English people use signifiers in strange ways. They feel a strong need to send out signals to the world as to their place in it. I know this is not unique to English people; but my experience suggests that the English do it in more ways, and more subtlety. Clothes, for example. Where I grew up, clothes were [...]
Anyone who talks to me discovers I have a frustrating tendency to go from rapid speech to complete silence in the middle of a sentence. This is because I am trying to find just the right word to complete my thought, but my irritated conversational partner often gets there ahead of me. They supply the [...]
I have always enjoyed watching people, perhaps because I find other people quite hard to understand. I think – although I have no way of knowing for sure, of course – that most people seem to pick up little unspoken signals and gestures more naturally than I do. I have often either missed these signs [...]