We describe a new paradigm in which a user can produce a wide range of expressive, natural-looking movements of animated characters by specifying their manners and attitudes with natural language verbs and adverbs. A natural language interpreter, a Parameterized Action Representation (PAR), and an expressive motion engine (EMOTE) are designed to bridge the gap between natural language instructions issued by the user and expressive movements carried out by the animated characters. By allowing users to customize basic movements with natural language terms to support individualized expressions, our approach may eventually lead to the automatic generation of expressive movements from speech text, a storyboard script, or a behavioral simulation.