extralinguistic (adj.)

In its most general sense, this term refers to anything in the world (other than LANGUAGE) in relation to which language is used – the extralinguistic situation. The term extralinguistic features is used both generally, to refer to any properties of such situations, and also specifically, to refer to properties of communication which are not clearly analyzable in LINGUISTIC terms, e.g. gestures, tones of voice. Some linguists refer to the former class of features as METALINGUISTIC; others refer to the latter class as PARALINGUISTIC.