'Thumbs up' is a kind of ______ communication

Concept: Communication is classified along more than one axis. By MODE — the channel that carries the meaning — it is verbal (meaning encoded in language: words spoken or written) or non-verbal (meaning encoded in everything other than words: body movement and gesture, studied as kinesics; facial expression and gaze; touch, or haptics; the use of space, or proxemics, and of time, or chronemics; and tone and pitch, or paralanguage). By LEVEL — who the participants are — it is intrapersonal, interpersonal, group, mass or transpersonal. A blank asking what kind of communication a single sign is, is asking about the MODE.

Application: A 'thumbs up' is a hand sign, and in the study of gesture and body movement (kinesics) a hand sign of this kind is called an emblem — a gesture that carries a fixed, culturally agreed meaning (approval, "good", "go ahead") and can therefore stand in for speech on its own. No word is spoken and none is written; the entire message rides on the movement of the hand. On the mode axis it is therefore non-verbal communication.

Cross-check — how the four offered terms differ:

• Verbal — mode axis: meaning is carried by language itself; saying or writing "well done" would be verbal.

• Non-Verbal — mode axis: meaning is carried without language, through gesture, expression, posture, touch or space; a thumbs-up sign belongs here.

• Transpersonal — level axis: exchange that reaches beyond the ordinary individual self, as in prayer, meditation or communion with a spiritual entity; it is defined by whom one communicates with, not by whether words are used.

• Intrapersonal — level axis: communication inside a single person, such as self-talk, reflection and inner dialogue, where sender and receiver are the same individual.

Emblems such as the thumbs-up are conventional signs whose meaning varies across cultures — approval in India and the United States, an insult in parts of West Asia and Greece. That variation shows the gesture is a learned convention, and in every one of those cultures its meaning is still carried without a single word being used.

Answer: Non-Verbal communication.