Don Satz replies to Len Fehskens:

>>This is precisely the substance of my question.  What kind of a language
>>is it that means one thing to one person and the opposite to another?
>
>A flexible language? Verbal language can also often be misunderstood
>or interpreted in an opposite manner primarily because one language is
>covering multiple cultures.  I've read that body language is the primary
>means of communication among people, and that can also lead to frequent
>misunderstanding.  These things happen all the time.  I don't see music
>as inhabiting some kind of special dysfunctional area concerning
>communication, and I still consider music to be a language in that
>it communicates to the listener.

How about the difference between "denotation" and "connotation?" As far
as I can tell, language depends on denotation much more than music does.
Hence, there are dictionaries of verbal language and none of music.  Also,
if languages have a grammar (that is, you can describe how they mean,
rather than what they mean), what's the grammar of "body language?" I
strongly suspect that body language is a metaphor.

Steve Schwartz