Milford A. Jeremiah English Department Morgan State University Baltimore, MD 21251 It has been noted that humans communicate more by nonverbal forms of language than by verbal ones (Patton, 2015). For persons who live in the Northeastern states, where snow fall can be abundant, residents communicate territorial ownership by placing lawn chairs or other visual markers to denote a cleared space for parking or for easy access to home entrance. One sign noted in Boston, for example, cautioned persons not to try parking in a cleared space. Similar forms of nonverbal communication can be seen in Baltimore where much of the data for this study was obtained. But is there more to the placing of signs in these situations? For this proposal, I ask three questions: 1. What message is communicated by these nonverbal forms of communication? 2. How do these cultural objects convey meaning? 3. What is the relevance of this topic to a conference on popular culture? The theoretical framework is cross disciplinary in that it draws on insights from cultural representation (e.g., semiotics) (Hall, 2007; Harding & Pribram, 2009) and from cognitive psychology (e.g., visual perception and mental representation) (Kosslyn & Smith, 207).
About the presenterMilford Astor Jeremiah
Milford.Jeremiah is a professor in the English Department at Morgan State University. He earned the B.A. degree at Hampton University in language studies and the M.A. and PhD in linguistics at Brown University. He teaches many language-based courses and has published several articles in journls as “Studies in Poular Culture”, “Popular Culture Review” , and “College Language Asociation Journal.” His research interests are language and cognition and language in social situations.