Nonverbal Communication may be defined as transfer of messages without words. It comprises visible expressions like touching, eye contacts and gazes, facial expressions and intonations, as well as less noticeable messages like dress, posture and space between human beings. There are clear distinctions between the meanings we offer in words and the meanings we give off in nonverbal signs. Sender...

The current study qualitatively examined blurbs in the discipline of physics which is perceived to be less infused with evaluative resources and more objective and impersonal in its textual argumentation. The study followed the appraisal framework proposed by Martin and White (2005) to see how interpersonal meaning is textually constructed in blurbs. Findings indicated that writers of the blurb...

Is music a sort of non-verbal language conveying meanings to listeners? In this article, one part of this old controversial subject is approached experimentally. Reasons are given for the hypothesis that the works of music signify interpersonal tendencies which are understood and reacted to by the listeners who in this way participate in fantasy on the interpersonal transactions of the composer...

Physical diseases that appear to be symbolic somatic representations of patients' personal meanings or individual 'stories' continue to be reported in the medical literature. The identification of a symbolic disease requires a clinical focus upon a patient's highly individual and nuanced meanings largely rendered invisible by the usual methodologies of clinical and research medicine, which has ...

In this article, I discuss the meanings of "restraints," or physical intervention strategies that are used at a total institution for mentally ill adolescents in the United States. This paper argues that this particularly complex form of mental health treatment is simultaneously a violent and an intimate way in which men relate to one another and also takes on complex meanings about trust and i...

Consistent with calls by O’Sullivan (1999) and Rogers (1999), we use mass communication theory to help understand what are often thought to be largely interpersonal communication processes. Specifically, we contend that investigating media frames found within metapragmatic discourse of nonverbal events can help organize and reveal more specific meanings that can be given to the cues. To provide...

This paper revisits the too-long-overlooked relation between hypnosis and human development, aiming to understand hidden, yet powerful sociogenetic processes in development that are exposed in hypnosis. Hypnosis, as a process of interpersonal exchange, not only provides empirical evidence that such factors can dramatically influence intramental functioning, it also affords a glimpse of how such...