When you get a new shout, it says dragon sould are required to unlock shouts... I'm guessing it means more than one dragon kill to unlock a shout as I have killed plenty with the shouts still not unlocking. So does it mean you need to absorb a certian amount of dragon souls?

You have to go into the shouts menu and hit the unlock button. Unlocking a single word in a shout costs 1 dragon soul.

There's a special unlock button. It's X on the xbox.

Wow. I'm stupid. Thanks guys =D

Go to your Magic menu
Select Shouts
Select the Shout you want to unlock
Hit the R button on PC
It will ask you if you want to spent the Dragon Soul
Select Yes

Don't worry, I was totally lost in that area as well. I didn't even look at the bottom of the screen to see the menu! LOL
I was like OMG I already killed like 5 dragons, why can't I SHOUT!? LOL

No you have to physically apply the soul to the specif shout you want to unlock. When you go to your 'shouts' menu, in the bottom right
hand corner will be displayed the number of dragon souls you have at your disposal! I don't know what the command is on pc but on xbox its 'x', ps3 would be 'square' i assuming!

Don't feel bad man, I did the same thing. I thought it was because I needed to progress further in the main story line... I wound up with about 9 souls that I wasn't using and had one of the biggest facepalms of my life when I figured it out.

Just like everyone else has explained how to, I have also done the same thing. I had about 9 as well Lateralus, and I sat there with like 5 locked words wondering why the hell they weren't unlocking. Silly me.

I didn't know this either. I've been using the very first shout. I just thought it was because I haven't gone to see the Greybeards. I'm level 40 and only have three shouts but only one is unlocked.