteraction.
 INTRODUCTION 7

This realistic definition constitutes, therefore, the basis of this book.

B y necessity, however, C H A P T E R O N E discloses the eloquence of the
human sounds, beyond those produced in the vocal-narial channel, deter-
mined by our movements in contact with ourselves, others, and the objects
w e are surrounded by in each culture, for they all blend with language and
paralanguage, and even with the sounds of the environment, in mysteriously
meaningful, language-like audible sensations that cannot be ignored and
unrealistically detached from the p h e n o m e n o n of h u m a n language and the
processes of communication. It is only after sensitizing ourselves to all c o m -
municative sounds that w e can try to focus on the strictly organic sounds of
language and paralanguage, as is done in C H A P T E R T W O . This approach
to speech, however, is an audible-visual one; thus, besides discussing the
anatomical characteristics of the speech organs, their articulatory pos-
sibilities and the muscular physiology involved, the classification and iden-
tification of communicative sounds goes inevitably well beyond the tradi-
tional I P A limits, as they are seen in their relations with the communicative
aspects of each visible speech organ and the face in general, that is, the
speaking face;, the basic typical pathology of each speech organ is also iden-
tified, and m a n y needed transcription symbols (based on computer sym-
bols) are suggested to at least attempt a realistic social or clinical notation.
C H A P T E R T H R E E , then, acknowledges the expressive limitations of
words, and the triple reality of speech language-paralanguage- kinesics (the
'basic triple structure') in its various combinations; naturally including the
intervening silences and stills of speech, indispensable for a detailed
analysis of discourse — or for weighing the communicative possibilities and
problems in 'reduced interaction' (i.e., by/with the deaf, the blind, the
limbless) — and for which a multi-system transcription is proposed which
cannot neglect other cobehaviors, nor the m a n y variables of the 'total con-
ditioning background'. The next four chapters discuss the four paralinguis-
tic categories. C H A P T E R F O U R deals with the fundamental primary qual-
ities of speech (loudness, pitch, etc.) and their linguistic, social, cultural and
pathological aspects. C H A P T E R F I V E identifies and classifies paralinguis-
tic qualifiers, that is, the m a n y voice qualities or voice types, the labelling
problems involved, their production, attitudinal and communicational func-
tions, social perception, cultural aspects, and pathological occurrences.
C H A P T E R SIX is the longest, as it deals with paralinguistic differentiators,
not discussed systematically and interdisciplinarily before despite their
enormous relevance phonetically and kinesically as audible-visual
8 PARALANGUAGE

phenomena, as well as socially, psychologically, clinically, culturally and

crossculturally (not only laughter and crying, but lesser behaviors like
coughing and sneezing). C H A P T E R S E V E N offers a theoretical and
methodological model for the identification, classification, analysis, and
writing of paralinguistic alternants, the word-like independent constructs
(qualified by paralanguage and kinesics) that constitute our daily repertoire
beyond the official dictionary, an extensive and colorful series of segmental
utterances, but also the most elusive and challenging from the point of view
of identification, labelling and written representation.
A n eight chapter would have dealt with paralanguage in narrative liter-
ature as the basis for an analytical dimension of the visual written text. It
was based on the other h u m a n and n o n h u m a n sounds discussed in Chapter
1, their semiotic-communicative itinerary between the writer's conception
and the reader's visual-intellectual experience of reading — in which punc-
tuation deserves an in-depth discussion as a definite form of paralanguage
— the stylistic and technical functions of paralanguage in literature, and the
n e w perspectives this area offers in literary translation. H o w e v e r , due to
inevitable editorial constraints, the various aspects of nonverbal c o m m u n i -
cation in literature are being arranged as a separate publication (initially in
Poyatos 1992b, 1993a, 1993b).

5. The interdisciplinarity of paralanguage: applications and implications

A s soon as I began to be seriously interested in communication behavior

almost twenty-five years ago, I could not but agree wholeheartedly with a
statement read in a book (Thayer 1967: iii) to the effect that whenever one
tries to study h u m a n communication from within his o w n discipline, "he
soon finds himself at an impasse; the corpus he wants to comprehend
stretches perversely, indeterminately across m a n y fields of study in the life
and behavioral sciences and the applied arts". I consider the present book
a totally interdisciplinary endeavor, notwithstanding the severance from it
of most of the literary discussion. H o w e v e r , even a perfunctory discussion
of the m a n y applications of paralinguistic research would have taken too
m u c h space. Instead, although frequent references are m a d e (apart from
those to linguistics, phonetics and literature) to areas like what has been
called the ethnography of speaking and to crosscultural aspects and
pathological paralinguistic behaviors, the readers are most emphatically
 INTRODUCTION 9

encouraged to think of their o w n individual research field or professional

type of interaction as they read through each chapter. Implicit and explicit
comments and suggestions can be found throughout which are relevant to
cultural anthropology, ethnology, h u m a n ethology, psychology (particu-
larly areas like development, abnormal psychology and social psychology),
psychiatry, counselling, doctor/nurse-patient interaction, theater and film
acting, teaching, business meetings and interviews, oratory, etc., although,
for lack of space, they truly constitute only the tip of the iceberg. The main
objective of the book is to identify and describe paralinguistic behaviors in
order to m a k e the general reader aware of a neglected but fascinating real-
ity in daily h u m a n communication, but, above all, to incite researchers to
improve upon any of the areas discussed, as this study is very far from being
exhaustive and cannot pretend to be free from certain shortcomings. It con-
stitutes also a useful set of theoretical and practical models with m u c h
crosscultural documentation and countless research suggestions. In addi-
tion, a most important objective is also to m a k e ourselves aware of the
m a n y nonverbal signals and messages conveyed by our o w n sounds and,
through that awareness, hopefully become more sensitive to others in m a n y
everyday-life situations.

6. The use of literary quotations

D u e to the above-mentioned editorial constraints, only less than 400 remain

of the 1,000 original literary quotations (mostly from novels, a few from
plays), which I regarded as a very special feature worth their painstaking
selection from personal readings. I hope, nevertheless, that the readers will
recognize their indispensability in this book, as they have a twofold func-
tion: first, to sensitize one to 'hearing' a text better and enter a realm which
so often remains insufficiently explored w h e n w e read; and then, to
enhance the theoretical discussion of paralinguistic behaviors with the writ-
ers' acute observations of the reality of h u m a n communication.

7. A note for the non-English-speaking reader

Apart from the occasional thoughts on translation and the m a n y crosscul-

tural observations — which suggest diverse problems and possibilities — I
10 PARALANGUAGE

have kept the non-English-speaking readers very much in mind when com-
piling the different lists of words and phrases as well as the great number of
examples from everyday language and the literary quotations, which should
be a useful source of vocabulary build-up and of usages with which one can-
not be in contact away from the daily cultural experience of the language.
 INTRODUCTION 11

Figure 0.1 Paralanguage