Everyday quarrels are conducted through indirect symbolic objects and gestures

Evidence

People constantly function symbolically. We must do so because we rarely know exactly what we mean, and if we do we are not willing to express it, and if we are willing we are not able, and if we are able we are not heard, and if we are heard we are not understood. Words are unwieldy and unyielding, and we leap past them with intuition, body language, tone, and symbol. “Is the oven supposed to be on?” he asks. He is only peripherally curious about whether the oven is supposed to be on. He is really complaining: You’re scatterbrained and extravagant with the money I go out and earn. — Janet Burroway; Elizabeth Stuckey-French; Ned Stuckey-French, Writing Fiction, Tenth Edition, 637

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Watzlawick’s communication theory and to the iceberg metaphor of subtext in dialogue craft. — connects to: Everyday gestures become rituals through the charge they carry — Karl Ove Knausgaard, A Death in the Family, 1414; Micro-level symbolic encounters carry relative autonomy from the social structure; Writers evoke character through physical gestures and spatial orientation in a scene — Hilary Mantel, A Memoir of My Former Self- A Life in…, 163 (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• Seating distance from strangers encodes unspoken interaction signals with systematic rules #expands (0.80)
• Writers evoke character through physical gestures and spatial orientation in a scene #exemplifies (0.70) — Hilary Mantel, A Memoir of My Former Self- A Life in…, 163
• Physical objects in prose can register the emotional weight of unreciprocated speech #exemplifies (0.65) — Hilary Mantel, A Memoir of My Former Self- A Life in…, 165
• Everyday gestures become rituals through the charge they carry #expands (0.60) — Karl Ove Knausgaard, A Death in the Family, 1414
• Character is sketched through specific physical details and social pressures #exemplifies (0.60) — Hilary Mantel, A Memoir of My Former Self- A Life in…, 81
• A writer can render another’s character through the physical rhythm of their actions #exemplifies (0.60) — Hilary Mantel, A Memoir of My Former Self- A Life in…, 58
• Micro-level symbolic encounters carry relative autonomy from the social structure #expands (0.55)