Expression or Communication?

Some linguists told me that there is no “expression” - the purpose of everything we say is to communicate. I doubt: If I happened to scream when I got scared of something that was absolutely not dangerous, the sound could communicate my surprise and someone could come to see if I was OK. But the screaming sound could have been an immediate reaction (expression of surprising fear) and not a planned action to call for help, and it could be embarrassing if someone had heard it. What I want to say is that the scream was not intended to communicate but was an expression that urged from the inside. Such scream would be a kind of impulsive, intuitive, embodied expression, not planned to influence an addressee in specific way.

We can experience and interpret everything we hear, see, touch or smell – everything can communicate to us even if it was intended to communicate. And the other way around, what we do and how me move might be interpreted by others, however we sometimes do not have other intentions than to experience the sound of own voice or to re-experience a painting or a sculpture we are making. One might say that this also would be a form of communication between a person and the materials that are getting transformed in her/his hands. Such communication would be here-and-now-negotiation between the materials’ qualities and the person’s hand, voice, feelings, ideas…

A few days ago I observed a six year old girl. A was on the balcony and she did not see. She left her bicycle looking for something (possibly flowers) by the road, and started to sing. None was around – she was singing for herself. Then, she went back to her bicycle to ring the bell, making the music for her song. A year ago I experienced something similar when a video camera captured a five year old boy while he was alone in a room. He was hammering and the rhythm of the hammering sound seemed to remind him of a song he knew and he started to sing for himself: “I was made for loving you baby…”

We sometimes feel inner urge to jump, sing or cry. Young children often do what they feel, but they soon learn to supress our expressions as they socialize. I suppose the both of the children were singing exactly because none could hear them, and not with intention to communicate.
Yet in another occasion I observed a two year old boy; There was a party in the house and many saw that the fell and hit his cheek. Holding his hand over the wounded cheek, and not crying, he asked the people around where his mother was. They pointed and he followed the directions. When he few minutes later finally found his mother, he started to cry. His cry expressed that he was hurt, but it was also a form of communication he wanted to share only with his mother.

I do not have any answers about relations between communicating and expressing – but I keep wondering…