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The father of modern American poetry, Walt Whitman, celebrates the importance of slang: "...perhaps Language is more like some vast living body, or perennial body of bodies. And slang...is afterward the start of fancy, imagination and humor, breathing into its nostrils the breath of life.

It has been nearly 20 years since a landmark education study found that by age 3, children from low-income families have heard 30 million fewer words than more affluent children, putting them at an educational disadvantage before they even began school. Now, a growing body of research is challenging the notion that merely exposing poor children to more language is enough to overcome the deficits they face. The quality of the communication between children and their parents and caregivers, the researchers say, is of much greater importance than the number of words a child hears.

This article elaborates on how dance is a type of language that connects all cultures, and all species around the world. Dancers are thought of as storytellers, and their stories are their bodies and movement.

The oldest forms of communication even before languages included body language, drawings, dancing, acting, and grunting. High or low pitched grunts indicated social communication or warning signs. The ancient Egyptians were some of the first people to use symbols as a means of recording their lives or for goods and trading and eventually the symbols changed to the alphabets we use today.

10 signs to tell if you have a liar. These include body language and word choice signals

The GreenDot Project aims to track speaker's gesture and body language, looking for patterns and new understandings in non-verbal communication.

nbsp; Image by Getty Images via @daylife When he's on his game (as was the case last night), few leaders are better than President Obama at crafting and delivering a speech. His State of the Union address was beautifully written (of course, much credit goes to head speechwriter Jon Favreau) and expertly [...]

Based at the University of California, Berkeley, the Greater Good Science Center sponsors groundbreaking scientific research into social and emotional well-being and helps people apply this research to their personal and professional lives. Their website has useful resources for Safe Conversations, Word Acts, and fostering better social relationships.

A new form of therapy makes use of virtual therapists, who have the capacity to read facial expressions, vocal patterns, body posture, and speech tones. Cleo Stiller, host of Asking For A Friend, said in a video, "[The virtual therapist]'s also interpreting my speech in real time. Am I using positive or negative language? [the therapist] adjusts her questions based off of my responses." The benefit of virtual therapy is that it removes some of the stigmas associated with "seeing a shrink," and allows people to feel more open with their feelings and problems... at least, that's the idea.

This article is pretty self-explanatory based on the article - it talks about how monkeys' vocal cords and bodies are physiologically able to talk and make distinct sounds. However, monkeys lack the brain circuits used by humans to learn sounds, and the special nerve sets humans use to control the shape of our vocal tracts.

This article highlighted some of the averted words in the english language, like "slacks" or "gasp." The study showed that most of the averted words were related to body parts and bodily functions. Other averted words bothered people for no reason. For example, "ointment" and "unguent" were recorded in the study.

Contrary to popular belief, liars don't actually give many visual giveaways to their lies. The better cues are in their speech. The common misconceptions about liars and their body language are actually signs of anxiety. More often than not, truth-tellers are assumed to be liars because they are anxious to recount the correct details

I recommend that everyone watch this...through to the end.

How language, not only your words but bodily figures, shape you.

Eye contact plays a bigger role in communication than previously thought. Our pupils, which we cannot control, expands or contracts based on the attractiveness of what we're looking at. Blinking speed can also tell us something. You blink faster when talking to someone you find attractive. Too much constant eye contact can make people feel uncomfortable. A reason why children are often victims of pet attacks is that they stare too long at the animal and the animal feels threatened. The best use of eye contact is regular intervals rather than constant eye contact.

Written language is an imperfect method for the messy, complex business of communication, where facial expressions, gestures and vocal tones transmit oceans of meaning and subtext - for those, at least, who can read them. Words themselves offer none of that: In a famous study, Albert Mehrabian, a psychology professor at U.C.L.A., found that humans tend to perceive only a fragment of a speaker's meaning through spoken words. Instead, he observed, most meaning is gleaned from body language and tone of voice. In a text-only environment, how can we ever be certain other people understand what we mean when we post online? Enter tone indicators. Tone indicators are paralinguistic signifiers used at the ends of statements to help readers fill in the blanks. Put simply, they are written shorthand for the poster's intent and emotion. One might use "/srs," short for "serious," to express sincere affection for a pop culture crush.

Scientific American Mind, 18(4), 13-13. Infographic that talks about how non-verbal language reveals your roots and heritage, such as body language.

This article talks about swearing and the hidden benefits that come with it. It also talks a little bit about swearing in different languages and how what words are considered swear words evolved. One thing I found particularly interesting in the article is that swearing has an observable, physical effect on a person. In the article, it said that "Students who repeated a curse word were able to keep their hand in a bucket of ice water longer than those who uttered a neutral word." I think that's both crazy and amazing that repeating a word that's considered taboo can have a physical impact on one's body.