The study of paralanguage is known as paralinguistics and was invented by George L. Trager in the 1950s, while he was working at the Foreign Service Institute of the U.S. Department of State.
A good example is the work of John J. Gumperz on language and social identity, which specifically describes paralinguistic differences between participants in intercultural interactions.
[5] The film Gumperz made for BBC in 1982, Multiracial Britain: Cross talk, does a particularly good job of demonstrating cultural differences in paralanguage and their impact on relationships.
Paralinguistic information, because it is phenomenal, belongs to the external speech signal (Ferdinand de Saussure's parole) but not to the arbitrary conmodality.
Even vocal language has some paralinguistic as well as linguistic properties that can be seen (lip reading, McGurk effect), and even felt, e.g. by the Tadoma method.
[7][failed verification] Emotional tone of voice, itself paralinguistic information, has been shown to affect the resolution of lexical ambiguity.
It is universally reflected in expressive variation, and it is reasonable to assume that it has phylogenetically given rise to the sexual dimorphism that lies behind the large difference in pitch between average female and male adults.
In text-only communication such as email, chatrooms and instant messaging, paralinguistic elements can be displayed by emoticons, font and color choices, capitalization and the use of non-alphabetic or abstract characters.
A sigh is a kind of paralinguistic respiration in the form of a deep and especially audible, single exhalation of air out of the mouth or nose, that humans use to communicate emotion.
This serves to improve the mechanical properties of lung tissue, and it also helps babies to develop a regular breathing rhythm.
[13] Moaning and groaning both refer to an extended sound emanating from the throat, which is typically made by engaging in sexual activity.
Throat clearing is a metamessaging nonverbal form of communication[16] used in announcing one's presence upon entering the room or approaching a group.
[18][19] In chimpanzee social hierarchy, this utterance is a sign of rank, directed by alpha males and higher-ranking chimps to lower-ranking ones and signals a mild warning or a slight annoyance.
Observing emotional differences and taking care of an interviewee's mental status is an important way to find slight changes during conversation.
One such study investigated the effect of interjections that differed along the criteria of lexical index (more or less "wordy") as well as neutral or emotional pronunciation; a higher hemodynamic response in auditory cortical gyri was found when more robust paralinguistic data was available.