About verbal/nonverbal communication.
1) Both major parts of communication.
2) Interestingly, processed in different parts of the brain. People with damage to the left brain are generally far more reliant on verbal communication (some exclusively). I've also read of a recent study where people with verbal processing problems were proved to be far more likely to tell if someone was lying or not (the researcher said he got interested when a group he worked with kept laughing during a presidential debate a few years back).
3) Read an essay by Patricia McKillip a few years back where she discussed something about this. Character A wants to put a love spell on character B. Before you can write this, she said, you have to decide what you mean by love.
4) I was thinking of this a bit in a story I wrote where Cally kept getting frustrated because of the difficulties she has communicating with humans. Part of it's cultural - they keep assuming she can process the information they give her in the same way even though she lacks the cultural background (a Federation citizen, for example, would know what penalties a person would face for things Cally might not realize were crimes). But it also works the other way. Not only is there a nonverbal language that's subtly different from hers, she should be used to telepathic cues no one ever gives. Imagine talking to someone who gives _no_ nonverbal cues, not even tone or inflection.
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