Chronemics for Writers

Chronemics is the study of how time is used in communication, including how we use time to signal social status, power, and intimacy. Here are some examples of the kinds of events and time signatures that may be of interest to chronemics.

What is time, and how do we talk about it? Aristotle defines time as “the calculable measure of motion with respect to before and afterness.” 

In the English language, an abundance of expressions exists to talk about time, phrasal verbs being among the most numerous. Their formulas consist of a few words in a string comprising a verb and particle, e.g., “We ran out of time, so we scheduled a follow-up meeting.” These phrasal verbs are tricky to memorize for second language learners of English dialects; a missing, stray, or incorrect element can throw off the meaning and result in a humorous or harmful gaffe, and at the least, charming miscommunication, as in “We ran up to time, so we scheduled a follow-up meeting.” 

Native speakers of English may not think about using phrasal verbs consciously, yet they are everywhere we speak. Staying with the example of time, we: make, use, and put in time; have it to spare and also run out of it; carve it out; spend, waste, and save it; take a time out; and take time off. More poetically, we set it aside, and idle, while, and fritter it away. Time is money. It flies, and it heals all wounds.

Chronemics however, focus on what we are saying by what we are doing. Are we late, unresponsive, interrupters? What does that say about a character? It is a bit like body language, only for time. 

The Studies of Non-Verbal Communication

There are several related fields of study that focus on Kinesics. Some of these fields are:

Quotes from Anaïs Nin

Anaïs Nin said...

• "We do not see things as they are, we see them as we are."

• "The role of a writer is not to say what we all can say, but what we are unable to say."
• "Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage."
• "And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom."
• "I am an excitable person who only understands life lyrically, musically, in whom feelings are much stronger as reason. I am so thirsty for the marvelous that only the marvelous has power over me."
• "I must be a mermaid, Rango. I have no fear of depths and a great fear of shallow living."
• "I am not a Sunday morning inside four walls with clean blood and organized drawers. I am the hurricane setting fire to the forests at night when no one else is alive or awake however you choose to see it and I live in my own flames sometimes burning too bright and too wild to make things last or handle myself or anyone else and so I run. Run run run far and wide until my bones ache and lungs split and it feels good. Hear that people? It feels good because I am the slave and ruler of my own body and I wish to do with it exactly as I please."
• "Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings."
• "Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death."

The role of a writer is not to say what we all can say, but what we are unable to say.

• "I am lonely, yet not everybody will do. I don't know why, some people fill the gaps and others emphasize my loneliness. In reality, those who satisfy me are those who simply allow me to live with my 'idea of them.'"
• "I am an instrument in the shape of a woman trying to translate pulsations into images for the relief of the body and the reconstruction of the mind."
• "The only thing I know is that I paint because I need to, and I paint whatever passes through my head without any other consideration."
• "I take pleasure in my transformations. I look quiet and consistent, but few know how many women there are in me."
• "The dream was always running ahead of me. To catch up, to live for a moment in unison with it, that was the miracle."
• "Anxiety is love's greatest killer. It makes others feel as you might when a drowning man holds on to you. You want to save him, but you know he will strangle you with his panic."

Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings

• "The personal life deeply lived always expands into truths beyond itself."
• "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are."
• "I postpone death by living, by suffering, by error, by risking, by giving, by losing."
• "I want to live only for ecstasy. Small doses, moderate loves, all half-shades, leave me cold. I like extravagance, heat."
• "The possession of knowledge does not kill the sense of wonder and mystery. There is always more mystery."
• "The artist's duty is to express the spirit of the time."
• "The personal life deeply lived always expands into truths beyond itself."
• "It is the function of art to renew our perception. What we are familiar with we cease to see" 

The Varangian Guard

The Varangian Guard was an elite unit of the Byzantine Army, formed in the late 10th century AD. Its members were mostly Norsemen or Vikings, who were known as Varangians in the East.

The origins of the Varangian Guard can be traced back to the early 980s, when the Byzantine Emperor Basil II sent an embassy to the Viking lands in the north, in search of mercenaries to aid his campaigns against the Bulgarians. The Varangians impressed the Byzantines with their bravery and fighting skills, and they were eventually hired as mercenaries.