verbal components mentioned before but they have to. Consider the shrug to don’t indicate that you know or the crossed arms of a parent to indicate displeasure don’t or the pointing in a direction to indicate location. What differentiates these components from the linguistic components is that they occur in the here-and-now. I shrug yesterday or cross my arms to indicate displeasure can’t tomorrow. As mentioned earlier these gestures can be taught (bye-bye) or they can be instinctive (smile, raised eyebrows, smirk, etc.). But they are not productive. A shrug is just that—it cannot create a different meaning for itself by adding anything to indicate when it was done, who else did it, how it was done, etc. A word of caution: since these postures and gestures can be part of the communication process which occurs within a culture, they will often have different meanings for different cultures. Roger Axtell, an author of several books on getting along in other cultures, has one on gestures and their meaning across cultures. One of his examples is the University of Texas gesture for “hook ‘em on where it is used, it can mean: a college rallying sign, a horns.” “Depending signal of infidelity, a voodoo-like curse, a symbol for the Devil, or ‘good luck,’ of ‘you’re full horse apples.’” Body Language and Animal Language
verbal components mentioned before but they don’t have to. Consider the shrug to indicate that you don’t know or the crossed arms of a parent to indicate displeasure or the pointing in a direction to indicate location. What differentiates these components from the linguistic components is that they occur in the here-and-now. I can’t shrug yesterday or cross my arms to indicate displeasure tomorrow. As mentioned earlier these gestures can be taught (bye-bye) or they can be instinctive (smile, raised eyebrows, smirk, etc.). But they are not productive. A shrug is just that—it cannot create a different meaning for itself by adding anything to indicate when it was done, who else did it, how it was done, etc. A word of caution: since these postures and gestures can be part of the communication process which occurs within a culture, they will often have different meanings for different cultures. Roger Axtell, an author of several books on getting along in other cultures, has one on gestures and their meaning across cultures. One of his examples is the University of Texas gesture for “hook ‘em horns.” “Depending on where it is used, it can mean: a college rallying sign, a signal of infidelity, a voodoo-like curse, a symbol for ‘good luck,’ the Devil, or ‘you’re full of horse apples.’” Body Language and Animal Language
Winter2016LangCultureClassNotes.docx