ABSTRACT
Language is usually carried by marks on a surface or sounds in air: graphetic and phonetic substance. Each of these give rise to two kinds of meaning simultaneously. On the one hand, the substance is perceived as the sounds or letters of a particular language (the phonology or graphology) which in turn1 form words and word combinations (the morphology and grammar) which are in turn perceived as meaningful (the semantics). But the substance which carries language is also the vehicle of another kind of meaning, conveyed simultaneously by voice quality, or choice of script, letter size and so on. This latter kind of meaning, occurring together with linguistic meaning, is paralinguistic (see section 1.0)—a term which also embraces other meaningful behaviour which accompanies language but does not carry it, such as gesturing, facial expression, body posture, eye contact, or the way writing is bound or displayed.
