A Triphase Objective Action

Kantor, Jacob Robert 1922. Memory: A Triphase Objective Action. Journal of Philosophy 19(23): 624-639.

...why should it be necessary, in order to be objective, to reduce complex human behavior to extremely simple processes? Such a reduction we find in the description of memory as simple habit actions. (Kantor 1922: 624)

Similar objection could be raised against the necessity of "units" which has driven away many a scientist from the field of semiotics.

Whenever we start a memory reaction it is invariably implied that the behavior initiated shall be continued or suspended until some specific posterior time. The immediate act is initiated in order that some related action should occur. We make engagements in order to keep them; we memorize in order to recite after some longer or shorter intervening time interval. (Kantor 1922: 626)

This generality aptly describes the function of writing, the function of which in this case is to enable easy reading after some interval of time. I emphasize easiness because, in this blog for example, only those bits and pieces which seem like they could be important at some point in the future are recorded and commented. The bold emphases enable one to discriminate most important parts at a glance and comments stand as an achor to what is significant about it. All in all, when combined into a single PDF file, it enables me to Ctrl+F the whole corpus of my oriationes logoi. This is something distinctly new that was markedly impossible for thinkers of previous ages without information technology.

Another important point for the understanding of memorial behavior and one which argues for the continuity of such reaction is the fact that memory reactions involve very close connections between specific responses and particularly stimuly coördinated with them. A given stimulus must call out directly a specific name or a specific act of some non-verbal sort. (Kantor 1922: 626)

Thus far this is the earliest use of the word "nonverbal" I have discovered. Given that this does not yet refer to "bodily behaviour" variety of nonverbal phenomena, I am most likely still far off from finding the "holy grale" of first use of "nonverbal" in the sense of overt bodily action or behaviour.

...we have no room in our description for the sorcerous reinstatement of mental states in the remembering mind through a mysterious association of ideas, a process usually made more mysterious still by means of various forms of imaginary neurology. (Kantor 1922: 629)

Burn! Yet psychology did not forsake "mental states," "association of ideas," etc. much like semiotics did not heed Charles Morris and stop speaking in vague terms such as sign, language, and meaning.

Projective Memory Acts. - In this class we might consider two types (a) the intentional and (b) the unintentional projective memory response. (a) By intentional projective memory we mean the action in which the person purposely postpones, suspends or projects a response into the future to be later performed. As illustrations we might take the situations in which the person makes an engagement, or arranges to do something later, or memorizes some information to be used at a future date.
(b) By unintentional projective memory we refer to situations in which the person is not spontaneosly involved in the memorial action; either he is disinterested or does it merely through the influence of a group convention, although the person himself and not the stimuly plays the predominant role in the total behavior segment. Typical of such memory reactions are the casual information behavior which involves acquiring memory materials by sheer contact with things. (Kantor 1922: 630-631)

In my case this distinction makes perfect sense in that whatever I quote and comment for future use is intentional projective memory and whatever I remember from the top of my head but have not written down for my blog for specific use is unintentional projective memory. The first case occurs with almost every text of my own choosing, the second mostly with seminar texts (read because of the influence of "a group convention").

By casual remembering we mean the kind of activity in which some unimportant and even obscure stimulus starts off a train of memory actions to absent things or events. The whole procedure is unconditioned by any need or necessity, but once the process is started it gains momentum and proceeds apace. Each recovered element serves to arouse a further factor. On the whole, the action is passive at the time and no special practical value accrues to the person, although it may be the source of no end of amusement of depressive uneasiness. (Kantor 1922: 631)

It is as if the author is describing Peirce's semiosis, although with the distinct difference that semiosis seems more active and accrues some special practical value (e.g. the generation of meaning?) to the person. Might it be that semiosis is nothing more than casual remembering vested with self-control and made to serve rationality? This sounds like something that should be investigated...

In direct recollection the need to have some information such as a name or event, or when we must recover a lost article, stimulates us to bring about the operation of a consummatory phase of a memory behavior. Here the primary emphasis is upon the recall for the purpose of achieving some practical result... (Kantor 1922: 631)

This seems like an everyday occurrence, but the description again sounds like that of semiosis. Perhaps semiosis can be thought of in these terms but instead of memory we would be dealing with the process of thinking? But I digress, semiosis must also account for feeling and behaving, not only thinking.

Another Object Becomes the Adequate Stimulus. - In these segments a different object from the one to which the response is to be made initiates the consummatory phase of the response. This form of memory may safely be called the typical sort and it undoubtedly constitutes a larger serues of actual memory behavior segments. Moreover, the reactions of this type constitute the most effective of our memory behavior. Because of the range of objects that can serve to arouse the reaction the memory behavior can be carried over great stretches of time and place. A striking example of the power of such memory actions as we are now discussing is supplied us in the operation of the extremely complex behavior in which we use printed and other symbolic records to incite memory reactions to function. (Kantor 1922: 635)

I wonder if it would be too far of a stretch to call this "semiotic memory" e.g. when signs ("printed and other symbolic records") are made to stand for memory?

Nielsen, Greg M. 2000. Action and Eros in the Creative Zone: Kant, Weber and Bakhtin. Dialogism 4: 34-53.

For Alexander more than for Joas, this process hasled to an understanding of theory as being fundamentally rooted in empirical analysis. From the point of view of subfield research, theory must be limited according to its capacity to be shaped into testable hypothesis. (Nielsen 2000: 37)

It becomes very clear that what I am set out to do (something to the effect of writing "the history of the study of nonverbal communication") is basically a construction of a bad theory that cannot be readily shaped into testable hypotheses.

Kant defines sexual appetite as a universal inclination we have for enjoying anothe human being's sex. Sexuality per se 'is not an inclination which one human being has for another as such, but is an inclination for the sex of another'. Acting on such an appetite means turning the other into ab object of impulse. Polygamy, concubinage, prostitution, bestiality, and incest are some of the forms of sexual practice that Kant gives as examples of deviation from the categorical imperative. All violate the notion of the person by separating human and sexual love or by exploiting the other (the object of sexual inclination or possession) as simply a means and not an end. According to Kant, the sexual inclination towards another can only be exercised by all genders ethically should the sexual act with the other be achieved under the umbrella of the monogamous marriage contract. 'Sexual love makes of the loved person an Object of appetite, as soon as the appetite has been stilled, the person is cast aside as one ccasts away a lemon that has been sucked dry.' Sexual love needs to be combined with 'human love' and placed into the construct of rights over the body in order to escape degrading the other person. Only when both partners have the same full rights of access to each other's bodies can one actually give oneself up or abandon oneself in order to get oneself back. Thus, it is only through a contract of marriage rights that we might exercise our sexual impulse without violating the categorical imperative. (Nielsen 2000: 39-40)

This struck two cords. Firstly, these problems are dealt with artistically in Brief Interviews with Hideoes Men. Secondly, it struck a chord with modern discourse on homosexuality. Specifically, the note of conservative christians who claim the logical fallacy of slippery slope to be logically valid, that allowing homosexual marriages will soon bring about the profusion of marriages with animals and even corpses. This idiotic contention, an attitude clearly premised on religious imperialism rather than common sense, is regularly argued against with the notion of consent. That is, grown ups of whatever sex or gender can give each other consent, or "full rights of access to each other's bodies." In this sense Kant is deeply outdated, in that today there is little need for marriage to achieve mutual consent. A simple "are you okay with this?" seems to suffice. And returning to the first chord, in Brief Interviews with Hideoes Men one character recounts a story told to him by a casual lover, a spiritual young girs who recounted her experience with a murderous rapist. She eshablished deep eye contact with the maniac, "focused" on him with the sole intent of establishing a connection so that he wouldn't kill her afterward. She held the crying man lovingly while he raped her. In a sense she gave her consent, but merely in the impure sense similar to Elaine Scarry's discussion of how a military trainee who is compulsed to participate in the training "consents" every morning when he wakes up and puts on his soldiers uniform. This seems less like consent than, for example, "acceptance" of a forced situation.

Weber's pivotal Kantian assumption is that reality contains an infinite number of elements. The human mind is capable of grasping only a limited number of these elements. The actor abstracts through concept formation those elements that are meaningful. Those meaningful elements, abstracted from the infinite number of elements in empirical reality, are chosen on the basis of the presuppositions of the actor. In other, words. the meaningful elements are chosen because they have significance for the actor, or, as Weber suggests, are 'value-relevant'. (Nielsen 2000: 42)

Is this proto-semiotics?

Bakhtin also takes up an axiological or 'point-of-view theory' that he calls exotopy, or the theory of the excess of seeing. Where Bakhtin differs from Weber is over the meaning of the relation between the points of view and how they exist through one another as much as they exist outside of one another. The way in which the self conceives the other, or the author sees the hero, is always from outside the other. This 'outsidedness' gives the advantage of an excess of seeing that in turn makes the cross-over or doubling process of the self-other relation possible. The selfg-other relation is doubled in the sense that each of us sees the other from outside and each of us has the advantage point of a view above and over that which the other might have on herself or himself. (Nielsen 2000: 48-49)

Finally I have a label for the point-of-view approach in Florenskij, Bakhtin, and Uspenskij. This "seeing from the outside" (exo - outside; topos - place) is relevant for nonverbalism as well, as almost everything non-self-comminucative/non-proprioceptive is exotopic. In this sense, exotopic seeing is sysonymous with exteroception.

Bakhtin sees the relation between the inner and the outer body as transgredient in the same sense of the self-other relation.

My own body is, at its very foundation an inner body, while the other's body is, at its very foundation, an outward body. When we see our outer body in the mirror we invariably attitudinze a bit ... giving ourselves one expression or another that we deem to be desirable

either according to our own value judgments or according to our anticipation of the other's evaluation and what we might feel about what they might think. (Nielsen 2000: 50)

Peeglinägu! Peeglinägu! #peeglinägu

Koczanowicz, Leszek 2000. Freedom and Communication: The Concept of Human Self in Mead and Bakhtin. Dialogism 4: 54-66.

In the last sentences of his article, Taylor evokes Bakhtin's concept of the dialogical self as an alternative to Mead: 'we need not Mead and his like, but rather Bakhtin. Human beings are constituted in conversation; and hence what gets internalized in the mature subject is not the reaction of the other, but the whole conversation, with the interanimation of its voices.' (Koczanowicz 2000: 56)

I think I need Mead and his like rather than Bakhtin, because Mead seems to pay more attention to nonverbal communication or what he calls "the conversation of gestures."

For Mead the basic entity of mental life is meaning, understood as a phenomenon constituted in action. Mead offers the following definition of meaning: 'A gesture by one organism, the resultant of the social act in which the gesture is an early phase, and the response of another organism to the gesture, are relata in a triple or threefold relationship of gesture to the first organism, of gesture to the second organism, and of gesture to subsequent phases of the given social act; and this threefold relatioship constitutes the matrix within which meaning arises or which develops into the field of meaning'. In this way meaning is constituted by gesture and a subsequent social action. (Koczanowicz 2000: 57)

Yet another precipitation of Goffman's self-other-situation model, given that "subsequent phases of the given social act" constitute the social situation.

Me is a system of internalized attitudes that allows orientation in the world and the controlling of interactions with others. (Koczanowicz 2000: 58)

If this statement is supplemented with the notion of "the conversation of attitudes" then it starts to look like "nonverbal/gestural repertory/capital."

Bonetskaia, N. K. 2004. Mikhail Bakhtin's Life and Philosophical Idea. Russian Studies in Philosophy 43(1): 5-34.

According to his own testimony, Bakhtin did not like Moscow. His life passed mostly in the provinces, in towns within the pale of settlement in the 1920s and in such backwaters as Kustanai and Saransk in later Soviet times. Unattached and wandering are characteristic of Bakhtin's spirit. Cut off as he was from the spiritual foundations of the Symbolist philosophers such as P. Florenskii and S. Bulgakov, Bakhtin is somewhat closer to the existentialists N. berdiaev and especially L. Shestov, who clearly represented the beginning of the post-Christian period of Russian culture. (Bonetskaia 2004: 9)

There is a collection of essays by L. Shestov available in the repository. I think I might go for it.

Whether Kagan knew the memberrs of Patmos has not been clearly established so far; however, we do know that Buber's I and Thou was well known in Bakhtin's circle. The prevailing opinion is, however, that Bakhtinian dialogism emerged, at least initially, completely independently: perhaps I and Thou contributed to Bakhtun's choice of the term "dialogue," which does not appear in his early treatises. (Bonetskaia 2004: 14)

Also available in the repository.

Bakhtin loves to use the term "word." One should not think that he means a lexeme, a dictionary word: for Bakhtin "word" is the synonym for an integrated and at the same time personal utterance. (Bonetskaia 2004: 19)

Good to know. This could be expressed simple as: Bakhtin's "word" is not a type but a token.

Bakhtin's doctrine of the word, theefore, does not belong to "pure" linguistics: Bakhtin himself called it "metalinguistics." In the book on Dostoevsky, metalinguistics appears as a theory of dialogue; in Marxism and the Philosophy of Language, as a sociological doctrine of language. Then in the 1930s this same metalinguistics demonstrates its capabilities in the analysis of the novel; in the 1950s it serves as a theory of speech genres; and finally, in the 1960s and 1970s, as a discipline dealing with the problem of a specifically Bakhtinian hermeneutics as textual interpretation. Such are the multifarious approaches to one and the same problem of language in Bakhtin's works. (Bonetskaia 2004: 19)

It seems typical for metaterms to change their meaning over time (metacommunication is a good example).

On the other hand, the noveristic image in Bakhtin's theory is funddamentally a linguistic image. According to Bakhtin's "metalinguistics" of the 1930s, in the opposition of the speaker and the word the accent shifts to the second member of the pair. The hero as body, soul, and spirit disappears from Bakhtin's construction of those years, and image of the human being is replaced with "the image of language." Thus existential depth is reduced to the level of language: a postmodernist paradigm of being as a purely linguistic reality appears in Bakhtin's works. (Bonetskaia 2004: 23-24)

Today I had a premonition, that I should some day write "A Straw-Man Verbalist," a chapter in which I set up the most detestable "postmodernist" and textualist claims, construct an enemy so to say, which I could then shoot down with a reminder that human beings are nothing without their bodies. Here "the image of the language" could be contorted to the degree of organicist - living and breathing - image of language.

What is important is that today Bakhtin fulfills his intended function - de is organizing the dialogue between Russia and the West. (Bonetskaia 2004: 32)

So this is the reason for so many comparative articles (Bakhtin vs. Scheler, Rocker, Goffman, Mead, etc.). His dialogism is dialogued with other great thinkers. This actually made me wonder if I could pull off my own such dialogue: "Kinesic dialogism: Bakhtin and Birdwhistell." Because Birdwhistell furnished his own "dialogical" model of communication (for obvious reasons such as the nonlinear exchange of bodily information), this could actually be tenable. But I a am a dreamer.

Torop, Peeter 2005. Semiosphere and/as the research object of semiotics of culture. Sign Systems Studies 33(1): 159-173.

Furthermore, in Lotman's opinion, in order to understand dialogue, it is not enough to understand the language that is used in the dialogue. In his article "On Semiosphere" he wrote:

Consciousness is impossible without communication. In this sense it can be said that dialogue precedes language and generates the language. The idea of semiosphere is based exactly on this: the ensemble of semiotic formations precedes (not houristically, but functionally) a single isolated language and is a precondition for its existence. Without semiosphere a language not only does not work, but doen not even exist. (Lotman 1984: 16)

In the next stage of discussion on semiosphere, in his book "Universe of the Mind" published in 1990, Lotman emphasized that the dialogic situation has to be understood before dialogue: "...the need for dialogue, the dialogic situation, precedes both real dialogue and even the existence of a language in which to conduct it: the semiotic situation precedes the instruments of semiosis" (Lotman 1990: 143-144). Thus dialogue becomes not only a term closely related to semiosphere, but it becomes one of its ontological characteristics. (Torop 2005: 163)

In this sense it also makes sense to talk about the behavioural sphere: forms of behaviour "functionally" precede concrete manifestations of specific behaviour.

Foreseeing the increase in the varieties of textual ontiologies and problems of understanding, R. Jakobson stresses the importance of distinguishing between homogeseous messages, i.e. those based on a single sign system, and syncretic messages, i.e. those based on the combination of several sign systems: "The study of communication must distinguish between homogeneous messages which use a single semiotic system and syncretic messages based on a combination or merger of different sign patterns" (Jakobson 1971: 705). (Torop 2005: 166)

Indeed, perceptive. I presume that concursive messages (in which the verbal and nonverbal are "merged") belong to the class of syncretic messages.

Danesi, Marcel 2013. On the Metaphorical Connectivity of Cultural Sign Systems. Signs and Society 1(1): 33-49.

Connectionism [that the brain is a connecting organ, putting the bits together in a holistic way] has, however, always been an implicit working hypothesis in semiotics. It was the basis of Charles Peirce's theory of semiosis (1931-58). Peirce called the process of connecting forms to each other "abduction," defining it as a form of inference based on sense, experience, and the creative imagination. Lotman (1990) called the organizational structure of cultures an overarching "text" and recommended that the study of individual texts would lead to an understanding of hew the overarching one crystallized. Mertz and Parmentier (1985) used the term semiotic mediation to indicate how signs interact to produce meaningful wholes, and Parmentier (1994) subsequently argued that sign systems are structured according to reciprocally mirroring semiotic devices that create a sense of wholeness to people's experience of reality. (Danesi 2013: 34)

Always good to see several strands of semiotics recollected as if without effort.

their [Lakoff and Johnson's] notion of "conceptual metophors" came forwald to provide the missing piece of the puzzle of how culture coheres into a cognitive Gestalt - a connective system of meaning. (Danesi 2013: 34)

Lotman has his own a title for culture: "a certain unity."

But still missing from this framework is a relatively simple feature - the relation between linguistic and nonlinguistic forms in the connective system. This essay puts forward a concrete proposal of how the various nonlinguistic forms (material, visual, aesthetic, etc.) can be connected to conceptual metaphors and how this connectivity produces the sense of wholeness in a culture. (Danesi 2013: 35)

I am excited. The introduction alreadi hinted that he proposes the notion of metaform. Now, Metaform is also an instrumental hip-hop artist who released a dark and beautiful album Standing on the Shoulders of Giants in 2008. I am exicted because not only is this term familiar because of the artist, it looks as if Danesi is going to propose basically what I have already termed concursivity. It may very well happen that his notion is better than mine and I will have to either discard or rethink a lot of notes I have made during the past year or so. Thus, before I will continue reading, I'll have a cigarette and ponder about all of this - perhaps a personally historical moment for me.

A "metaform" can be defined as the form that is connected interpretively (semiotically) to a conceptual metaphor as a consequence of the metaphor being distributed thoughout the cultural network of meaning. The latter can be called a "distributed sign" (DS), for lack of a better term, which in the meaning extracted of a specific conceptual metaphor that works its way into the interpretation and use of physical forms such as objects, rituals, symbols, and the like. An initial example is the meaning of chocolate as a symbol of love. This is the result of the DS derived from the conceptual metaphor love is a sweet taste. The DS works its way into the meanings of material forms (chocolate) and rituals (the giving of sweets at Valentine's Day) that are connected to love. The chocolate and rituals are exaamples of metaforms. (Danesi 2013: 35)

Hmm, not exactly what I was expecting. Metaform in this sense seems more like a "part" of a metaphor "whole."

Conceptual metonyms are distributed in nonverbal domains as well, producing their own kinds of metaforms. For example, the face is a common metonym for personality ("There ar emany faces in the audience"; "His face tells it all"). It becamen a DS leading to metaforms of the face as a symbol of personality - this can be seen, for example, in the use of theatrical masks, in portraits that focus on the face, and so on. (Danesi 2013: 43)

Dno, I think these examples can be taken quite literally (that is, metonymy is not necessary): when the audience is packed there are a lot of faces - remember that the face is the first thing one would count in this situation (counting pairs of hands in this situation would make no sense); and the face can tell it all - facial expressions can make verbal expressions unnecessary.

In gesture, the raising of a hand designates notions of amelioration, betterment, growth, and so on, whereas the lowering of the hand designates the opposite notions. In bodily representation and perception, this metaform shows up in the common viewpoint that "taller is more attractive" / "shorter is less attractive." (Danesi 2013: 43)

Again, I don't think these are mere metaphors. Happiness does produce the effect of raising the hands - I have personally wittnessed a girl and a boy standing face-to-face and intermittently with hugging the girs waved her hands in the air with a giddy expression in her face, as if she had just received good news. And didn't social psychologists prove long ago that taller people are perceived as more attractive?

The line of inquiry suggested here is really part of a frowing awareness in anthropology and linguistics of the connectivity between the verbal and the nonverbal domains of semiosis, a line consistent with the emergent linguistic and materialist-semiotic discourse on the mutual categorization of the order of objects and the ordering off objects (e.g., Jocjelman 2010). This article suggests that this kind of research consider a level of "ethno-metaforms" as part of the overall system of "ethnometapragmatics" (Silverstein and Urban 1996). (Danesi 2013: 45)

Yeah, no, I am dissappointed. The notion of "nonverbal" here is too broad to fit my rather narrow interests as a student of nonverbal communication (or body motion and postures). Metaform theory may become useful for my purposes in another way, though. Concursive analysis takes account only of that domain of language use that refers to "body langugae," but there are many metaphorical phenomena that sort of "builds" on concourse - e.g. "body of research;" also, I'm still looking for means for making better sense of expressions such as Wittness's lyrics: "She's got a body language written out in cursive."

Lateiner, Donald 1996. Nonverbal Behaviors in Ovid's Poetry, Primarily Metamorphoses 14. The Classical Journal 91(3): 225-253.

Nonverbal behavior adds a visual and emotional dimension to these as well as to more "realistic" characters. (Lateiner 1996: 226; footnote 2)

Well put.

The data inventories here survived the undeniable loss of many undocumented "real life" nonverbal behaviors. Readers should understand that some human gestures or postures fall into more than one category of any systematic terminology. Therefore, some complex acts of Achaemenides or Vertumnus appear in several soctions. (Lateiner 1996: 226; footnote 3)

The limits of concursivity: concursive study may (turn out to) only yield verbal labels or descriptions for actions that do have name or succumb to description; thus may nonverbal behaviors may go undocumented. A hypothesis could be built from this: that the nonverbal behaviour which reaches the concursive status or level is the nonverbal behaviour that is most important for the common man (more exactly, to writers and readers).

Gestures (to use the common term) intensify or resolve face-to-face confrontations and determine the course of narratives. (Lateiner 1996: 225)

E.g. concourse as a plot advancement device.

Ovid's one epic presents a wide range of nonverbal behaviors in portrayals of formal and informal communication. He highlights communicative blockage, failures in communication and persuasion, also defeated appeals, and he focuses on success in deceits, especially deceptive entreaty by body language and explicit words. He fingers and probes discrepancies among characters' self-image, their messages to others and their public repute. He draws attention to "face," a person's efforts to convey a persona, and to "leakage," tell-tale displays of nonverbal affect (postures, gestures, and sounds) that are hard or impossible to control. Ovid explicitly notes (Met. 2.447): heu! quam difficile est, crimen non prodere vultu! (Lateiner 1996: 225-226)

The ancients were perceptive. The statement goes approximately: "Hey! How difficult it is not to let a look betray a crime!"

Five distinct categories of nonverbal behavior useful for analysis of ancient epic emerge from recent research on modes of expression conducted by social psychologists [Ekman & Friesen], comparative anthropologists [E. T. Hall], and literary semiologists [F. Poyatos]. Following this schema will fragment some oft-cited tales such as Vertumnus', but the gain will be to keep focus on the categories.
A. Ritualized, conventional gestures, postures, orientations, & vocalics. [emblems]
B1. Affect display: psycho-physical, out-of-awareness emotional show.
B2. Subconscious, out-of-awareness gesture, posture, and vocalics.
C. External adaptors: communicative objects and clothes; self-grooming.
D. Proxemics & chronemics: the social manipulation of space and time.
E. Informal, in-awareness gesture, posture, and vocalics.
These rubrics outline the following survey of Ovid's "body-talk," a useful if inexact term, and paralinguistic. (Lateiner 1996: 226-227)

Lateiner has made his own mix of Ekman & Friesen's classical "categarise of coding" and Edward T. Hall's contribution. Neat. And I suspect that "body-talk" - a useful if inexact term - is Lateur's translation of sermo corporis (I would have guessed "speech of the body" but body-talk is better, shorter).

...vix tollens lumina... (Lateiner 1996: 227)

Google translate: "hardly lifted eye" - very much the routine of modern lecture classes.

Comic literature includes more bodily business and movement than tragic. Gawky bodies betray social pretence and pretensions. Undignified behavior suits the comic genre. Ovid exploits his predecessors' solemn poetic conventions, generic pastoral, elegiac, and epic vocabulary and motifs, in order to exploit the humorous potential inherent in both heroic and amatory characterization. One encounters disconcerting, maliciously intentional anachronism and "anatopism," conscious mis-timing and misplacement, especially in the free-floating similes. (Lateiner 1996: 228)

This may be a rationalization for my own choosing of dystopian literature for analysis: dystopias are tragic (often ending in death [Orwell] or suicide [Huxley]) and thus not very frivolous with nonverbal behaviour. Just today I wondered if, besides dystopian literature, I should also perform concursive reading of fiction which is so explicit as to have "body language" in the title (e.g. Body Language and by Suzanne Brockmann Dead Body Language by Penny Warner).

The focus of nonverbal attention naturally falls on protagonists, whose nonverbal behaviors receive lengthier description... (Lateiner 1996: 230)

Naturally... But why? Could it be that the authors "live through" the protagonists, sembling with them as "I" and view other characters as "Thou" whose consciousness (and detail behaviour) is less accessible? It is imaginable that, just like the protagonist of Notes from the Underground is "anonymous" (has no name, no verbal label) there could be literature wherein all but the protagonist's behaviour is finely discriminated?

Song (ritualized paralinguistic performance with marked pitch, pace, and tone)... [...] The dance (expressive standardized movement)... (Lateiner 1996: 231)

Jesus Christ! Do the terms "song" and "dance" really need a nonverbalist definition?

Hands may be less expressive and explicit than words (manus autem, minus arguta), but Cicero recommends foot-stamping (supplosio pedis) at the beginning and end of emphatic verbal passages. This is part of a prlea for histrionics in court. Cicero in this passage criticizes the lawyers handling a case in which "no defence-lawyer groaned, none cried out, and none beseeched" the court (nemo ingemuit, nemo inclamavit patronorum ... nemo supplicavit). Since "the face tells all," in ore sunt omnia, for Cicero and Ovid, the face by itself can express all attitudes, moods, and emotions. The eyes, moreover, dominate the face. In general, "delivery is a kind of language of the body for which reason all the more ought to fit the mind cllosely" (est enim actio quasi sermo corporis quo magis menti congruens esse debet). Quintilian later says in a similar fashion (inst. or. 11.3.65): is [se. gestus] ... pleraque etiam citra virba significat ("gesture means more than the words themselves"). Vox, vultus, and gestus should match serious speakers' intentions. (Lateiner 1996: 323)

Some age-old truths that somehow got lost for the postmodernist/textualists.

Ovid avails himself of this resource of shorthand report of emotional response, but with less detail. For his quickly moving narratives, one or two such visible or audible displays replace description or analysis of emotional states and dynamics. (Lateiner 1996: 234)

That is, show not tell (though, to be exact, show by tell). I wonder how "reported speech" relates to concursivity...

Some philosophical critiqcs, unfamiliar with studies of nonverbal behavior, initially exclude "object adaptors" from the field of nonverbal behaviors, but material goods provide people and literature, a medium of words, with an essential communicative channel for feeling, action, thought, and social status - sometimes complementing, sometimes contradicting, sentiments in the verbal channel. "Say it with flowers" contains a very old observation on communicative tokens. Objects, like gustures, are indispensable to our interactions. Objects invested with political, social, or class value can support, supplant, or contradict a character's words or deeds. (Lateiner 1996: 241)

Semiotics of objects.

Gesture for the philosophies oyten supplies decipherable emotional reality when language offers sentiment of dubious authenticity (Josephs 1960: 48-61). Diderot and other philosophies were convinced that gesture, as a feature of human psychology, was prior to, and more honest than, words. They believed there was a universal, natural language of dynamic and fugitive gesture, more adequate and immediate than civilized and manipulable words. This expressive resource could supplement words and therefore was useful for actors portraying intense emotional experiences. (Lateiner 1996: 244; footnote 29)

Another reason for some day reading Diderot.

Ovid reasized that humans initially recognize each other less by the words of speech, shared verbal greetings and ideas, than by more idiosyncratic nonverbal behavior, such as paralinguistic identifiers like vocal quality (accent, drawl, nasalization), stuttering, or vocal tempo, or gait, facial tics, expressive postures, and cocking of the head. A habitual movement of the eyes, exprissive hands, a slouched posture or loping walk, or one sarcastic tone of voice, even a smile (cf. 272) instantly enables humans to identify hundreds of other individuals. (Lateiner 1996: 244-245)

The importance of nonverbal repertory.

The earliest studies (both reprinted) of A. de Jorio, La mimica degli Antichi investigata nel Gestire Neapolitana (1832) and D. Efron, Gesture and Environment (1941) study specific Italian (and Jewish) gestural communities. (Lateiner 1996: 249; footnote 36)

Efron is well known, because Bridwhistell seemingly just replaced gesture with kinesics and environment with context for the title of his own work. De Jorio I am hearing about for the first time. Transration of his book, Gesture in Naples and Gesture in Classical Antiquity is available in Tartu in wholly two libraries (one of them being Sebeok's collection).

Avid's reports of nonverbal behavior provide a helpful "silent language" to convey difficult human choices, social dilemmas, and personal emotions. Ovid anticipates, but does not replicate, modern character description or psychological analysis, novelistic or clinical. In the varied sufferings and aborted wooings of his epic, nonverbal behavior frequently underlines victimizing passions, societal tabus, and invincible responses to loss and frustration. References to involuntary affect displays, often quite unconscious for the characters, supply something like motives or "causes." (Lateiner 1996: 250)

These are thi things I consider worthy of study in dystopian literature.

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WORDS

• "...the timorous Hobbes..."

  Showing or suffering from nervousness, fear, or a lack of confidence: "a timorous voice".

• "...a natural law of propinquity in marriage..."

  1. The state of being close to someone or something; proximity.
  2. Close kinship.

• "...the absence of prejudice and rancorous feeling..."

  showing deep-seated resentment; "preserve...from rancourous envy of the rich"- Aldous Huxley.

• "...the fair of Niort, for which Villon composed his diablerie..."

  1. Reckless mischief; charismatic wildness.
  2. Sorcery supposedly assisted by the devil.

• "...the universal conflageration is merely the fire near which they are resting after the game..."

  An extensive fire that destroys a great deal of land or property.

• "...an ideal of intelligence that lies before us of the clear refulgence of the intellect..."

  radiance: the quality of being bright and sending out rays of light.

• "...the misprisions. of these partial approaches to the study of literature.."

  1. The deliberate concealment of one's knowledge of a treasonable act or a felony.
  2. Erroneous judgment, esp. of the value or identity of something.

• "...the silent house of langorous Somnus or Sleep..."

  dreamy: lacking spirit or liveliness; "a lackadaisical attempt"; "a languid mood"; "a languid wave of the...

• "...especially deceptive entreaty in body language and explicit words..."

  An earnest or humble request: "turned a deaf ear to his entreaties".

• "...consequently and condignly, his voice is punished..."

  Deserved; adequate: "On sober reflection, such worries over a man's condign punishment seemed senseless" (Henry Louis Gates, Jr.)

• "...the superhuman pretensions of the Augustan dispensation..."

  1. Exemption from a rule or usual requirement.
  2. Permission to be exempted from the laws or observances of a church.

• "...Ovid's heroes beseech or expostulate with their bodies as well as with words..."

  Express strong disapproval or disagreement.

• "...The perfervid manner..."

  Intense and impassioned.

• "...Stupefaction, silent paralysis, loss of verbal contact..."

  Ultimately from Latin stupefaciō (“strike dumb, stun with amazement, stupefy”), from stupeō (“I am stunned, speechless”) (English stupid, stupor) + faciō (“do, make”).

• "...her rebarbative and total rejection of males..."

  Unattractive and objectionable: "rebarbative modern buildings".

Early mentions of the nonverbal

Ritchie, Benbow F. 1956. Review of Theories of Perception and the Concept of Structure: A Review and Critical Analysis With an Introduction to a Dynamic-Structure Theory of Behavior by Floyd H. Allport. American Journal of Psychology 69: 498-501.

In the concluding three chapters, Allport considers "the unsolved problem of meaning" and develops his concept of "event-structure." The various philosophical issues that enter this discussion are so numerous and so difficult, that a brief and accurate report of his opinions is out of the question. Instead I have chosen to say what I think he means by "the unsolved problem of meaning" and to explain how he thinks the concept of "event-structure" will help to solve it.
The proper analysis of the relation between non-verbal signs and what they signify is the fundamental problem which Allport regards as unsolved, but, before we can see this problem clearly, several semiotical distinctions are essential. We must understand first that the term "meaning" refers to a particular kind of relation among three terms, a sign, an interpreter of the sign, and a significate of the sign. (Ritchie 1956: 498)

It is interesting that this great problem is the exact same problem that I am working on more than half a century later: the relationship between verbal and nonverbal codification/communication/behaviour. Although these "semiatical distinctions" (in this case most likely derived from the work of Charles Morris) have been known for a long time, they seem not to have solved this great problem.

The defining properties of the class (i.e. the significate) are given in the image aroused by the sign. Thus, the sign designates that class with members similar to the image. This treatment has the advantage of providing the kind of specificity of designation that the problem seems to require, but it has the disadvantage of introducing a mentalistic term ("image") as essential to the analysis. How can we determine the content of another's imagery, and what can we do with Kulpe's evidence of imageless thought? (Ritchie 1956: 499)

This author approaches the problem from the standpoint of logic, which I believe to be the uttermost invalid approach to non-verbal matters. There is very little that can be done with set theory in relation with body movements, emotions, attitudes, the immesureable vastness of context, etc. But I do appreciate the hint that "image" (which I met in reading G. H. Mead) is a mentalistic term.

Stouffer, Samuel A. 1930. Implication of this study for research on the theory of attitudes. In: An Experimental Comparison of Statistical and Case History Methods of Attitude Research. Doctoral Dissertation, University of Chicago, 49-64.

Professor Thurstone, in his discussions of attitude testing, has been explicit in disclaiming that the tests which he and his students have devised will measure every aspect of an attitude. The tests purport to use only one kind of indices, out of several possible kinds. They use the statements which a subject endorses. They do not use, directly at least, as indices overt non-verbal acts, for example. Professor Thurstone recognizes that a continuum of attitudes indicated by overt non-verbal acts might differ somewhat from a continuum of attitudes as indicated by endorsements of statements. These in turn might differ somewhat from a continuum of attitudes as indicated by feelings revealed subtly and indirectly by the tone in which statements are endorsed or by the spirit in which overt non-verbal acts are carried on. Professor Thurstone defines attitude as the "sum total of a man's inclinations and feelings, prejudice, or basic, preconceived notions, ideas, fears, threats, and convictions about any subset and assumes that that portion of the "sum total" which is tapped by the verbal indices represents a large and important enough portion to justify saying that the test measures attitudes in somewhat the same sense as a yardstick measures a table if it measures the length though ignoring the volume or weight. (Stouffer 1930: 53-55)

Just like Bakhtin's "material bodily images," here the reference to nonverbal behaviour is reinforced: not overt acts as indices and not non-verbal acts as indices, but overt non-verbal acts! It seems that at this early stage there was still some doubt about how nonverbal behaviour should be referred to. At least it is "overt non-verbal acts" instead of, for example, "overt expressive acts" or "overt bodily acts." It is also noteworthy that all three of Peirce's phenomenological interpretants are represented: verbal statements (logical), overt non-verbal acts (energetic) and "feelings revealed subtly and indirectly by the tone in which statements are endorsed" (emotional). Also, note that "the spirit in which overt non-verbal acts are carried on" bears some semblance to Mead's vague "conversation of attitudes." It makes perfect sense that nonverbal behaviour should appear in an early study of attitudes.

From what the writer gathered in talking with the judges after they made their ratings, they made little attempt to formulate a rigorous and technical definition. Apparently, they followed more or less the common-sense conception of attitude held by the layman, just as they would in a conversation with a friend with whom they discussed so-and-so's attitude toward prohibition. The concept of attitude, like the concept of love, or of religion, presumably varies even in Its common-sense usage (Stouffer 1930: 56)

The same could be said in relation with nonverbal communication: that it is neither wise nor useful to produce a rigorous and technical definition of nonverbal communication when a common-sense conception of body language may very well do the trick.

Cooley, Charles Horton 1909. The Growth of Communication. In: Social Organization: A Study of the Larger Mind. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 66-79.

THE chief means of what we may call pre-verbal communication are the expression of the face—especially of the mobile portions about the eyes and mouth—the pitch, inflection, and emotional tone of the voice; and the gestures of the head and limbs. All of these begin in involuntary movements but are capable of becoming voluntary, and all are eagerly practiced and interpreted by children long before they learn to speak. They are immediately joined to action and emotion: the inflections of the voice, for instance, play upon the child's feelings as directly as music, and are interpreted partly by an instinctive sensibility. I have heard a child seventeen months old using her voice so expressively, though inarticulately, that it sounded, a little way off, as if she were carrying on an animated conversation. And gesture, such as reaching out the hand, bending forward, turning away the head, and; the like, springs directly from the ideas and feelings it represents. (Cooley 1909: 66)

So Cooley preferred "pre-verbal" to "non-verbal." Otherwise this discussion seems verily informed by Darwin's Expressions.

The human face, "the shape and color of a mind and life," is a kind of epitome of society, and if one could only read all that is written in the countenances of men as they pass he might find a great deal of sociology in them. (Cooley 1909: 66)

Ah, a reflection of Cicero, for whom the face was "the window to the soul." Here, it is not soul, but mind and life... Very general. And, indeed, there is a great deal of sociology in nonverbalism.

All kinds of conventional communication are believed to be rooted in these primitive imitations, which, by a process not hard to imagine, extend and differentiate into gesture, speech, writing, and the special symbols of the arts and sciences; so that the whole exterior organization of thought refers back to these beginnings. (Cooley 1909: 67)

Very great importance ascribed to bodily behaviour: that every kind of externalization of the human mind is somehow, at the beginning, related to our bodies.

Even without words life may have been an active and continuous mental whole, not dependent for its unity upon mere heredity, but bound together by some conscious community in the simpler sorts of thought and feeling, and by the transmission and accumulation of these through tradition. (Cooley 1909: 68)

An objection to Saussure's belief that mind without language is "a vague uncharted nebula." Rather, the nebula of thought would have consisted of "simpler sorts of thought and feeling."

Many humble inventors contribute to its [language's] growth, every man, possibly, altering the heritage in proportion as he puts his individuality into his speech. Variations of idea are preserved in words or other symbols, and so stored up in a continuing whole, constantly growing in bulk and diversity, which is, as we have seen, nothing less than the outside or sensible embodiment of human thought, in which every particular mind lives and grows, drawing from it the material of its own life, and contributing to it whatever higher product it may make out of that material. (Cooley 1909: 68-69)

Yet another objection to Saussure: the individual can change language.

A word is a vehicle, a boat floating down from the past, laden with the thought of men we never saw; and in coming to understand it we enter not only into the minds of our contemporaries, but into the general mind of humanity continuous through time. [...] "This way," says the word, "is an interesting thought: come and find it." And so we are led on to rediscover old knowledge. (Cooley 1909: 69)

And now Cooley sounds a bit lotmanian, if only because the bold expression is similar to "the universe of the mind." And the "guiding to ideas" function of words is exactly the reason why I love complex (obscure and abstruse) terms - they ma lead to complex ideas.

Nor must we forget that this state of things reacted upon the natural capacities of man, perhaps by the direct inheritance of acquired social habits and aptitudes, certainly by the survival of those who, having these, were more fitted than others to thrive in a social life. In this way man, if he was human when speech began to be used, rapidly became more so, and went on accumulating a social heritage. (Cooley 1909: 71)

And now I perceive Bourdieu in this passage - that "a social heritage" is habitus, though the function of habitus is not only to survive but to live better than another.

It is the social function of writing, by giving ideas a lasting record, to make possible a more certain, continuous and diversified growth of the human mind. It does for the race very much what it does for the individual. When the student has a good thought he writes it down, so that it may be recalled at will and made the starting point for a better thought in the same direction; and so mankind at large records and cherishes its insights. (Cooley 1909: 72)

This argument could be used in discussing the development of body language in the last century: the video camera has made possible the creation of lasting records of bodily behaviour.

"In study we hold converse with the wise, in action usually with the foolish" (Cooley 1909: 76)

Ouch. I wholeheartedly agree with the first part, but feel unjustice in the second. The quote comes from Bacon's "Antitheta on Studies."

A subtler function of the non-verbal arts is to communicate matter that could not go by any other road, especially certain sorts of sentiment which are thus perpetuated and diffused. (Cooley 1909: 77-78)

Cooley recognizes the function of "the non-verbal arts" as a means of conveying that which cannot be expressed in words. Here, he mentions only "sentiments" but there is much more: the human form in sculpture and painting, human movement in video, human sound (music) in audio, etc.

One of the simplest and most fruitful examples of this is the depiction of human forms and faces which embody! as if by living presence, the nobler feelings and aspirations of the time. Such works, in painting or sculpture, rest main as symbols by the aid of which like sentiments grow up in the minds of whomsoever become familiar with them (Cooley 1909: 78)

Exactly.

Kulp, Daniel H., II. 1935. Concepts in Attitude Tests With Special Reference to Social Questions. Sociology and Social Research 19: 218-224.

An attitude is a behavior tendency with reference to a value. It may be expressed in verbal symbols or through nonverbal overt behavior. (Kulp 1935: 219)

What changed in 5 years? "Overt non-verbal acts" became "nonverbal overt behavior." Not only did the order of the words change, but "acts" became "behavior" and the hyphen in "non(-)verbal" was gotten rid of. Can we deduce that in this short time the term became so well-known that hyphen was no longer needed? Yet this same author is inconsistent with his hyphens, listing "inter-national" next to "interracial."

A belief is a verbal expression of one's highly personalized affective behaviors with reference to environmental qualities. There is more of an emotional than an intellectual content. It takes form with reference to idealistic norms. (Kulp 1935: 219)

This definition may become useful in other contexts (namely when discussing religion). It is interesting that there is mention of "affective behavior" - somewhat more active designation than "emotional states" which is common today. Also, this phraseology could be used for defining concursivity: "Concourse is a verbal expression of bodily behaviours."

A fact statement is a record of data based upon actual and verifiable information. (Kulp 1935: 219)

Also an interesting definition. Mostly because of how the word "fact" is misused so often - one could object to the misuse of this word with a well-known exclamation: "Where is it written?" ["Kus see kirjas on?"], because a fact needs to be on record.

Young, Kimball 1930. Language and Social Interaction. In: Social Psychology: An Analysis of Social Behavior. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 203-232.

A gesture is defined as "a motion of the body [a title], head, or limbs, especially a movement or action of the hands or face, expressive of some idea or emotion or illustrative of some utterance." For our purposes we include in gesture the vocal responses as well. A grunt, a sigh, a shout constitute gestures just as much as do movements of the facial muscles or the hands. All of these various types of gestures may be thought of as indicating an action to come. In other words, a gesture bespeaks or denotes an oncoming act. In this sense it assumes the characteristic of an attitude. As Mead puts it, a gesture is "a truncated act." In the evolution of social intercourse the gesture has played an enormously important rôle. Thus the cry of warning of the frightened animal or bird gives a clue to others of its species of incipient danger. So, too, the love-calls of the moose or the bird are indicative of mating acts to follow. (Young 1930: 205)

I have an incling that "vocal responses" was included in the category of gestures because Trager had not yet coined "paralanguage.".

Incredulous or critical doubt adds also a protruding or pursing of the lips. (Young 1930: 208)

Neat. I read in some popular body-language book that the gum-grinding lip-gesture is merely "bad" with no elaboration. Incredulity ("The state of being unwilling or unable to believe something.") and doubt are more specific.

Raised brows and a wide direct gaze after speaking serve as a facial interrogation point, and demand an answer. (Young 1930: 208)

Haha, #eyebrows

While among animals the expression of feelings and emotions in the presence of situations, material or social, may and does serve as a stimulus for other forms of like species, in man these incipient, truncated, oncoming responses come to have relationships to concepts, and to carry with them definite intention to alter the behavior of the other person who sees or hears the gesture. (Young 1930: 209)

Thus one could "stereotypically" state that "gesture is a form/means of social control."

The heart of language is not "expression" of something antecedent, much less expression of antecedent thought. It is communication; the establishment of coöperation in an activity in which there are partners, and in which the activity of each is modified and regulated by partnership. To fail to understand is to fail to come into agreement in action; to misunderstand is to set up action at cross purposes . . . . (Young 1930: 210)

Something to this effect is stated often by modern writers: that communication is not merely a means of expression, but a form of social action (that something pre-made is not transmitted, but something new is created).

Rice, Stuart A. 1930. Statistical Studies of Social Attitudes and Public Opinion. In: Rice, Stuart A. (ed.), Statistics in Social Studies. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 171-192.

Statements of opinion, however, are to be regarded as but one among various forms of expression of attitude. Non-verbal, or more accurately, non-propositional expressions may likewise be susceptible of classification, and hence permit of counting and statistical analysis. Again, we may classify attitude studies according to the degree of control which the investigator is able to exercise. We thus have at least four types of actual or possible attitude studies which might receive attention in the present survey. Thurstone's studies are of the controlled verbal or propositional type. The studies of "social distance" inaugurated by E. S. Bogardus, and the study by Donald Young of the effects of classroom instruction in changing student attitudes with respect to race differences, might possibly be cited here as illustrations of controlled but non-propositional studies. Others, more definitely of this type, may easily be conceived. The late lamented silent drama, for instance, presented many situations in which the attitudes of an audience were tested and might have be engauged by such indexes as the sound volume of applause or the ratio of disgusted patrons walking out on the show. (Rice 1930: X)

Another point for my personal aversion to propositional logic: nonverbal communication is "nonpropositional"! Also, the study of "social distance"as a measurement of attitude is exactly what Mehrabian performed three decades later; not only is he a boring read, but unoriginal as well.

Bain, Read 1930. Theory and Measurement of Attitudes and Opinions. Psychological Bulletin 27: 357-379.

One of the most important (and confused) subjects in the interlocking and overlapping fields of sociology and social psychology is the category of motivation. It is apparent that human movements are possible only when appropriate action-patterns exist and that these patterns must be either inherited or acquired. It is also apparent that the functioning of both human and non-human animals is largely motivated by action-patterns that seem to be products of germinal development. These patterns are present at birth or soon after, relatively stable and unmodifiable, common to the species, usually adaptive and largely unlearned. If they are relatively simple, like grasping, knee-jerking, winking, they are "reflexes"; if they are more complex like crying, suckling-swallowing, assimilating-excreting, manipulating, they are "instincts." Just how complex such responses must be to be "instincts" is undetermined and perhaps indeterminable. The safest procedure, probably, is to call them instinctive, innate, native, germinal, and let it go at that. (Bain 1930: 357)

Made me think of the behavioural sphere. That is, action-patterns exist (in a virtual "space of behaviour") before individual actors.

Organicist Theory

Mandelker, Amy 1994. Semiotizing the Sphere: Organicist Theory in Lotman, Bakhtin, and Vernadsky. PMLA 109(3): 385-396.

Semiotics of the Moscow-Tartu school evolved from a theory rooted in Saussurean linguistics and in mathematical procedures to a biological, organismic approach. In a series of largely untranslated articles from the 1980s, Yuri Lotman, the leading figure of the Moscow-Tartu school, proposed the model of the semiosphere, a metaphor based on principles of cell biology, organic chemistry, and brain science, to map cultural dynamics. (Mandelker 1994: 385)

The "brain science" aspect was dissappointingly outdated, though. In 1986 Lotman said scarcely anything about the two hemispheres of the human brain that had not been said by Ruesch and Kees in 1956.

Attributing a biological or living energy to events in consciousness, Bakhtin similarly argues that developments in self-awareness, the production of thought - like the production of beings - can only take place through contact with an other. Comparing the emergence of conscious thought in the individual mind to the birth of the noosphere, he observes:

Something absolutely new appears here: the supraperson, the supra-I, that is, the witness and the judge of the whole human being, of the whole I, and consequently, someone who is no longer the person, no longer the I, but the other. [That is, the development of individual consciousness allown the self to know the self, as if it were an observing other.] The reflection of the self in the empirical other through whom one must pass in order to reach I-for-myself (can this I-for-myself be solitary?). The absolute freedom of this I. But this freedom cannot change existence, so to speak, materially ... - it can change only the sense of existence. ... ("From Notes" 137)

Bakhtin's conclusion here implicitly interrogates Vernadsky's theory: how do shifts in consciousness (the plane of the noosphere) affect material reality (the plane of the biosphere)? Bakhtin rejects Vernadsky's view of an active noosphere cultivating the biosphere and instead adopts an almost Husserlian subjectivity where the inner dialogic relation between existence and consciousness functions only to alter perception. (Mandelker 1994: 388)

This sounds strangely meadian, but with a distinct tint of the ancient "know thyself."

The Semiosphere: Breaking with Semiotic Totalitarianism
Lotman explores the dialogic relations between existence and ronsciousness by narrowing the focus of his work to the biochemical processes of the mind - that is, to the communication between the functionally asymmetrical hemispheres of the brain. The dialogic relations Lotman describes at the intracranial level he then interprets as microcosmic models for large events in life and in the universe of meaning. In this passage he traces his commitment to resolving these questions:

The biologist V. I. Vernadsky [found] it more productive to study the interrelationship of structures of the brain, asymmetrical, and at the same time, unitary. This is the approach we [in current semiotic theory] will be adopting. (Universe 3)

Lotman builds on the biosphere and logosphere theories by developing his own bioecological, neurocultural theory of the semiosphere in articles from the 1980s: "Asymmetry and Dialogue," "Culture and the Organism," "The Brain, the Text, Culture, and Artificial Intelligence," and "On the Semiosphere." (Mandelker 1994: 388)

This may very well be the source for Randviir's claim that the semiosphere is a totalitarian concept.

Bakhtin's statement that we have not experienced an event until we re-present it to ourselves in words (through inner speech) is reiterated in Lotman's model, where the left brain cognizes and interprets the impulses received by the right. (Mandelker 1994: 389)

A gleaming example of "linguistic/textualist imperialism" - that behaviour needs to be concursivized in order for it to be understood. I contend that although verbal descriptions may greatly aid "experience," what is really needed is, following Mead, some prior experience with similar phenomena.

Organicism, the philosophical strategy of attributing organic status to inorganic objects, is predicated on a vision of a polyphonic and harmonized totality of life that is isomorphic at its every level - from the microcosm to the human brain and its manifest behaviors and beyond to the macrocosm of the universe. (Mandelker 1994: X)

Finally a definition of organicism! It reminds me of animism in the sense of conceiving inanimate objects like stones or mountains as alive (Abram 1997: 57), and vitalism in the sense of conceiving of the universe in biological terms (Bookchin 2005: 427). Mandelker notes [11]: "I use the term organicim comprehensively to include a common theory within philosophy, biology, and aestetics. See discussions in Abrams; Orsini; Phillips; and Terras." (ibid. 394). The citations are as follows:

• Abrams, M. H. 1953. The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Condition. London: Oxford University Press.
• Orsini, G. N. G. 1969. The Organic Concept in Aesthetics. Comparative Literature 21: 1-30.
• Phillps, D. G. 1970. Organicism in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries. Journal of the History of Ideas 31: 413-432.
• Terras, Victor 1974. Belinskij and Russian Literary Criticism: The Heritage of Organic Aesthetics. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.

The organicist metaphor is both liberating and confining. The model of the sphere organicizes as it organizes. It operates positively as a figure of autonomous enclosure in geological theories of oscillation and as a figure of the dynamic equilibrium of homeostatic systems. It also functions discriminatively as a figure of definition - distinguishing between the external and the internal, demarcating what is alien to the enclosure and what is native. In its culturological function it becomes a mechanism for delimitation or, alternatively, translation. (Mandelker 1994: 390)

I once tried explaining semiospheric modelling of (sub)cultural processes to foreign students by drawing a circle and some arrown in Inkscape. It ended up looking like a biological cell. Why I had not come to recognize this before I do not know - even the word "membrane" in the definition of the biosphere should give a very clear hint. The matter becomes more interesting when one considers that "Vernadsky derived his theory of the paired structure of life-forms from the work of Louis Pasteur and Pierre Curie..." (ibid. 388).

Like the female body, the enclosing sphere evokes the creation of life and of meaning, a mystery that must be penetrated and acquired. In "On the Semiosphere," Lotman uses terms of reproductive biology when he discusses how meaning is generated and transmitted. For example, he contrasts the stasis of a barren, isolate semiosphere with the productivity of a semiosphere in dialogue. Thus semiosis - the process by which signs of one semiosphere are made intelligible to another - gains a sacral-sexual character: intercourse is required for something new and meaningful to be created. The sphere may be compared to the circle of necromancy, which distinguishes what is enclosed and what is excluded and thus privileges the necromancer, who communicates with both. The necromancer must own a special language and ritual to bridge the uncrossable line. In modern idiom, the necromancer is the scientist, who intellectually dominates and manipulates the vegetative body and its inarticulate mysteries (as the noosphere cultivates the biosphere). (Mandelker 1994: 391)

Haha, in this sense the "generation of meaning" in Lotman's parlance could very well be replaced with "the birth of meaning" and the interaction of heterogeneous codes with, very robustly, "the sexual interaction of codes." Thus, when Bookchin remarks in relation with Fourier's law of passionate attraction that "A vibrant vitalism so completely replaces the despiritized matter of conventional physics that even the idea of planets copulating is not implausible" (Bookchin 2005: 427), then one could possibly in a simila manner perform a "vitalist" interpretation of Lotman's mature work with the aim of showing that "even the idea of cultures copulating is not implausible."

But perhaps silence need not be the result of oppression. Bakhtin considers the "I-for-myself" 'я-для-себя' to be without words until its thought is structured responsively by the "I-for-others" 'я-для-других' ("From Notes" 138; "Из записей" 342). In Bakhtin's version, silence is gestational, free, and productive, while the verbalization of experience is secondary and enculturated. Lotman does not allocate the same values to these two modalities. Rather, he exalts the creative free play of signification that can occur only when semiotic activity is liberated from experience. (Mandelker 1994: 392)

I don't believe that he relationship of verbal and nonverbal codifications to the notions of private and public self could be so concrete. The I-for-others cannot be merely verbal, because that would effectively deny the very existence of nonverbal communication.

The enforced silence that has traditionally been the part of the feminine in all semiosexual transactions is perpetuated in Lotman's model. In demarcating the actions of the two hemispheres, Lotman privileges the masculinized left hemisphere, with its freedom from extrasemiotic reality and capacity for the free play of signs, and secures the right to its somatic impulses, tying down semiosis to reality from that side. (Mandelker 1994: 392)

Dafuq? ...semiofuq :D - Äkki peaksin kohmeti termini "semiotic adjectivism" asemel (kena tihtipeale pole üldse tegu omadussõnadega, vaid pigem tegusõnadega) kasutama sellise metakeele sildistamiseks sõna "märgikepp?" Esmakordsel kohtumisel sellise sõnaga võib labane konnotatsioon isegi minna kaduma ja tekkida hoopis denotatiivne nüanss: et "märgikepp" on semiootilise sõnavara kasutamine viisil mis justkui seob mingi ebamäärase märgiteooria toki etsa, et sellega siis erinevaid mitte-nii-väga-semiootilisi nähtusi torkida... Näiteks kui Dworkin (2001: 103) väidab, et Acconci tegi oma tükke "in a climate of radical semiotic interrogation," siis ta: 1) märgikepib performance kunsti diskursust ja/või 2) torgib performance kunsti semiootilise sõnavaraga (mida ta ju tegelikelt teebki, väga kummalisel ja arusaamatul viisil). Minul pole aimugi mis on "radical semiotic interrogation," aga äkki Dworkin ise, märgikeppimise hoos, mõistis seda väljendit täiuslikult; kahju vaid, et selgitust ei antud.

I make a distinction here between semiotic theory - that enterprise which explores the parameters of a theory of semiosis - and semiotic practice, or the analysis of texts to reveal their semiosic structures. (Mandelker 1994: 393)

Seems commonsensical and easily acceptable, yet there is a nagging voice in the back of my mind that this may not fit Charles Morris's idea of "applied semiotics," maybe even for the sole reason that Peircean semiotics seems more bent on "semiosis in everyday life" rather than "semiotic analysis performed in academic contexts."

Mead, George H. 1915. Natural Rights and the Theory of the Political Institutions. The Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods 12(6): 141-155.

The timorous Hobbes facing the disturbances of the Puritan revolution and the worse conditions which were likely to ensue defined the individual in terms of those hostile impulses which must lead to a bellum omnium contra omnes. It was this human being, lifted through Hobbes's fear out of all human relationships, whose rights, recognized only in a state of nature, must be entirely surrendered to an autocratic sovereign, who is defined entirely in terms of what he must surrender to be safely admitted within a human society. (Mead 1915: 144)

And now I know the Latin expression for kõigi sõda kõigi vastu.

In general no man is free who has not the means of expressing himself, but just what is necessary to that self-expression can not be made clear. It is probable that Epictetus was far freer than was his master, and at the present time millions of men are expressing their freedom in exposing their bodies to torture and death. I do not say that we can not formulate a fairly comprehensive statement of what has come to be the stature and measure of what the citizen should be in our minds at the present moment. We would give him undoubtedly economic freedom, an education, an association with his fellow citizens and fellow workmen that would ensure him the means of control over situations affecting his physical, social, and intellectual well-being. (Mead 1915: 147)

The freedom to be tortured and put to death does not sound very good, aga igale oma.

Had Locke had the acquaintance of our anthropologists with primitive groups he would have recognized that his precontract men would have possessed an organized group of social habits out of which indeed governmental institutions were to arise, but which already performed the functions of government as definitely as the later institutions were destined to do. Rousseau of course is subject to the same error of supposing that his socially endowed men with their recognition of each other's personalities could have existed without some form of social organization that must have fulfilled the function in some way of social control. (Mead 1915: 148)

This is the quintessential anarchist standpoint: that groups do perfectly fine without governmental institutions and it is the usurpation of the people that these institutions must be gotten rid of.

Barsky, Robert F. 1998. Bakhtin as Anarchist? Language, Law, and Creative Impulses in the Worx of Mikhail Bakhtin and Rudolf Rocker. The South Atlantic Quarterly 97(3): 623-642.

The various directions toward which Bakhtin studies are presently moving suggests that whatever the differences from one scholar to another, there remains a naggingi question in much Bakhtinian work: What else can be done with Bakhtin? This is not, or should not be, a purely academic concern; indeed, it may be because Bakhtin's work is so obviously applicable to concerns beyond tenure-article production that it is so frequently asked. (Barsky 1998: 623)

I had not realized this, but there does seem to exist a need for scholars to publish inane material merely for the sake of getting published and "promoted" in academia. And it is no surprise to see Bakhtin related to this: his thought is indeed wide and can be applied to a lot of triviality merely for reiterating the terminological register of Bakhtinian dialogism.

It is true that Bakunin and Rocker (like most anarchists) are against the arbitrary or self-serving use of his writing to the relationship between culture and structures of authority. The most powerful articulation of his view on culture is to be found in Nationalism and Culture, which is virtually contemporaneous with Bakhtin's "Discourse in the Novel." Here, Rocker relates the dongers of power to the suppression of cultural production, the parallel arising from the simple reason that "power is never creative. It uses the creative force of a given culture to clothe its nakedness and to increase its dignity. Power is always a negative element in history." But even though anarchy in almost all of its forms is against power and authority, it does not follow that it "rejoices in the undoing of rules, in centrifugal energy for its own sake," or even "in clowning," as Morson and Emerson suggest. (Barsky 1998: 626-627)

I don't believe that the relationship of culture and power is so simple. This is evaluative and calls for examples.

Rocker goes on to nate that in some cases the foreign expression for a particular idea is not adapted even when the idea is (or what he calls "loan-translation"). Then,

we translate the newly acquired concept into our language by creating from the material at hand a word structure not previously used. Here the stranger confronts us, so to speak, in the mask of our own language...

[Rocker, Nationalism and Culture, 282.](Barsky 1998: 632)

Täpselt sama mõtet väljendasin ma hiljuti kodukootud mõistega "võõrmeelsus" (as opposed to võõrkeelsus).

Mead, George H. 1900. Suggestions Toward a Theory of the Philosophical Disciplines. The Philosophical Review 9(1): 1-17.

In the Psychological Review (Vol. III, pp. 375-70), Professor Dewey maintains in his discussion of the Reflex Arc that the sensation appears always in consciousness as a problem ; that attention could not be centered upon a so-called element of consciousness unless the individual were abstracting from the former meaning of the object, and in his effort to reach a new meaning has fixed this feature of the former object as a problem to be solved. (Mead 1900: 1)

Man as a problem-solving creature; that only "problematic" stimuli breach the sensory treshold to produce "a more developed sign."

One finds in attention not only concentration, but that which concentration implies, control, and control can exist only where there is something definite to be done which is consciously involved in the whole doing of it. This does not take place through a statemeth of what the ultimate meaning of the act is to be. (Mead 1900: 8-9)

Thus concentration is the control of attention. Another obvious but noteworthy remark: control is present only when there is a choice, whet there is "something definite to be done." May become useful for theorizing self-control of nonverbal behaviour.

Bakhtin, Mikhail M. 1968. The Role of Games in Rabelais. Yale French Studies 41: 124-132.

* Reprinted from RABELAIS AND HIS WORL by Bakhtin, translated by Helene Iswolsky, by permission of the MIT Press. Cambridge, Mass. just published. PP. 484. $15. The following text is extracted from chapter three, entitled "Popular festive forms and images in Rabelais". [footnote]

No wonder that Bakhtin was so well received in the West: passages from his books were reprinted in journals just after his books were published.

Rabelais' own "Pantagruelesque Prognotic" is written in a similar spirit. In this short text we find material bodily images: "During Lent, lard will avoid peas," "the belly will go forward," "the bottom will sit down first." (Bakhtin 1968: 128)

And indeed Bakhtin too has noted on concursivity, calling it a "material bodily image."

The genre of travestied prophecies are essentially related to time, to the new year, to the guessing of riddles, to marriage, birth, and procreative force. This is why food, drink, the material bodily life and the images of games play in this genre such an important part. (Bakhtin 1968: 128)

Could it be that "the material bodily life" is Bakhtin's signifier for nonverbal behaviour or embodiment?

The images of games were seen as a condensed formula of life and of the historic process: fortune, misfortune, gain and loss, crowning and uncrowning. Life was presented as a miniature play (translated into the language of traditional symbols), a play without footlights. (Bakhtin 1968: 129)

The author who compared Bakhtin and Goffman apparently missed this little quip, which comes dangerously close to an alternative statement of dramaturgical sociology: treating a social interaction as "a play without footlights;" that is, without the "theater light at the front of a stage that illuminate the set and actors". This actually draws a significant distinction between a theatrical play and - for the sake of convenience lets call it - a social play. There is a marked difference in the structure of the setting - in the lighting. The implication is that a play put forth on the stage is meant to be seen in its totality (yes, even the legs are meant to be seen), while in ordinary social interaction it is only the upper parts of the body (mainly hands and the face) which is to be seen up close.

Mead, George H. 1908. The Philosophical Basis of Ethics. International Journal of Ethics 18(3): 311-323.

It is true that occasionally a scientist such as Poincare recognizes that even the number system, as well as Euclidian space, is but a construct which has arisen and maintained itself because of its practical advantages, though we can draw no conclusion from these practical advantages to their metaphysical reality. (Mead 1908: 312)

A similar case could be made for the concept of sign.

We are familiar with three ethical standpoints, that which finds in conscious control over action only the further development of conduct which has already unconsciously been determined by ends, that which finds conduct only where reflective thought is able to present a transcendental end, and that which recognizes conduct only where the individual and the environment - the situation - mutually determine each other. In the first case, moral necessity of conduct, for the conscious individual, is quite relative. It depends upon the degree of recognition which he reaches of the forces operating through him. Furthermore, the motive to act with reference to the end of the fullest life of the species is one which is primarily quite narrowly individualistic, and depends for a social interpretation upon the community of which the individual is a member. Moral necessity is conduct from this point of view is quite independent of the activity itself. So far from being the most fundamental reality it is a derivative by which, through what is hard not to call a hocus pocus, the individual acts, for what is only indirectly his own - a distant end, through a social dressur. It is, of course, natural that this point of view should mediate the process of training by which men are to be led unwittingly to socially worthy action, rather than the immediate conduct of the individual who finds himself face to face with a moral problem. It is the standpount of the publucust and the reformer of social institutions. (Mead 1908: 315-316)

I am quite sure that this lengthy passage contains much of value, but the immediate takeaway from it is close to zero; hopefully I will understand this betterr under more favorable circumstances.

Renfrew, Alastair 2006. A Word about Material (Bakhtin and Tynianov). The Slavonic and East European Review 84(3): 419-445.

Valashinov in fact follows very closely the argument of Bukharin, asthough, as we shall see, with a very different purpose:

You can isolate any phenomenon of social life, any fragment or series, but [...] if you do not see its function in life, if you do not regard it as an organic component of a social whole, [...] you will never understand these phenomena.

Bukharin essentially argues that the base-superstructure model requires a high degree of sophistication in its application to ideological and cultural phenomena, which will consist, more or less, in a refusal to perform the kind of specific isolation Voloshinov later mocks... (Renfrew 2006: 423)

I wonder if it is wise to isolate nonverbal behaviour from the rest of human (social) life.

This expulsion of content consists in two related operations: first, the 'material' of the literary work is associated with fabula, the range of ethical, political, historical and 'real-life' events and phenomena which in various ways precede it; these are artistically organized to form its siuzhet, sometimes referred to as 'plot', but better understood as the immanent, literary organization of the events and phenomena which constitute fabula, transformed in a range of processes that would became the technical focus of Formalist theory. (Renfrew 2006: 424)

Et süžee võib põhineda päriselulistel sündmustel mis eelnevad sellele.

Thus the 'content' of the literary work is not directly significant in itself, but rather for the way in which it enables various transformative techniques, specifically, various compositional devices ('braking' [tormozenie [pidurdamine]], 'making difficult' [zatrudnenie [raskendamine]], 'repetition' [povtorenie [kordamine]], etc., all of which are related to the 'master' device of 'alienation' or 'making strange' [ostranenie]). (Renfrew 2006: 425)

An elaboration of the "master" concept of "defamiliarization."

Voloshinov does not offer the 'sociological method' as a straightforward alternative to the immanent, asocial specification of contemporary poetics (Formalism), but seeks instead to transform the sociological method into a sociological poetics, which will reject the methodological distinction between 'immanent' and 'causal' just as it rejects the separation of material into verbal and non-verbal. (Renfrew 2006: 434)

I wish there were more on this topic. As far as I can dig, the distinction between the verbal and nonverbal reaches back to the 1920s (at least in America), and mainly in the field of aesthetics and symbolism, e.g. talk of "the non-verbal arts."

Voloshinov finally defines art as ''immanently socialagical' ('immanentno-sotsiologichno') and, in what is an alternative description of the dynamics of our new conception of material,

the extra-artistic social environment, which influences [art] from without, finds in it a direct internal response. It is not a case of one alien entity influencing another, but rather of one social construction influencing another.

(Renfrew 2006: 435)

From Voloshinov's "Discourse in Life and Discourse in Poetry" p. 62 and p. 7. For my purposes this makes sense insofar as both literature and "body language" are social constructions. Thus, it makes sense to study their interrelationships (or their mutual "influence").

For Voloshinov, the material of the literary work is indeed language, but language understood as a:

particular form of social interaction, which is realized and fixed in the material of the artistic work.

Voloshinov thus gestures towards the possibility of a new 'poetics', towards the literary strand of a new "material aesthetics', which will be founded on the inseparability of real-life phenomena and speech or, in other words, on the indivisibility of material. (Renfrew 2006: 435)

Something similar could be discussed in terms of concursivity, given that "language" can be replaced by "behaviour" (is nonverbal behaviour not itself a "particular form of social interaction"?).

...poetry itself (and by extension all literary production) must be understood not as a hermetically-sealed domain for conveniently abstract linguistic analysis, but as a type of concrete utterance, cognate with a limitless range of other types of utterance associated with the various non-literary locations of linguistic performance. (Renfrew 2006: 436)

More useful phraseology: concourse is "a type of concrete utterance" in which the verbal and the nonverbal "come together."

[Tynianov's] The Problem of Verse Language, hawever, is not just a clear acknowledgement of the growing influence of teh association of material and language in his thinking; it also, and crucially, signals the beginnings of a problematization of the relationship between verbal and 'non-verbal' material, and indeed a questioning of the fundamental tenability of such a distinction. (Renfrew 2006: 438-439)

Ah, yes, problematization... Neat... But how exactly? In what does this consist?

What is initially astonishing and yet ultimately crucial in Novikov's summary is not the particular terms in which he chooses to characterize the first three, apparently 'non- or extra-verbal' components of 'the entire pre-creative reality of the artistic work', but rather what is implied about the relationship between these categories and thi final one, 'language in its linguistic specificity'. Language is freed from abstraction and 'inertness' in the act of being forced to chabit with or, better, to inhabit, to bring into being what was previously mistaken for 'non-linguistic' content: just as material cannot be 'formless', neither can it be emptied of content (which itself, in turn, cannot be conceived in isolation from language). (Renfrew 2006: 441)

I feel as if there are answers here but I am simply unable to comprehend them.

Medvedev's criticism is that Tynianov's second conception of material, as well as its problematic associaton with the abstractions of linguisticcs, also fatally undermines the idea of a distinctively and definitively literary language. This is essentially a repetition of the global Bakhtinian criticism of Formalism, to the effect that the Formalists have been consistently unable, even in their own terms, to conceptualize the distinction between the literary ath what is verbal/textual but non-literarp. (Renfrew 2006: 442)

Similar critique could be raised against the TMS: although the Theses states that not every verbal text or utterance in a given language functions as a cultural text of that culture, it remains somewhat ambiguous what the exact distinction consists of. Maybe a clera statement of the distinction exists but has simply eluded me?