Non verbal communication, is it really communicating?

I used to question and look at people funny when they would throw up hand signals or move around in strange ways while another person was talking to them. It took a while for me to realize that this person was deaf and was commnicating through sign language instead of saying words verbally. Chapter 5 in Jandts book goes into so much more detail about different forms of nonverbal communication that didn't even involve sign language. Some of the main ideas I caught onto were cues, kinesics, silence, haptics, and mainly olfactics.

While learning sign launguage this quarter, it never really occured to me that there are so many various ways people communicate daily without even saying a word.