Nope Yep

Swift and Sleek

Fast and Furious 
Dissent…

Brian: Great movie.

Betsy: Trash.

Brian: But you like action.

Betsy: Not cars.

Brian: Drift cars are a culture.

Betsy: Subculture. As in subnormal.

Brian: Some would say sublime. I have an idea. Your black Toyota. Paint some red stripes on that and we’d have a Mustang lookalike.

Betsy: Nope.

Brian: You sound dead set against it.

Betsy: Yep. End of discussion.
________________
Voice-over
Betsy is adamant. She signals this by ending her dissent "No" and assent "Yes" with the unvoiced plosive /p/. An audible punctuation mark. "Nope!" "Yep!" Signalling an incontestable, indubitable, incontrovertible viewpoint. An unequivocal. unarguable, unassailable position. This lady’s not for drifting.
…

Green flowers mean...

Ludovic suggests a new signaling system.

...

Ludovic: The telephones are bugged and email is too dangerous. Cameras are everywhere. If I have a message I’ll leave a sign.

Marcus: A sign.

Ludovic: Yes. I’ll leave a plant on the stairs. If there is no message, there is no plant.

Marcus: What kind of a plant?

Ludovic: A discreet one. I am thinking of a small pot plant with green flowers.

Marcus: And where will the message be?

Ludovic: The usual place. Under the bridge.

Marcus: So I go to the staircase, and if there is a small plant with green flowers, then I go to the bridge?

Ludovic: Exactly.

______________
Voice-over

Just as spies need a protocol to pass information, so do we when we call a friend at the office.

“Can you talk?”

“Important?”

“Life and death.”

“Urgent?”

“Level orange.”

“Bit busy. Got someone with me. 10 minutes.”

Such signals are helpful, but not foolproof, they can interpreted or intercepted.

...

Train whistles

Marcus, steam train buff, and student of train whistles, instructs his nephew, Jerome.

...

Marcus: Whistles go back a way.

Jerome: I guess they signal something?

Marcus: Sure. You know what long-long-short-long means?

Jerome: Nope.

Marcus: Approaching a public crossing. Rule 14L.

Jerome: Hmm. Hoot. Hoot. Hoooooot. Hoot?

Marcus: You got it. But the system can do emotions too.

Jerome: Sad whistles as in Woody Guthrie?

Marcus: Can be a whole railroad folk song in one steam train whistle hoot. Like this. Listen.

­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­___________

Voiceover

Signaling systems have a limited lexicon. “Watch out! Coming through.”

Language systems have big refined lexicons and complicated syntactic systems. “See you downtown in the King George for a pint after I hand over 454 to maintenance?“

And yet the mechanistic signaling system early on was adapted to include emotional expression. Unsurprising really since emotions probably preceded lexis.

...