THE LARGEST WHALE PENIS IN THE JUNGLE AND OTHER BIG THINGS: TOWARD SIMPLER MESSAGES

There is a history of researchers and theorists discussing particular social interactions and their meanings. More than thirty-five years ago, Krivonos & Knapp, for example, wrote about greetings, how people say "hello" to one another. As somewhat of a punctuation mark in communication, the "hello" may be considered the beginning point of a conversation or a relationship. The significance of "hello" was articulated brilliantly by Zunin & Zunin who claimed that people decide whether to meet a person a second time within four minutes of their first interaction. The rituals, hello and good-bye, may be encoded through verbal channels and/or through nonverbal channels. When distance is a concern, for example, the two parties may simply wave to one another as a sign of hello and good-bye. The purpose of this article is to describe some general principles of such a "system" of simplistic communication, nearly as simple as symbolic logic but including emotional expressions. Emoticons now symbolize the emotions through electronic media.