Talk:Paralanguage

Merging Paralanguage and Paralinguistic competence

a competence is not the same thing as the thing one is competent in. I feel the desire to merge is a result of both articles being stubs.

If metalinguistic compentence were expanded into a full article, I would expect topics such as: assessment, a list of drugs, disabilities and diseases that affect competence (various affective disorders, autism, stroke, etc), a discussion of treatment modalities, etc. -and- of course a cross reference to paralanguage.

If paralanguage were expanded into a topic, I would expect a discussion of the kinds of paralinguistic communication, cultural variations within a single language, a brief history of research on the topic, and a list of other related linguistic areas, for example pragmatics. Egfrank 23:52, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Imprecise introductory paragraph...

The wording here (pasted below) needs to distinguish between non-linguistic, but voiced elements (which it later refers to as pitch, volume and intonation) and non-verbal (ie un-voiced) elements which are referred to later in the text..

"Paralanguage refers to the non-verbal elements of communication used to modify meaning and convey emotion. Paralanguage may be expressed consciously or unconsciously, and it includes the pitch, volume, and, in some cases, intonation of speech. Sometimes the definition is restricted to vocally-produced sounds. The study of paralanguage is known as paralinguistics."

Jeroboambramblejam (talk) 02:06, 2 January 2011 (UTC)