Aristotle defined voice as: ". a particular sound made by something with a soul; for nothing which does not have a soul has a voice." Beyond Words encompasses human language outside words, the realm of the sounds of the mouth, controlled and automatic, which bring depth, meaning, and confusion in equal measure to our communication as humans. Steven Connor takes in the phantasmal life of excitements, identifications, and recoils associated with particular groups of vocal utterances: the guttural, the dental, the fricative, and the sibilant; and reveals our beliefs, myths, and responses to the growls, stutters, ums, and ahs of everyday language and exchange. This book is not really a work of linguistics or phonetics because it is concerned less with what language actually is or how it works than with popular conceptions of what it is. From the moans, whimpers, and sobs of human grief, to the playful linguistic twisting of nonsense Beyond Words probes the fringes and limits of human language, and our definitions and notions of "voice" and meaning, to challenge our basic assumptions about what it is to communicate and where meaning lies in language. By engaging with the vocal sounds, utterances, and tics usually marginalized, trivialized, or ignored completely in phonetics and linguistics, this book presents the reader with a startling and fascinating new way to engage with language itself.