The Nonverbal Domain

Snow, David A. 2001. Extending and Broadening Blumer's Conceptualization of Symbolic Interactionism. Symbolic Interaction 24(3): 367-377.

When confronted with the challenge of articulating the core premises of symbolic interactionism, scholars generally refer, almost in the fashion of liturgical recitation, to Herbert Blumer's conceptual distillation of the perspective into three core principles: (1) that people act towards things, including each other, on the basis of the meanings they have for them; (2) that these meanings are derived through social interactios with others; and (3) that these meanings are managed and transformed through an interpretive process that people use to make sense of and handle the objects that constitute their social worlds (Blumer 1969:2). (Snow 2001: 367)

Is this self-referentiality? "Some people do this..." and then continue to do the same.

The principle of interactive determination stipulates that understanding of focal objects of analysis - be they self-concepts, identities, roles, organizational practices, or even social movements - cannot be fully achieved by attending only to qualities presumed to be intrinsic to them. Instead this principle requires consideration of the interactional contexts or webs or relationships in which they are ensnared and embedded. For all practical purposes, then, neither individual or society nor self or other are ontologically prior but exist only in relation to each other; thus one can fully understand them only through their interaction, whether actual, virtual, or imagined. (Snow 2001: 369)

Interactive determination in this sense amounts to the mutual interdependence of various levels of symbolic signification. This should be reconsidered in light of Ruesch's systematic model of human relations.

The principle of symbolization highlights the processes through which events and conditions, artifacts and edifices ,people and aggregations, and other features of the ambient environment take on particular meanings, becoming objects of orientation that elicit specifiable feelings and actions [why not thoughts?]. This principle lies at the heart of Blumer's conceptualization of symbolic interactionism and typically is presumed to be the focal concern of the perspective. However, to focus too heavily on the generation and imputation of meanings and on associated interpretive processes can give rise to two erroneous presumptions: (1) symbolization is a continuously problematic issue for social actors; and (2) we therefore are continually engaged in the interpretive work of making sense of the social world as we encounter and negotiate it through our daily lives. Such presumptions are misguided inasmuch as thef fail to recognize the extent to which symbols and the meanings they convey are often, perhaps routinely, embedded in and reflective of existing cultural and organizational contexts and systems of meanings. (Snow 2001: 371)

It almost seems that these assumptions are "misguided" merely because Blumer cast away the notion of habit.

After all, one of the established functions of social movements, particularly those that rise early in a cycle of protest, is the provision of new or alternative framings of previously take-for-granted misfortunes or grievances, transforming them into injustices or moral transgressions that call for action (Gamson, Fireman, and Rytina 1982; Turner 1969). (Snow 2001: 372)

This seems to hold true, even for current and local small protest movements. E.g. the building of the Oa street house was taken for granted and, even more, the unstated assumption that building developers have a right to override whatever hindrances they may have (e.g. the consent of the neighbourhood) got challenged and framed as a moral injustice.

Therefore, the question is not whether people act toward things in terms of their meaning or how they are symbolized. As Fine (1992:97) has asked rhetorically, "How could it be otherwise?" Rather, our focal attention should be on the order of the following: How de meanings or symbolizations become taken-for-granted and routinized, become part of Bourdieu's (1990:52-65) "habitus," Mead's (1938:220-23) "specious present," or Goffman's (1974:21-39) "primary frameworks"? What kind of social contexts, organizational forms, relational connections, and social processes are conductive to or facilitative of the routinization of meaning, or what has been referred to as its "sedimentation" (Berger and Luckmann 1967; Fine 1992)? And under what conditions and in what ways are sedimented meanings or extant cultural frame fractures, contested, or debated, thus rendering the symbolic basis for action problematic and calling for new or revitalized interpretations and framings? (Snow 2001: 372)

For a novice such as myself this sounds like Peirce's common-sensism.

The principle of emergence follows from the foregoing. It focuses attention on the nonhabitual side of social life and its dynamic character and thus the potential for change, not only in the organization and texture of social life, but also in associated meanings and feelings. The principle of emergence encompasses processes out of which new, novel, or revitalized social entities, or cognitive and emotional states, arise that constitute departures from, challenges to, and clarifications or transformations of everyday routines, practices, or perspectives. The centrality of this principle to symbolic interactionism is rooted in part in Mead's (1938) emphasis on the novel and emergent nature of the act and in part in Blumer's ([1939] 1951) conceptualization of the various forms of collective behavior not only as emergent phenomena but as often constitutive of new forms of social life as well. (Snow 2001: 372-373)

This may be the most important principle for my purposes. What else is concursive research than the study of how new ways of talking and writing about body language have emerged and continue to emerge, equally creating stable/staple expressions as well as novel descriptions and metaphor? I imagine the most fruitful concourse would be that of a person who attempts to describe body language in emergent manner of languaging.

Kaplan, Bernard 1961. An Approach to the Problem of Symbolic Representation: Nonverbal and Verbal. The Journal of Communication 11(2): 52-62.

During the past fifty years it has become increasingly recognized that symbolic activity is among the most characteristic features of human existence and that the whole development of human culture is based upon man's capacity for transforming simple sensory material into symbolic vehicles - carruers of the finest intellectual and emotional distinctions. So important is symbolic activity in human life that one of the outstanding contemporary philosophers has urged: "Instead of defining man as an animal rationale, we should define him as an animal symbolicum. By doing so we can designate his specific difference. ..." (Kaplan 1961: 52)

The outstanding contemporary philosopher is of course Ernst Cassirer in An Essay on Man (1944).

In the process of perceiving objects or forming conceptions, symbols are perhaps useful, but not, according to this view, really necessary; after the object is seen or the conception formed, vocal or nonvocal elements may be used to indicate the object or fix the concept "in the mind" (label or tag it, so to speak) but such signs or marks have no role in determining the characteristics of the objects perceived or the notions conceived. (Kaplan 1961: 54)

Not according to de Saussure, for whom thought without language is "a vague uncharted nebula."

In contrast to this standpoint the orientation which this writer endorses. First, objects of human perception are permeated through and through with our human activities as knowers and doers. No direct, unmediated contact with things-in-themselves exists which can in any way be the subject matter of cognition. In other words, perceived objects as known are made and not discovered - they are productions or constructions in which the knower's activity plays a constitutive role. From this vantage point, the "given" is indeterminate as to its characteristics and even as to its nature; the specific determination given to presented phenomena varies with different individuals, for the same individual at different times, etc. Furthermore, this determination rests in large part on an underlying activity of schematization, which is indissolubly linked with symbolic activity.
Second, conceptions are rarely formed through the abstraction of objectively identical elements from a manifold of particular percepts. In fact, in a very important sense, conceptions are presupposed in any particular situation where a given sensory event is perceived in one way rather than in another: In Kant's famous aphorism, "Percepts without concepts are blind." Furthermore, conceptions, in order to be grasped, must either be immanent in some particular event or else be represented by some tangible form intended as a symbol. Conceptions are therefore always tied up or interdependent with some symbolic process, although this type of symbolization need not be verbal or in any way overt. Again we contend that probably under all circumstances, but at least in certain phases of cognitive activity, the symbolic process enters into the articulation of conceptions and thus determines the meaning that ideas have for us in our lives. (Kaplan 1961: 55-56)

This seems to precipitate social constructionism.

In the universe instituted through symbolic activity, the previously "meaningless" patterns - e.g., sounds, lines, movements, or the simple events of everyday life - take on a new coloring and significance: they are invested, so to speak, with a life of their own, which they express in their shapes, contours, and "actions." These features of the patterns qua symbols are, to be sure, quite fluid, malleable within limits, etc., but the range of meanings for which they are takes to be adequate is not infinite. In any cognitive activity, these expressive features of the pattern-becoming-vehicle affect the referent with which they are being linked and are affected by them. The symbolizer attempts to bring vehicle and referent into some sort of "fitting" relationship by restructuring the former, by reformulating the latter, or by both; finally, some modus vivendi is established. (Kaplan 1961: 58-59)

I wonder if "the universe istituted through symbolic activity" is "the universe of mind" or "semiosphere" - an idea which may be as old as knowledge of signs, but which comes to be expressed in increasingly more exact terms... Also, at this point "vehicle and referent" sound like "signifier and signified."

As I have already mentioned, Werner and I in our research have used nonverbal media extensivery. Our employment of these media (e.g., line patterns, bodily movements, colors, visual imagery, hypnotically induced dreams, and clay) is based primarily on three considerations. First, our lifelong, habitual, and intimate use of the vocal-sound medium in the development of speech symbols may tend to obscure our vision of the handling of that medium in symbolic activity. This problem is especially likely to exist in the case of sound patterns which have already been structured into symbols - i.e., have become invested with significance. In contrast, the use of nonvocal media, whuch have not been previously exploited in the service of representation, provides a distance which permits a better view of how the intention to symbolize operates to transform material entities into symbolic vehicles. (Kaplan 1961: 59)

"Nonverbal media" in this sense parallels "plastic arts" or "nonverbal texts" in TMS. Also, ever since the popular "body language" discourse, or the emergence of peaseism, many body movements and postures have been structured into symbols or invested with significance. Crossing one's hands at the chest or covering one's eyes with the palm of a hand have, thanks to these popular body codes, become "symbolic vehicles."

The third reason for using nonverbal media is that they have generally not been structured into a system of symbols. Individuals obliged to use them for symbolization must begin - as it were - without the advantages and the constraints of an already formed and organized system of vehicles. Through the use of nonverbal means we are enabled to witness, to a far greater extent than would be true otherwise, the early stages in the formation of symbolic vehicles out of a material medium. (Kaplan 1961: 60)

Yeah, no, too late.

After this phase of the experiment was completed, the subject was told to express verbally how the same material pattern - the linear vehicle initially formed - had been used to represent the various conceptions he had listed. In general, we have found that the same material pattern was imaginatively restructured - perhaps modified, sometimes elaborated, and occasionally radically changed - in order to portray the different conceptions. In other words, although the pattern was, from the pount of view of an external observer, invariant, for the symbolizer it was imaginatively changed so that in each case it sustained for the subject an analogical relationship to the content symbolized. (Kaplan 1961: 61)

This is an important aspect in concourse - that each iteration, each description brings forth "a more developed sign." This is captured well in the footnote: "A person typically struggles, with varying degrees of success and satisfaction, to form an analogy between the vehicle and the referent; he does not simply observe a similarity." (ibid.) Concourse is in this sense a struggle of imagination.

Through the employment of such media as expressive lines, visual imagery, hypnotically induced dreams, bodily gestures, etc., Werner and I have been able, we believe, to arrive at a clearer picture of the genetically earlier phases in the symbolic organization of experience. It is our hope that the coordination of findings from experimental studies on nonverbal representation with those from naturalistic studies on the ontogenesis of speech will eventually permit the formulation of the general developmental relationships between the symbolic process and the other activities of human beings. (Kaplan 1961: 62)

This last bit sounds similar to my project, given that I can replace "symbolic process" with "semiosis" and "other activities of human beings" with "bodily behavior."

Knapp, Mark L., John M. Wiemann and John A. Daly 1978. Nonverbal Communication: Issues and Appraisal. Human Communication Research 4(3): 271-180.

Some critics of the term nonverbal point out that a literal interpretation suggests an almost limitless area of study, including everything except that which is determined to be "verbal." It is not surprising, then, to find a book dealing with language pathologies in chuldren called The Non-verbal Child (Adler, 1975). Furthermore, the term nonverbal may suggest a conceptually disfunctional dichotomy for examining human message systems. (Knapp, Wiemann & Daly 1978: 271)

This is why "concourse" needs a name: it is not properly "nonverbal" if the object of study is verbal (nonverbal communication mediated by verbal communication). Concourse is verbal, but it deals with the nonverbal. Conceptually disfunctional indeed, but "nonverbal" is nevertheless the most comprehensive designation for the study of body motion communication (as no term is perfect, even body motion communication is an ill-suited label for the study of postures, for examel).

The dissatisfaction with the nonverbal label has prompted others to suggest replacements. The phrase body language seems to be widely used - primarily with nonacademic audiences. Because of this association with the popular press, its limitation to the body, and the imprication that it is a formal language, it has received limited acceptance in the scientific community. Contrast this with the word pasimology, "the study of gestures as a means of communication," which is found in Webster's Third New International Dictionary - and almost never in the scientific literature or the popular press. (Knapp, Wiemann & Daly 1978: 272)

Indeed, this is the first time I glance at this term. As I understand this is generally referred to as "gesture studies" or, evidently less so, as "gesturology."

In the preface to the transactions of the 1962 Indiana University Conference on Paralanguage and Kinesics, the editors tell us that Margaret Mead proposed the word "'semiotics' ... as a term which would aptly cover 'patterned communications in all modalities'" (Sebeok, Hayes, & Bateson, 1964). The editors further state: "By choosing it [semiotics] for the title [of the transactions of the conference], we intend to stress the interactional and communicational context of the human use of signs and the way in which these are organized in transactional systems involving sight, hearing, touch, smell, taste" (p. 5). This rather comprehensive interpretation of the term semiotics reminds us that many of the leading researchers and theorists associated with nonverbal study resist identifying themselves solely with the label nonverbal, preferring instead to be known as communicologists or investigators of face-to-face interaction or social interaction. (Knapp, Wiemann & Daly 1978: 272)

And this is why I think "nonverbalism" is an apt designation. Many researchers who contributed heavily to the study of nonverbal behaviour and communication refused to use the term "nonverbal," but in hindsight their work falls right into the area (the -ism emphasizes the indirect relation in this case).

Like other areas of study, we have some isolated examples of nonverbal behavior which exist in a theoretical vacuum, and we have some theoretical frameworks which remain virtually untested. The issues which follow have been given warying amounts of attention by the aforementioned theorists. They are, however, issues which are often central to a theoretical statement and, in turn, provide implicit assumptions for the conduct of nonverbal research. (Knapp, Wiemann & Daly 1978: 273)

This echoes Marcel Mauss's contention that many aspects of the "techniques of the body" have no other designation than under the umbrella of "miscellanoeus."

Another issue related to communicator intent concerns the time we choose to assess intent. Our conscious awareness of doing something during an encounter may be very low, but as soon as it is brought to our attention we may feel the need to explain "why." From a researcher standpoint, this is a methodological problem, and is often linked to our need to appear "sensible." (Knapp, Wiemann & Daly 1978: 273)

At the moment I see this as related to "nonverbal ethics" - when someone concourses our behaviour, we may feel it necessary to start rationalizing out bodily behaviour which may in fact be wholly unrelated to anything rational. The need to appear sensible presents a pressure in these (disruptive) situations.

Variance in behavior is concordant with variance in the position of an environmental object. (Knapp, Wiemann & Daly 1978: 174)

Due to the word "concur" I will have to differentiate concourse from concordance.

Few would disagree that many individual words have several denotative meanings; most recognize the capacity of a word to communicate distinctly denotative meanings; and in addition, each word can elicit a number of connotative meanings. This same multimeaning potetntial found in words is not always extended to nonverbal signals such as facial, gestural, and bodily behavior. The assumption of a single, apparently unchanceable meaning for nonverbal cues has an unfortunate prevalence in the literature. (Knapp, Wiemann & Daly 1978: 274)

This is what Birdwhistell called "the meaning-carrier temptation" to which many a nonacademic writers give in.

Perhaps the concern for restoring the parts to the whole is partly responsible for a continuing movement away from studying a specific body part and toward an outcome which involves many body parts - as well as concurrent verbalizations. (Knapp, Wiemann & Daly 1978: 275)

As much as I have figured out, the difference between concurrent verbalization and concoursive verbalization is parallel to that between synchronic metacommunication (Ruesh's co-verbalization) and diachronic metacommunication (theorizing communication).

Those who think that an understanding of the meaning of nonverbal signals is the sole key to social competence or control over others (as some popular books suggest), do not appreciate the fact that the nonverbal system is only a part of the total system of human communication, that understanding of the subtleties will take years of study, and that people will alter behavior when others constantly take advantage of them. (Knapp, Wiemann & Daly 1978: 276)

That is to say that nonverbal communication is not all about power and social control and vice versa.

There is no more devastating condemnation that that the self-designated theorist makes of the researcher than to label his work purely descriptive. There is an implication that associates "purely descriptive" research with empty-headedness; the label also implies that a a bare minimum every healthy researcher has at least an hypothesis to test, and preferably a whole model. This is nonsense. ... In every discipline, but particularly in its early stages of development, purely descriptive research is indispensable. Descriptive research is the stuff out of which the mind of man, the theorist, develops the units that compose his theories. The more auequate the description, the greater is the likelihood that the units derived from the description will be useful in subsequent theory building. (Dubin 1969: 85)

Concoursive study is descriptive research in the sense that what is under study is the body of existing descriptions in both fictional and nonfictional literature.

Eibl-Eibesfeldt reports a camera invented by H. Hass which allows filming of people without their awareness (Eibl-Eibesfeldt, 1975, p. 461). The camera and the photographer seem to be concerned with something at a right angle to the subject, but a lens in the side of the camera deceptively captures spontaneous behavior. Naturally, when a researcher is attempting to record normal behavior which will likely manifest significant distortions with more obtrusive methods, the potential harm of perceived privacy invasion must be carefully weighed against the value of the information sought. (Knapp, Wiemann & Daly 1978: 277)

Analogous to E. T. Hall's manner of carrying a small spy-camera for taking photographs in the public unobrusively.

Andersen, Peter A., John P. Garrison and Janis F. Andersen 1979. Implications of a Neurophysiological Approach for the Study of a Nonverbal Communication. Human Comunication Research 6(1): 74-89.

The eyes are unique in that each eye is split into two visual hemifields, with little or no overlapping between them. The left visual field of each eye is connected to the right hemisphere, and each of the right visual fields is connected to the left brain hemisphere. (Andersen, Garrison & Andersen 1979: 74-75)

Kui sa vaatad vasakule, siis töötleb seda parem ajupool ja kui vaatad paremal, siis vasak ajupool. Niiet kui keelekeskus on vasakus ajupooles, siis oleks efektiivne midagi kujundades asetada pilt vasakule ja tekst paremale.

Weinstein and Sersen (1961) reported that a majority of subjects are more sensitive to touch on their left palms, forearms, and soles than on their right. (Andersen, Garrison & Andersen 1979: 77)

Hea teada.

Mountcastle's (1966) studies show that good Braille readers use both hands to read each word. Braille readers apparently do better with two fingers (one from each hand), as if the person summed the information from each brain hemisphere. (Andersen, Garrison & Andersen 1979: 77)

Curiously, a page earlier I had thought how can Braille readers read at all if the right hemisphere is better at tactile recognition and the language center is in the left hemisphere. Also, this imagery of using two fingers, one from each hand, is useful for imitating/mimicking a blind person reading Braille (may never know when this may come handy).

Damage to the right brain hemisphere impairs one's perception of his/her own body. Persons with right brain lesions often have considerable difficulty locating themselves or the bodies of others in three-dimensional space (Hecaen, 1967). Luria (1966) examined patients with right hemispheric lesions who could not locate motion in their own fingers and manifested no awareness of their disability. (Andersen, Garrison & Andersen 1979: 77)

More interesting factoids. Apparently it does not impair their functioning if they are not aware of their disability.

Bogen (1974) builds an extensive case for viewing music, including singing, as a nonverbal, nonlinguistic, primarily rigt hemisphere funciton. [...] The right hemisphere plays a primary role in the reception of musical information (Brookshire, 1975). (Andersen, Garrison & Andersen 1979: 79)

Thus, the left ear / right hemisphere is the "musical" part of the brain (at least for nonlinguistic sounds). This has importance for everyday life: without an exception it is always the left part that goes out when headphones break due to "natural" wear and tear. It is quite possible that headphone producers make it intentionally so that the left one goes out in order to make you buy new headphones. Thus, the practical suggestion is: if headphones break and music comes only from the right ear, switch the headphones around!

While each brain is specialized for either verbal or nonverbal communication, the twe hemispheres are connected by a band of nerve fibers called the corpus callosum. The corpus callosum relays information from one hemisphere to the other in approximately 30 to 40 milliseconds through a complex process that is not fully understood (Filbey & Gazzaniga, 1969). It is unclear whether this information is transmitted through a verbal code, a nonverbal code, or some modality-unspecific neural code (Moscovitch, 1973). It is clear, however, that verbal or nonverbal messages are altered when they are transmitted to the opposite hemisphere. (Andersen, Garrison & Andersen 1979: 80)

Most likely it is some modality-unspecific neural code.

At the other extreme of this debate is the position taken by Wilden (1972a) that all behavior is communication. This position may be as unrestrictive as the Wiener et al. (1972) position is overrestrictive. (Andersen, Garrison & Andersen 1979: 83)

All behoviour simply cannot be communication. That would devalue the notion of communication and even an ampliation of the self-communication paradigm would not include all behaviour (how could one self-communicate via behaviour that the self is not and cannot be aware of?)

...it is generally agreed that proxemics and spatial communication, tactile or haptic communication, bodily appearance and kinesics, object communication, environmental sound, and musical communication are part of the nonverbal domain. (Andersen, Garrison & Andersen 1979: 83)

I agree. This is a central point in nonverbalism.

Ekman, Paul 1976. Movements With Precise Meanings. Journal of Communication 26: 14-26.

As might be expected, illustrations are more frequent when conversing face-to-face than when not able to see the person with whom you are talking (12, 25). Even when not able to see the other conversant some illustrators do occur, suggesting habut may maintain their occurrence or that illustrators serve a self-priming function [a title]. (Ekman 1976: 16; footnote 2)

Oddly enough I have not yet added sely-priming to my list of self-concepts, although it is a remarkable feature of self-communication.

Stokoe brought Meisner and Philpott's study of emblem communication among men working in sawmill in British Columbia to my attention (Sign Language Studies, 9, 1975, pp. 291-347). Among these workers where there is too much noise to communicate in words emblems typically occur in strings, and the order of performance of the emblems roughly parallels what the word order would be if spoken. (Ekman 1976: 23; footnote 7)

I have heard of this example. Now I have a reference.

While emblems are the most deliberate of the body movements and facial expressions, the paradox is that there can be emblematic equivalents to slip-of-the-tongue. In my first study of body movement in 1955, I observed such an emblematic slip. I had arranged for the director of the graduate program to subject one of my fellow students to a stress interview. He attacked and criticized her abilities, ethics, motives, etc. While she had volunteered for some abuse, it seemed clear that he succeeded in upsetting her. Importantly, the power relationship was such that the student could not fight back and had to contain her anger and resentment. My film record showed that she held the "finger" emblem on one hand for a few minutes during the interview. Both the student and the professor were unaware of this emblem until I showed it to them on the film. We have found similar emblematic slips in our current studies of deceptive interactions (17). When there are social or contextual constraints inhibiting the transmission of a message but that message is quite salient nevertheless, emblematic slips can occur without awareness. (Ekman 1976: 25)

I have noticed this exact "emblematic slip" in the Foucault-Chomsky debate while Foucault mentions psychiatric practice, and personally in a conversation with a friend while she was mentioning her housemates. It seems evident that this slip occurs most saliently when the sematic content of speech is about something unpleasant (related to anger or resentment).

Young, Richard F. 2009. Foundations for the Study of Practice. Language Learning 58(s2): 9-47.

The principal fault lines lie between those who hold to modernist views of universality, homogeneity, and the possibility of consensual agreement among diverging pounts of view and postmodernists who, by contrast, see plurality, variety, and change underlying all knowledge and belief systems and who, in Z. Bauman's (1992) words, therefore see order and agreement among competing world views as only "randomly emerging, shifting and evanescent" (p. 189). (Young 2009: 9)

In this sense I belong to the "postmodernist" camp, although this distinction seems too imposed and I do feel positively disposed towards the "unified science" project.

Aspects of communication that, until recently, have not received much attention are semiotic systems other than language. Because of the primacy of interest in language, other meaning-making systems have been called simply "nonverbal," but work over the past few decades on bodily gesture, facial expression, clothing, spatial positioning, ritual practice, and expressive systems such as the visual arts has helped us to see langugae as only one among many ways of making meaning and has excited interest about how different semiotic systems combine and interact in communication. (Young 2009: 14)

Right-o, but it's not few decades anymore, but rather half a century already.

Malinowski (1923) wrote his first discussion of the inseparability of meaning and activity as a contribution to a volume of essays that itroduced the semiotics of American philosopher C. S. Peirce to a British readership. (Young 2009: 23)

My first thought was: "Incredible! Why have I not heard of this before?" and then I reasized that this volume of essays might be The meaning of meaning.

The concept of context of situation was later taken over and expanded by J. R. Firth, who, in a number of publications (J. R. Firth, 1935, 1957 [p. 9]), attempted to systematize exactly which features of context of situation were relevant. His list was short and included the following:

1. The participants: persons, personalities, and relevant features of these.
   • The verbal action of the participants
   • The non-verbal action of the participants.
2. The relevant objects and non-verbal and non-personal events.
3. The effect of the verbal action

(Young 2009: 24)

No wonder Birdwhistell was compelled by the notion of contex: Firth placed so much importance on nonverbal aspects of the context. Though I wonder why "The effect of the nonverbal action." is missing.

In 1974, Hymes published a revision of his seven components of speech events. He called the revised terms SSetting and Scene, Participants, Ends (purposes or outcomes), Act Sequence, Key (the tone or manner of the event), Instrumentalities (channel and form), nNorms (social rules governing the event), and Genre (the kind of event). Listed in this order, the seven factors or components of speech events form the acronym SPEAKING and, thanks in part to this felicitous mnemonic, Hymes's "SPEAKING model" became well known. (Young 2009: 28)

Not too well known, I imagine, as this is the first time I'm hearing of it.

Bergman, Mats 2009. Experience, Purpose, and the Value of Vagueness: On C. S. Peirce's Contribution to the Philosophy of Communication. Communication Theory 19: 248-277.

One of the reasons for the relative neglect of Peirce is certainly the sheer magnitude and complexity of his philosophical writings - a corpus that leaves most philosophers bewildered, to say nothing of normal mortals. For communication scholars, Peirce's theory of signs seems to be the most promising place to start, but many have no doubt turned back after a brief encounter with the unwelcoming neologisms and logical classifications of his semeiotic. (Bergman 2009: 249)

Indeed even the Electronic Edition of Peirce's Collected Papers comprises 2904 pages.

According to Ransdell (1997), Peirce "does not identify science or the scientific by reference to any special type of property of the sobject-matter of the science (its 'primary qualities', for example), or by reference to same special 'scientific method' (in the sense in which that would usually be understood), but rather by reference to the communicational relationships of its practitioners, considered members - past, present, and future - of a potentially infinite community of shared cognitive concern truth-seekers considered just insofar as they are genuinely in search of the truth about an object of common interest" (§ 6). (Bergman 2009: 255)

This is similar to my conception of nonverbalism: it is shared interest in the communicative and informative functions of bodily behaviour that unites past, present and future inquirers.

In spite of the fact that the idea of communication arguably is found at the very heart of Peirce's philosophy and his conception of science, another potential disappointment awaits the communication theorist; Peirce rarely talks about "communication" (Habermas, 1995). In fact, he offers no definition of the conceptp However, this is not such a debilitating deficiency as it may at first seem, for Peirce's theory of signs can largely be interpreted as an attempt to articulate and analyze the complex set of experiences covered by the term "communication." (Bergman 2009: 256)

Remember Cherry's contention that there is no communication without signs and the concept of sign-exchange/transmission/giving is not so far away.

Given the framework of Peircean semiotics, communication can vaguely and generally be portrayed as a complex of sign processes, in which the involved parties (whether individual intelligences, phases of the self, or collective agents) refer to certain subject matters, theoretically conceptualized as objects, with certain effects or consequences, summarized as interpretants. This multifaceted process need not be fully intentional - involuntary facial expressions frequently function communicatively - but it requires a common ground of experience, whether emotional, practical, or intellectual, which suffices to identify objects of communication. (Bergman 2009: 259)

Actually a quite serviceable outline.

In an entry in The Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology, Peirce and Christine Ladd-Franklin state the matter as follows:

In every proposition the circumstances of its enunciation show that it refers to some collection of individuals or of possibilities, which cannot be adequately described, but can only be indicated as something familiar to both speaker and auditor. At one time it may be the physical universe, at another it may be the imaginary "world" of some play or nover, at another a range of possibilities. (CP 2.536 [1902]; cf. CP 2.357 [1902])

In other words, there is no semiotic property that would distinguish the various universes from each other; not even the basic distinction between fact and fiction is fiven in the signs (see CP 2.337 [c. 1895]). (Bergman 2009: 262)

I intend to provide an outline of different universes in this sense in order to elaborate the referential aspect of concourse. "A range of possibilities" is a title.

The determination of the object is basically a process in which the references of a sign are made sufficiently clear for communicational purposes. That is, this type of determination consists primarily in specifying the object in various ways, so that it can act as a basis for semiotic interaction. In other words, in the case of communicational indeterminacy, the immediate objects need to be made suitably determinate, so that the object can function dynamically as a determinant of semiosis. We could, therefore, differentiate twe modes of determination: Communicational determination, in which indices or other means are used to decrease the indeterminacy of a communicational situation, and objective determination, in which the object acts as a delimiter of interpretation. (Bergman 2009: 263)

As I generally understand it, the writer determines the behaviour of his or her characters. Thus Bergman's distinction between these two forms of determination may become useful once I'm more familiar with Peirce's semeiotics.

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WORDS

• "...even the most dessicated work of art..."

  Desiccation is the state of extreme dryness, or the process of extreme drying

• "...critics have equated art with the purgation of meanings..."

  1. The purification or cleansing of someone or something.
  2. (in Roman Catholic doctrine) The spiritual cleansing of a soul in purgatory.

• "...Pater's terms wore not austere enough..."

  1. Severe or strict in manner, attitude, or appearance: "an austere man with a puritanical outlook".
  2. (of living conditions or a way of life) Having no comforts or luxuries; harsh or ascetic.

• "...readers will, in truculent naivete, threat them as peaple in human situations..."

  Eager or quick to argue or fight; aggressively defiant.

• "...fiction, unlike acrostics, is clearly an art that is somehow made of human events..."

  A poem, word puzzle, or other composition in which certain letters in each line form a word or words.

• "...the plot amounts to the shape of a circonflex..."

  The circumflex (ˆ) is a diacritic used in the written forms of many languages, and is also commonly used in various romanization and...

• "...novelists can maintain a kind of choral vitality..."

  1. Composed for or sung by a choir or chorus.
  2. Engaged in or concerned with singing.

• "...a paucity of descriptive observations from natural settings..."

  The presence of something only in small or insufficient quantities or amounts; scarcity.

• "...Wittgenstein gave copious examples..."

  Abundant in supply or quantity.

• "...Dewey, with his firm denial of the theory/practice dualism and his melioristic sensibilities..."

  (meliorism) the belief that the world can be made better by human effort.

• "...individual experience that easily slips into simple positivism or gets mired in solipsism..."

  1. Cause to be stuck in mud.
  2. Cover or spatter with mud.

• "...when we discuss a vexed question..." [a title]

  1. (of a problem or issue) Difficult and much debated; problematic.
  2. Annoyed, frustrated, or worried.

• "...the whole thing might be a rather puerile prank..."

  Childishly silly and trivial.

• "...Peirce boisterously proclaims..."

  1. Rough and stormy; violent.
  2. Loud, noisy, and lacking in restraint or discipline.

• "...mutually supportive rather than in perniciously divergent..."

  a. Tending to cause death or serious injury; deadly: a pernicious virus.
  b. Causing great harm; destructive: pernicious rumors.

• "...magnificently cavalier with respect to his manuscripts..."

  Showing a lack of proper concern; offhand.

• "...to lead the reader through all the peripeteia of an adventure narrative..."

  A sudden reversal of fortune or change in circumstances, esp. in reference to fictional narrative.

• "...epopee of the Flaubert school..."

  An epic, saga.

• "...nervous energy which sluice off the nervous excitement..."

  Wash or rinse freely with a stream or shower of water.

• "...our senses, motility, and desires..."

  ability to move spontaneously and independently.

• "...experienced as true with irreducible verisimilar objectivity..."

  appearing to be true or real; "a verisimilar tale".

• "...which is short and curt in the world of typed communication..."

  Rudely brief: "his reply was curt".

• "...chiding himself for his shortcomings..."

  Scold or rebuke: "she chided him for not replying".

• "...truancy, insubordination, theft, immorality, and violation of the Child Labor Law..."

  failure to attend (especially school).

• "...the headwaters of poetic creativity itself..."

  A tributary stream of a river close to or forming part of its source.

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JOURNAL ARTICLES

• Argyle, M., and J. Dean 1965. Eye contact, distance and affiliation. Sociometry 28: 289-304.
• Duncan, S. 1969. Nonverbal communication. Psychological Bulletin 72: 118-137.
• Keiser, G. J. and I. Altman 1976. Relationship of nonverbal behavior to the social penetration process. Human Communication Research 2: 147-161.
• Scott, R. L. 1977. Communication as an intentional, social system. Human Communication Research 3: 258-268.
• Wescott, R. W. 1966. Introducing coenesics: a bio-social analysis of communication. The American Scholar 35: 342-356.
• Gilbert, C. and P. Bakan 1966. Visual asymmetry in perception of faces. Neuropsychologia 11: 355-362.
• Koneya, M. 1977. Query on Ekman: Nonverbal movements or verbal surrogates. Journal of Communication 27: 235-237.
• Lansdell, H. C. 1969. Verbal and nonverbal factors in right-hemisphere speech: Relations to early neurological history. Journal of Comparative and Physiological Psychology 69: 734-738.
• Sousa-Posa, J. F. and Rp Rohrberg 1977. Body movement in relation to type of information and cognitive style. Human Communication Research 4: 19-29.
• Wolff, W. 1933. The experimental study of forms of expression. Character and Personality 2: 168-176.

BOOK ARTICLES

• Bonson, T. W. and K. D. Frandsen 1976. An orientation to nonverbal communication. In: Applebaum, R. L. and R. P. Hart (eds.), Modcom: Modules in Speech Communication. Chicago: SRA.
• Birdwhistell, R. L. 1967. Some body motion elements accompanying spoken American English. In: Thayer, L. (ed.), Communication: Concepts and Perspectives. Washington, D.C.: Spartan Books.
• Condon, W. S. and W. D. Ogston 1971. Speech and body motion synchrony of the speaker-hearer. In: Horton, D. L. and J. J. Jenkins (eds.), Perception of language. Cosumbus, Ohio: Merrill.
• Barker, L. L. and N. B. Collins 1970. Nonverbal and kinesic research. In: Emmert, P. and W. D. Brooks (eds.), Methods of research in communication. New York: Houghton Mifflin.
• Dittman, A. T. 1978. The role of body movement in communication. In: Siegman, A. W. and S. Feldstein (eds.), Nonverbal behavior and communication. Hillsdale, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
• Mountcastle, V. P. 1966. Representation of information. In: DeReuck, A. and J. Knight (eds.), Touch, heat, and pain. Boston: Little, Brown.
• Ruesch, J. 1973. Nonverbal language. In: Stewart, J. (ed.), Bridges not walls. Reading, Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley.

BOOKS

• Dubin, R. 1969. Theory Building. New York: Free Press.
• Eisenberg, A. M. and R. R. Smith 1971. Nnoverbal Communication. N.Y.: Bobbs-Merrill.
• Leathers, D. G. 1976. Nonverbal communication systems. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.
• McCardle, E. S. 1974. Nonverbal Communication. N.Y.: Marcel Dekker.
• Mehrabian, A. 1976. Public places, private spaces. N.Y.: Basic Books.
• Scheflen, A. 1973. Communicational structure: Analysis of a psychotherapy transaction. Bloomington, Indiana: University of Indiana Press.
• Tolman, E. C. 1932. Purposive behavior in animals and men. N.Y.: Century.
• Benson, T. W. and K. D. Frandsen 1976. An orientation in nonverbal communication. Chicago: Science Research Associates.
• Wilden, A. 1972. System and structure: Essays in communication and exchange.
London: Tavistock.
• Counts, Earl W. 1973. Being and Becoming Human: Essays on the Biogram. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold.