Beyond Words

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Autor	Randall P. Harrison (1929-)
Pealkiri	Beyond Words: An Introduction to Nonverbal Communication
Ilmunud	Englewood Cliffs, N.J. : Prentice-Hall, 1974
Link	books.google.ee/books?id=QpuyZ6joRPkC
Viide	Harrison, Randall P. 1974. Beyond Words: An Introduction to Nonverbal Communication. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall.

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• The sheer wealth of nonverbal cues. Even in a simple cartoon such as this we find hundreds of nonverbal cues.
• The way even minor cues elicit distinct meanings. For example, just seeing the eyebrows tilt up or down elicits a strong impression of each man.
• The complexity of our inference processes. We seem to say to ourselves: "That cue must mean ... and combined with that cue it must mean ... but this other cue countermands that, so it must really mean ... ," and so on.
• Our low awareness level. We apparently perceive and process nonverbal cues, often with little awareness that we have taken them in, that we have responded to them, that they are influencing our behavior.
• The differing interpretations made by individuals. For example, most people see the handshake as a sign of agreement, but that is not true in all cultures; meanwhile, some people see the crossed fingers as "hoping" while others interpret it as "deception."
• The complex relationship between verbal and nonverbal symbols. We try to make them fit together; and when they don't we reexamine again and again.

(Harrison 1974: 10)

Let's take a typical American middle-class male as he moves through a day's activities. What are the nonverbal cues he might produce - and process?
He begins each day by preparing himself as a nonverbal message to the world. He shaves his face. Or at least part of it, having recently grown sideburns and a mustache to appear younger and more debonair. He uses toothpaste, soap, and deodorant to manage his messages of smell. He adds cologne, after-shave lotion, or perfume. He brushes his hair into a style that is current - or at least relatively acceptable to those he meets. Some of his friends, of course, don wigs, to look more youthful and more stylish. And both his male and female friends use an array of cosmetics, to enhance their best features, to cover blemishes, to accent the features currently in fad.
Our American male dresses not only to protect his tender hide from the elements; his clothes are a statement about himself. He matches his garb to the events of the day: play, work; informal, formal; important, unimportant. His dress reflects the way he feels about himself, the way he feels generally: happy, sad; youthful, mature; fashionable, conservative. Again, his clothing may accent his best features - or remold those that are not so great. He may wear padded shoulders, just as his wife may wear a padded bra. Both he and she may squeeze into "foundation garments" to smooth the bulging tummy, to slim the too-plump hips. (Harrison 1974: 11)

(Nonverbal) care of the self.

On the way to work, he literally bets his life on nonverbal communication. Every time he steps off the curb or into an automobile, he wagers that others will know the nonverbal codes he does. He counts on others to have the same meanings for yellow lines painted down the middle of the road. For red and green lights. For diamond-shaped or triangular-shaped signs. For the policeman's gestures. For the ambulance's flashing red light. For the driver's turn signal. (Harrison 1974: 12)

Nonverbal communication and driving, traffic, pedestian stuff, etc.

He receives information, pictorially, graphically, color-coded, sized for important. (Harrison 1974: 12)

A neat designation for the relationship of size and status/power. The Japanese industrial manufacture is a good case - different sizes of electric soccets for differently important households, for example.

• two basic problems in nonverbal communication:
  • the problem of "missed cues" - not catching available nonverbal signs; and
  • the problem of "miscues" - catching but misinterpreting nonverbal events.
• two fundamental miscues, or types of error:
  • assigning meaning to meaningless events; and
  • not assigning meanings to meaningful events.
• two levels of meaning confusion:
  • knowing what the sign denotes or refers to; and
  • knowing what the sign connotes - what feelings and associations it elicits.

(Harrison 1974: 16)

Very... semiotic.

Sometimes we even miss the cues we send ourselves. A friend or spouse says, "What did you mean by that look?" And we say, "What look?" (Harrison 1974: 19)

Related to self-communication, but here rather self-communication-through-hetero-communication; or nonverbal-self-communication through verbal-hetero-communication. Perhaps: the limit of self-indication? We cannot indicate to ourselves how we behave sometimes because we do not see ourselves, but others do.

But with nonverbal events, we are often left wondering whether we are dealing with anything symbolic or not. If we see someone move, it may be that (a) it's a random movement; he was simply tired of what he was doing before; or (b) it reveals someimportant state within the individual or within the interaction; or (c) it's a very purpusefukl, meaningful motion intended to communicate specific information to someone else. An individual might scratch himself because he just happened to itch - or because he was just bitten by a mosquito. On the other hand, a therapist might note that every time a particular topic comes up his client scratches a certain part of the anatomy. The therapist might begin to suspect that the scratch was not random but that it revealed psychological distress or confusion, perhaps even a symbolic attack upon the self. Finally, a couple might set up a prearranged signal on their way to a dubious party: "When I scratch my lseft ear that means I want to leave." In quite a different area of nonverbal communication, many people have trouble when they look at abstract art. They can't tell it ift's the purposefully encoded message of a great artist ... or the random dribblings of a not-so-great-artists ... or the efforts of a talented primate. (Harrison 1974: 20)

A cue, as we have used the term, refers very broadly to any stimulus (a) that is above the sensory treshold of some human being and (b) for which tht human has some response. Nonverbal cues are all those stimuli we respond to - other than the spoken or written word. In this chapter we have begun to distinguish among different kinds of cues. And we will now want to distinguish between the broad category of nonverbal cues and the more specific process of nonverbal communication.
The term "nonverbal communication" has been applied to a bewildering array of events. Everything from territoriality of animals to the protocol of diplomats. From facial expressions to muscle twitches. From inner, but inexpressible, feelings to outdoor, public monuments. From the message of massage to the persuasion of a punch. From dance and drama to muisc and mime. From the flow of affect to the flow of traffic. From extrasensory perception to the economic policies of international power blocks. From fashion and fad to architecture and analog computer. From the smell of roses to the taste of steak. From Freudian symbol to astrological sign. From the rhetoric of violence to the rhetoric of topless dancers.
This is a fascinating spectrum. But it is also a rather confusing hodgepodge when we are first trying to get our bearings. As a jumping-off point, we will deal with nonverbal communication as follows:
Nonverbal communication is the exchange of information through nonlinguistic signs. This proposition, in turn, contains some key terms which need elaboration:

• Sign: a sign is a stimulus which, for some communicator, "stands for" something else; it "means" something above and beyond itself.
• Nonlinguistic: the primary linguistic sign is the word in spoken or written form; thus we are concerned with the full range of nonword signs.
• Information: in a technical sense, information involves the manipulation of uncertainty; it suggests that, for some organism, uncertainty is decreased - or increased.
• Exchange: by exchange we mean to imply more than one communicator linked in some way so that at least one of them can respond to the signs produced by the other. The easiest example is two individuals in face-to-face interaction. But we would include mass-media systems, where one communicator encodes messages, in one time and place, for other communicators at another time and place. We would even include such communicators as Rembrandt and da Vinci - long dead, but whose messages still find an audience.

(Harrison 1974: 24-25)

At first, it seems it should be simple to map communication. We all communicate from birth. It is as obvious - and yet as unnoticed - as breathing. But under scrutiny, communication begins to look more complex. It is familiar but subtle. It is unique and universal. It is slippery and inescapable. It may be one person making one gesture to someone. And even that simple act is multidimensional, multifaceted, multileveled. Or it may be an ongoing code system such as a language, or music, or an art form, which lasts thousands of years and encompasses millions of people. (Harrison 1974: 26-27)

Larry Barker and Nancy Collins identified 18 candidates for the nonverbal domains: (1) animal and insect; (2) culture; (3) environment; (4) getural, facial expression, bodily movement, and kinesics; (5) human behavior; (6) interaction patterns; (7) learning; (8) machine; (9) media; (10) mental processes, perception, imagination, and creativity; (11) music; (12) paralinguistics; (13) personal grooming and apparel; (14) psychological; (15) pictures; (16) space; (17) tactile and cutaneous and (18) time.
Abne Eisenberg and Ralph Smith use three major categories of nonverbal communication: paralanguage; kinesics, and the study of body movements; and proxemics, the study of space. Meanwhile, Mark Knapp organizes the nonverbal domain into (1) body motion or kinesic behavior, (2) physical characteristics, (3) touching behavior, (4) paralanguage, (5) proxemics, (6) artifacts, and (7) environmental factors. Michael Argyle includes (1) bodily contact, (2) posture, (3) physical appearance, (4) facial and gestural movement, (5) direction of gaze, and (6) nonverbal aspects of speech - timing, emotional tone, and accent. Finally, Starkey Duncan outlines nonverbal communication in terms of (1) body movement or kinesic behavior (e.g., gestures and other body movements, including facial expressions, eye movements, and posture); (2) paralanguage (e.g., voice qualities, speech nonfluencies, and such vocalizations as laughing, yawning, and grunting); (3) proxemics (i.e., the use of social and personal space); (4) olfaction; (5) skin sensitivity to temperature and touch; and (6) use of artifacts (e.g., dress and cosmetics). (Harrison 1974: 28)

THIS BRIEF ENCOUNTER BETWEEN TWO ROOMMATES introduces us to an ongoing communication system. What do we mean by "system"? A system is a set of interrelated elements. There must be (a) elements, and (b) relationships. Al and Bill are elements in this communication system; they are related by the messags they exchange.
In this chapter we will introduce you to the problems of being a good system analyst, the problems of diagnosing effective (and ineffective) communication situations. This is the first step in becoming an effective systems administrator, an individual who can create and maintain effective communication systems. (Harrison 1974: 38)

Boundaries/Environment
Figure 3-1 suggests that systems can be separated from their environment by a boundary. With physical systems, this boundary is often obvious. The skin is the physical boundary of the human body. The boundaries of communication systems are sometimes harder to identify. The nonverbal literature, for example, suggests that we walk around with a "bubble of personal space," a region of psychological territory which is within the boundary of our "self" system. If people come too close, they violate this invisible system boundary. In the example of Al and Bill, they are elements in a common communication system. Al's new acquaintaince is outside the system - in the "environment" - at least for the moment. Bill and his book define another communication system. Al is outside the boundary of that system. (Harrison 1974: 39)

Interaction system; semiosphere; self; Umwelt.

Figure 3-2 indicates that systems can be analyzed at levels. The level we are primarily interested in is called the system. But the system may, in turn, be made up of several subsystems. These subsystems may be made up of subsubsystems, and so on. The elements in our lowest level of analysis are called components.
Moving in the other direction, our system may be part of a subsystem in some larger suprasystem. In the example of Al and Bill, their living space represents a system that is within a larger suprasystem: an apartment building, a dormitory, a fraternity house, a coop, a rooming house. This suprasystem may, in turn, be a system within a larger suprasystem: an apartment complex, the dormitory system, the fraternity system, the off-campus living system. The living area may, in turn, be divided up into subsystems, such as kitchen, bathroom, bedroom. Or we might consider other subsystems: the electrical system, the plumbing system, the heating system. Avid television viewers are, of course, familiar with the important subsystems of the human body, such as the gastrointestinal system and the sinus system. (Harrison 1974: 40-41)

Evolution refers to the long-range history of a system: its growth and development, its expansion and perhaps eventual decline. Within evolution, or even within the shortest cycles of activation, we can often see distinct stages: (a) the formation stage; (b) the operation stage, with its activities devoted to maintenance and productivity; and (c) the termination stage, when the system is deactivated or closed down. (Harrison 1974: 48)

As we examine human code systems, we can note two major strategies of coding: the digital and the analogic. In an analogic system, the code elements are (a) continuous and (b) natural. The code bears a similarity to the referents. At least some of the code elements or relationships are similar to elements and relationships in the objects and events being denoted. It is a "natural" relationship. For example, a portrait looks like the person portrayed. In the digital code, the code elements are (a) discrete and (b) arbitrary. In other words, each code eleement is sharply different from others; the letter "a" is different from the letter "b," and the number "1" is distinct from the number "2." Second, the codes do not resemble the objects and events being denoted; their assignment is arbitrary. The letter "a" does not resemble an object in the real world. Or, the word "ape" does not resemble the active, furry creature we apply that label to. (Harrison 1974: 62)

In the analogic codes, a variety of elements or relationships may be preserved or made iconic. Sometimes, three-dimensionality is preserved, as in a model. Sometimes color is preserved, as in film or a painting. But sometimes the underlying relationships are captures, as in a blueprint, map, or X-ray. Finally, the analogic code may present a very abstract symbol of the referent, a symbol which attempts to capture the feeling or movement or spirit; modern abstract art is in this category.
These three types of symbols have names: (a) icons are those which bear a strong outward appearance; (b) schematics are those which capture underlying relationships (e.g., a map is a "schematic"); and (c) abstractions are those which, like modern art, capture the feeling or function of an object or event. In each type of symbol, however, we may find a range of "iconicity." For example, some maps are more iconic than others. And some abstract art is more representational, more iconic, than other art. (Harrison 1974: 62-63)

HUMAN SIGN PROCESSES
Man is an active agent in the world. He produces his own energy. He directs it at his environment. He channels it toward goals of his own choosing. Moment by moment, he processes stimuli. He sorts. He sifts. He interprets. He infers. He manipulates his uncertainty and the uncertainty of others. And at the center of this activity is his use of signs. Signs and patterns of signs are produced, transmitted, interpreted, stored. Signs fuel interaction. Signs fire the imagination. Signs ignite man's potential for shared understanding.

Man, the Uncertaintiy Manipulator
In thinking about man as a communication receiver, it is easy to imagine him as a passive receptacle. For example, we might be tempted to think: a message stimulus comes in; and he reacts. If no message, no reaction. A more accurate picture of man sees him as active, aggressively seeking information, constantly exploring. While awake, he is in a continual state of tension. He maintains a plateau of uncertainty. He constructs expectations. He tests. He checks. He develops new predictions. (Harrison 1974: 64-65)

This means, of course, that the same marker may be a sign for one man and not for another. One man may look at the red spots on your face and say, "Look at the funny red spots." A doctor may look at the same markers and say, "Measles!" A wife may see her husband make movements, conscious or unconscious, which indicate he's ready to leave the party. Others may see the same movements, but for them the markers are not a "sign" of anything. Similarly, the psychiatrist may make inferences on the basis of his patient's behavior. For the untrained observer, the same behaviors, the same markers, would be meaningless. (Harrison 1974: 66)

Symbols are those signs which are not signals; they are the pictures and words and marks and sounds which stand for other objects and evenets. They elicit meanigs from the receiver, denotative meanings and connotative meanings. But they do not demand action; they only ask to be interpreted. They do not herald the arrival of other events. They can talk about the not-here and the not-now, events which may be far removed in time and space. (Harrison 1974: 67)

The analogic-digital distinction may, however, become most important with the symbol. It is in presenting - or re-presenting - the not-here and the now-now that the analogic symbol may be most powerful. Similarly, it is in the digital symbol that we see the amazing efficiency of the human sign process. Man can store, transmit, receive, and retrieve vast stores of knowledge by manipulating 26 letters and 10 numbers.

Sign Patterns
As we use the term "sign" in this book it may apply to a single stimulus or a whole pattern of stimulation. Like our use of the term "system," we will apply "sign" to the symbolic level we are examining. But at times the "sign" will have many subsystems, other signs which go to make up the larger symbol. For example, we might take the picture of a face as a sign. But within this symbol, the line representing the mouth is also a sign.
Occasionally, we will want to draw attention to the fact that we are talking about a configuration of signs, and in those instances we will use the term sign pattern. In short, a sign pattern is a system made up of other signs. And in this pattern, as in any system, the relationships are likely to be important. The total facial expression may be a sign pattern. So would be a picture layout, or a movie sequence.
This may help us over a point of frequent confusion in nonverbal communication. Often, we think of signs as specific stimuli which elicit responses (e.g., denotative and connotative meaning). But when we begin to examine communication systems in operation we quickly note the importance of pattern. Man, as an active communicator, frames expectations. And he acts on them. He doesn't merely wait for meaningful stimuli to arrive.
As a result, when an expected sign does not occur, that is meaningful, too. When you smilingly say, "Good morning," to a friend and he doesn not respond, you wonder what is wrong. If you think of signs as only the presentation of specific stimuli, you will have trouble analyzing that situation. It appears that you are reacting to a nonsign, or the lack of a sign. If, however, you recognize the larger system of signs, the sign pattern, your friend's nonresponse is part of an important event which may well signal that something is amiss. (Harrison 1974: 68-69)

Figure 4-3 Possible Human Code Systems.
Fundamental motor act	Basic unit produced	Combined into	Studied by	Typical act or skill
uttering	phoneme	morpheme	linguistics	poetry
scratching	glyph pict	glytomorph pictomorph	glyptics pictics	writing drawing
molding	plasm	plastomorph	plastics	sculpture
building	technem	technomorph	tectonics	architecture
moving	kine	kinemorph	kinesics	dance
sound	tone	melos	melodics	music
touch	hapton	haptomorph	haptics	fondling
produce smell	ozone	aroma	aromatics	perfumery
produce taste	edon	edomorph	edetics	cooking
space arrangement	proxeme	proxemorph	proxemics	city planning
time arrangement	chron	chronomorph	chronemics	timing
filming	edeme	edemorph	vidistics	cinema

(Harrison 1974: 72)

But with the kinesic informant, difficulties arise. For example, the speaker gets feedback both from the movements of his mouth and from the sound he hears. He knows when he's made a "slip of the tongue," not because he feels it in his tongue, but because he hears the sound he has produced. But the kinesic informant only gets internal feedback. He knows how the move feels. But he doesn't see how the facial expression or movement looks to another. He may not detect his "slips of the face." As a result, the kinesic informant may have difficulty producing the "same" movement twice. He knows there's "something there" but he is unreliable as a producing informant. (Harrison 1974: 73-74)

Decoding
Within the social sphere, perceptual selectivity also screens the cues man uses. Where at the psychological level, this selectivity is related to individual differences, on the social level this selectivity stems from roles and group norms. Two managers, although very different in personality, might be attuned to the same nonverbal clues - because of their executive role. Similarly, members of a group may be acutely aware of cues that others would miss. Initiates of a teenage gang might see sharp differences between themselves and others, in dress, hair style, ornaments, manners. Meanwhile, to the adult "all the kids look the same." (Harrison 1974: 87)

Sensory gating, roles, subcultures.

In general, it will be helpful to note that nonverbal signs may be (a) enduring, (b) temporary, or (c) momentary. The enduring markers are those that, like monuments or architecture, may continue for long perods, beyond the life of one communication system, perhaps beyond the life of the participants. Or, at a more individual level, the enduring markers may include the general appearance of the person: how big he is, how his face and body are structured, what he looks like day in and day out. These markers move with the individual from communication system to communication system. They may have an impact on interaction, but they are not specific to any one situation.
The temporary markers are those that do change over time, but that may be stable during one communication situation, or during a phase of interaction. The seating arrangement at a meeting, for example, could be set up in a number of different ways. But once organized, it is likely to remain the same during the whole meeting, or at least during much of the meeting. Similarly, the clothing people wear may change from day to day, but it is likely to remain the same during one interaction. Finally, individuals may have moods or other states that change from one day to another but don't change moment to moment. On a particular day, I may be feeling very good - or bad - and that happiness or sadness may influence all of my interactions.
The momentary markers are those that, like the spoken word, change from instant to instant. Facial expressions and hand movements are prime examples. They may shift many times during a single interaction. (Harrison 1974: 102)

Vocal Emblems
The most obvious vocal counterpart of an "emblem" is: the word. There are a few examples, however, of vocal sounds that are not words (or at least do not appear in the dictionary) but approach emblem status. Included would be sounds of disapproval such as the "tsk, tsk" clicking of the tongue or the "harumph" grunt. In more bucolic and chauvinistic days, young men (then called "wolves") would stand around on street corners whistling at girls with a characteristic sound of appraisal and appreciation. Another vocal emblem might be Charlie Brown's cry of frustration: "Augh!" (Harrison 1974: 110)

THE HEAD AND FACE ARE PERHAPS MAN'S RICHEST SIGN SYSTEM. In Western culture, the head is frequently used in art to represent the whole man; it is seen as the locus of his personality, his intelligence, his soul. The face is central in most communication situations. In fact, we speak of "face-to-face" communication. Or, the face is used symbolically, as in "face the music," or tragically, "losing face." The head is the locus of most of the primary sense receptors: eyes, ears, nose, mouth - seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting. By looking at a person's head we know whether he is awake or asleep, listening, smelling, tasting, hearing. Vocalizations come out of the mouth. Facial expressions play across the features. And we tend to read a man's physiognomy for his history - his genetic heritage, his time on this earth, and the way that time has marked his character. This chapter examines areas of performance code in the head and face: (a) apperance cues, (b) facial expressions, (c) eye behavior, and (d) head nods and movements. (Harrison 1974: 114)

POSTURE
The way a man walks and stands and sits is frequently taken as a message about himself. These cues are read for self-confidence, for signs of energy or fatigue, for clues about status. In interactions, man orients himself toward others. He can stand over another, or kneel in front of him. He can face him directly, or "give him the shoulder." He can lean forward, or recline backward. He can lean to the right or to the left. He can sit erect or he can slouch. He can fold his arms and legs in a tight, defensive posture, or he can "open up" in a sprawling, relaxed pose. He can adopt the same pose as his fellow communicator, or he can take a contrary posture. (Harrison 1974: 132)

The most intentional use of clothing as communication is in uniforms. Individuals in different roles are dressed differently, prestructuring the interactions they will have. The uniform indicates status, appropriate communication content, appropriate rules of interchange. On amny campuses, moves have been made to take the campus police out of uniform. But these attempts have been resisted, sometimes for surprising reasons. (Harrison 1974: 148)

MARSHALL MCLUHAN HAS ARGUED THAT: "The medium is the message." McLuhan, in turn, got some of his best ideas from Harold A. Innis, an economic historian. Innis noted that some media are "time-binding," and some are "space-binding." Media such as telephone, telegraph, radio, and television allow man to extend his reach across space. He can instantaneously be in touch with other man, on the far side of the blobe, or the far side of the moon. Messages from these media, however, are short-lived. They are not "time-binding." Meanwhile, messages in the print media, in paintings, statues, and monuments, last. They are not as easily transported across space. But they are more permanent. (Harrison 1974: 160)

In the Soviet Union a few years ago, I was struck with the enormous portraits of Lenin scattered throughout the country. At that time there was no advertising, so where an American would expect to see a billboard or a sign on the side of a building, the Soviet citizen was likely to see Lenin's head, with some famous quotation. Lenin's body is, of course, preserved and displayed in his tomb on Red Square. The visitors can go and see the actual man. Usually, when seeing a famous person in the flesh, I think, "There he is, big as life." But upon seeing Lenin, my reaction was, "There he is, small as life." He was a little man. And that was startlingly apparent after seeing hundreds of mammoth portraits. (Harrison 1974: 164)

Big Brother ish.

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a glossary of key terms

[Harrison 1974: 196 > ] The following terms are a few of the concepts used by researchers of nonverbal communication. The definitions given are brief, introductory orientations; frequently the concept is more complex than a few words would suggest. Similarly, the same term may be used by different authors to denote different phenomena Where a term was introduced into the literature by a particular author, his name appears in parentheses.

ABSTRACTION. An analogic symbol that captures feeling, function, or connotation; compare icon and schematic.
ACTION LANGUAGE. Movement not done with the intent to communicate but which is informative; compare sign language, object language (Ruesch & Kees).
ADAPTORS. Behaviors originating in the adaption of the individual to his environment. Three types: behaviors directed toward self, object, or alter; compare illustrators, emblems, illustrators, regulators (Ekman & Friesen).
AFFECT DISPLAY. Nonverbal behavior, such as facial expression, that reflect emotional states, compare adaptors, emblems, illustrators, regulators (Ekman & Friesen).
ALLOKINE. One of a number of nondistributive variants of a kineme or gestural unit.
ANALOGIC. A relationship between sign and referent in which aspects of the referent are preserved in the sign; compare digital.
ARTIFACTUAL CODES. Sign sets arising from the use of objects; compare performance, spatio-temporal, mediatory codes.
BANDS. The channels and sensory receptors available for transmitting and receiving either verbal or nonverbal signs.
[Harrison 1974: 197 > ]
BATON. A type of illustrator (gesture) that provides emphasis, accent, punctuation.
BLEND. An affect display that combines emotional cues, e.g., a surprised, raised brow with a happy, smiling mouth.
CADEME. A basic element in film communication; a shot as it comes from the camera; see edeme, vidistics (Worth).
CODE. A set of transformations; a cluster of markers with rules for organization and interpretation; see artifactual, mediatory, performance, spatio-temporal codes.
COMMUNICATIVE. Done with intent to communicate; compare informative, interactive (Ekman & Friesen).
CUE. A stimulus that elicits response from some organism.
DIGITAL. A relationship between sign and referent in which the signs are discrete and arbitrary, e.g., letters and numbers; compare analogic.
DISPLAY RULE. A rule that modifies the display of nonverbal behaviors such as affect cues; may intensify, deintensify, neutralize, or mask.
EDEME. A basic unit in film communication; the edited film shot; see cademe, vidistic, Fig 4-3 (Worth).
EMBLEM. A highly stylized nonverbal behavior with well-articulated meaning; compare adaptors, affect displays, illustrators, regulators (Ekman & Friesen).
GLYPTICS. THe study of written, verbal symbols; Fig 4-3.
ICON. An analogic symbol that, in particular preserves outward appearance of the referent; compare abstraction, schematic.
ICONICITY. The degree to which a sign or sign pattern resembles its referent.
IDEOGRAPHS. Illustrators (gestures) that trave the flow of a thought or idea.
ILLUSTRATORS. Nonverbal behaviors that accompany speech, elaborating, punctuating, commenting upon. Term includes: batons, ideographs, kinetographs, pictographs, pointers, spatials; compare adaptors, affect displays, emblems, regulators (Ekman & Friesen).
INFORMATIVE. Not necessarily done with intent to communicate, but interpretable by an observer; compare communicative, interactive (Ekman & Friesen).
INTERACTIVE. Describes nonverbal behavior that may not be done with intent to communicate and may be responded to with little awareness but yet has an observable effect on interaction; compare communicative, informative (Ekman & Friesen).
[Harrison 1974: 198 > ]
KINE. A rudimentary unit of movement in Kinesics; see Fig. 4-3 (Birdwhistell).
KINEME. A unit of body movement comparable to the phoneme in linguistics; see kinesics (Birdwhistell).
KINEMORPH. A unit of body movement made up of one or more kinemes; see kinesics, Fig. 4-3 (Birdwhistell).
KINESICS. The system and study of body movement in communication; see Fig. 4-3 (Birdwhistell).
KINETOGRAPH. An illustrator (gesture) that demonstrates or reenacts some bodily action (Ekman & Friesen).
MARKER. A stimulus transmitted between two components of a system, i.e., a sign-vehicle. Differently in kinesics: a movement that marks off speech or interaction.
MEDIATORY CODES. Sign sets arising in the use of media such as film, art, music; examples include cuts, fades, cropping.
MESSAGE-SPACE. The space taken up by a message; may be the same as, less than, or more than "event-space."
MESSAGE-TIME. The time it takes to decode or process a message; may be the same as, less than, or more than "event-time."
MICROFACIALS. Fleeting facial expressions, sometimes difficult to detect with the naked eye.
MORPHEME. In lingusitics, a minimum distinctive unit of grammar, e.g., a word is composed of one or more morphemes.
NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION. As used in this text: the exchange of information through nonlinguistic signs.
OBJECT LANGUAGE. The use and display of material items, both intentional and unintentional; compare sign language and action language (Ruesch & Kees).
PARALANGUAGE. The system of "extra verbal" elements that accompany speech, including voice quality, vocal qualifiers, and vocal segregates.
PARTIALS. Affect displays involving only part of the face, e.g., a surprised, raised brow but neutral eyes and mouth.
PERFORMANCE CODES. Sign sets produced with the human body, e.g., facial expressions, hand gestures, body movements; compare artifactual, mediatory and spatio-temporal codes.
PHONE. In linguistics, a rudimentary vocal sound.
PHONEME. In linguistics, a basic sound unit; a morpheme is composed of one or more phonemes; see Fig. 4-3.
PICT. A rudimentary unit in drawing; the counterpart of a phone in speech.
[Harrison 1974: 199 > ]
PICTEME. The basic unit in a pictorial code; the counterpart of a phoneme in speech.
PICTICS. The system and study of pictorial communication, especially drawing.
PICTOGRAPH. An illustrator (gesture) that draws a picture or shape in the air (Ekman & Friesen).
PICTOMORPH. The minimum distinctive pictorial unit; parallel to the morph or morpheme level in speech; see Fig. 4-3.
POINTERS. Illustrators (gestures) that point to a referent; also called "deictic" movements.
POINTS. Movements, e.g., of eye or head, that punctuate the structural flow of interaction; compare position, presentation (Scheflen).
POSITIONS. Larger divisions of interaction, incorporating one or more points;; compare presentation (Scheflen).
PRESENTATIONS. Major divisions of interaction, incorporating one or more positions; compare points, positions (Scheflen).
PROXEMICS. The system and study of behavioral patterns associated with the use of space; see Fig. 4-3 (Hall).
REGULATORS. A type of body movement, such as head-nods, that regulates the flow of interaction; compare adaptors, affect displays, emblems, illustrators (Ekman & Friesen).
SCHEMATIC. An analogic sign that captures relationships or structure of the referent, e.g., maps, blueprints, diagrams; compare icon, abstraction.
SEQUENTIAL SYNTAX. The organization of code elements sequentially in time or space, e.g., most verbal sign patterns; compare synchronic syntax.
SIGN. A stimulus (marker) that "stands for" some other event for some interpreter; compare signal, symbols.
SIGN LANGUAGE. The purposeful use of gestures to replace words; compare action language and object language (Ruesch & Kees).
SIGN PATTERN. A configuration of signs; a system of sign elements.
SIGNAL. One type of sign; it is likely to "announce" another sign or to elicit an action response; compare symbol.
SPATIALS. Illustrators (gestures) that indicate size or relationship.
SPATIO-TEMPORAL CODES. Sign sets emerging in the use of time and sace; compare artifactual, mediatory, performance codes.
SYMBOL. A type of sign, emphasizing denotative and connotative meaning; compare signal.
[Harrison 1974: 200 > ]
SYNCHRONIC SYNTAX. The organization of code elements, simultaneously in time or space, e.g., picture layour; compare sequential syntax.
SYSTEM. A set of interrelated elements; the system is separated from its environment by a boundary; several levels may be present: suprasystem, system, subsystem, and component.
VIDISTICS. The system and study of cinematic communication; see Fig. 4-3 (Worth).

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• Gunther, Bernard. Sense Relaxation. New York: Macmillan, 1968.
• Larry L. Barker and Nancy B Collins, "Nonverbal and Kinesic Research," in P. Emmert and W. D. Brooks (eds.), Methods of Research in Communication (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1970), pp. 343-372.
• Abne M. Eisenberg and Ralph R. Smith, Jr., Nonverbal Communication (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1971).
• Starkey, Duncan, Jr., "Nonverbal Communication," Psychological Bulletin, 72, 1969, pp. 118-137.
• Theodore M. Newcomb, "An Approach to the Study of Communicative Acts," Psychological Review, 60, 1953, pp. 939-404.
• Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1966).
• Harold A. Innis, The Bias of Communication (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1951).

Dance as a Form of Art

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Feibleman, James K. 1950. The Art of the Dance. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 8(1): 47-52.

Nevertheless, if art has value, we cannot rid ourself of the conviction that it ought to survive. What, then, are we to think of those arts which are notoriously ephemeral in their material? Canvases and paints are more perishable than clays and stones, quite irrespective of what is or is not done with them in painting and sculpture. And there are, besides these, arts whose very nature precludes survival.
Among the latter there stands out prominently the art of the dance. The material of the dance as an art form consists in human bodies and their movements. (Feibleman 1950: 47)

The fact is that dancing is a universal human activity, and includes relations with practically all other human activities. That would appear to make our problem simpler, and it does in one way, but there is another way in which it does not. For while dancing seems to have a continuity as prolonged as that of any other institution in human culture, this is not true of the dances themselves. The content of the dance, in so far as the dance celeberates other human activities, is irrelevant if not spurious. Dances to bring rain and dances to prepare for war have in common to all sorts of dances sufficient to enable us to recognize that they are dances. We have, then, the problem of discovering what this element is. (Feibleman 1950: 48)

In essence the dance is an art among other arts and yet in some way set apart from them. We shall have to call upon some prior definition of art, and then examine the dance empirically in order to discover how under that definition the particular art of the dance can be singled out from the others.
The universality of dancing among human beings raises another and more serious difficulty in the path of the attempt to understand the nature of the art of dance. Plainly, there can be no such thing as a conscious art-form which is (a) not accomplished by human beings for the most part, and which is (b) devoted exclusively to human beings. So far as (a) is concerned, it is clear that the plastic arts, for instance, are worked by human beings, although with objective materials and for the achievement of a purpose which lies beyond human beings is that the works of art which are made are expected, if they prove to have any value, to survive objectively and independently the lives of the artists who are responsible for them. (Feibleman 1950: 48)

In employing the movement of the human body as its material, the dance adopts a means which is capable of enormous variations. The movements of the human body are limited only by the possibilities of the physiological and anatomical functions, more specifically by the skeletal and neuromuscular systems. These are mechanical limitations; yet the possibilities they prescribe are simply enormous. In a world where there are millions of people, it is still possible to identify individuals by their casual gait in walking, a remarkable enough fact. The variations of human movement in an unstudied way are innumerable; how many more must there be in a planned sequence of movements? The logic of the dance is a selection from the logic of human movement: poses, stretches of muscle, transitions from one movement to another, formal patterns consisting of sets of movements. All the variations, for instance, which are known to music are also possible to the dance. There can be in movement the theme-and-variations pattern, the fugal pattern of imitative movement, even contrapuntal movement. And of course the dance has and can invent patterns of its own. The dance has been said to be geometry in motion, and the art is also related to sculpture and architecture in being a plastic medium. (Feibleman 1950: 50)

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Cohen, Selma Jeanne 1953. Dance as an Art of Imitation. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 23(2): 232-236.

"Rhythm alone, without harmony, is the means of the dancer's imitations," wrote Aristotle, who then added - a bit grudgingly - "for even he, by the rhythms of his attitudes, may represent men's characters, as well as what they do and suffer." (Poetics: 1447a). This was ascribed considerable power of imitation to dance, claiming that it could show motivation, the emotional springs of action. (Cohen 1953: 232)

When, in the seventeeth century, some little thinking about dance technique had started, theories of the art as imitation began to stir. But they advocated only the lesser part of Aristotle's claim - that the dancer imitates what men do and suffer. Even when given an allegorical significance, the closest the contemporary ballets came to the imitation of character was the depicting of generalized classes of men distinguished by a single trait, such as desire for power or delight in intrigue. (Cohen 1953: 232)

But in the early twentieth century Michel Fokine mourned that the only difference between a dancer doing thirty-two pirouettes and an acrobat who did twice as many was that the acrobat did his with more certainty. The aim of the dancer, he cried, is not to establish a record; it is to express feeling beautifully. (Cohen 1953: 234)

The modern trend follows the line of Fokine but has become far more explicit regarding the origin of expressive movement. Fokine wrote mainly in terms of styles, periods, and national characters. Contemporaries go further by analyzing the movement signs of particular emotional qualities.
The basic premise is not new. But its scientific application to theatrical dance is new. Modern choreographers avow their indeptedndess to Desaltre who developed his own theories of gesture for use with speech or as pure pantomime. The system assigned fixed postures and movements to signify emotional states. These wre not, like gesture language of the old Russian ballet, arbitrarily set meanings. Rather, they were based on the inherently representative qualities of human movement used in non-theatrical life since the first foot was stamped in an instinctive expression of anger. (Cohen 1953: 234)

The moods of expressions of movements have a double source. It will be easily understood that a body and arm stretching high wide has a different expression from that of a body huddled up on a floor. It would be wrong, however, to speak of definite moods expressed by positions, because the dancer can move into any position in very different ways. Suppose he reaches the highly stretched position one time with a soft floating movement and another wime with an energetic thrust. It is obvious that the mood of the movement will be different each time. The expression of movement depends therefore on several factors - space, location, including shape, and dynamic content, including effort (Rudolf von Laban. Modern Educational Dance. London: 1948, p. 44).

(Cohen 1953: 235)

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Foregger, Nikolai 1975. Experiments in the Art of the Dance. Translated by David Miller. The Drama Review: TDR 19(1): 74-77.

The dance fulfills certain functions, strenghtens the basics for self-discipline in the masses, provides practice for the learning and mastery of rhythm (mass dances, which is so necessary in all labor processes. (Foregger 1975: 74)

The dance can be summarized as follows:
A. The art of the dance is independent; in relation to the other arts it may utilize Moliére's maxim: "Take what you need where you find it." Music provides a rhythmic support for the dance; painting, a colorful setting - but no more.
B. The dance must not be an illustration of music. The musical melody and the plastic may not coincide. The dancer and the violin form a duet.
C. In the dance, the expressiveness of the whole body is important, and not its parts. A slip or indifference of any one of the parts of the body in the dance is akin to a torn wire in a grand piano.
D. The affected line, pliant softness, slackness, incompleteness in the dance pattern, a passive surrender to the musical melody define the female beginnings in the dance.
Precision, firmness, muscular effort, and aggressiveness in fulfilling the pattern of the musical accompaniment characterize the male beginnings.
E. Eras of decline attribute the central position in the dance for women; the eras of construction - to men. The reverie, romance, and finesse of the nineteenth-century dance was transmitted by the ballerina. The validity, reality, and the strenght of our times must be demonstrated by the male dancer.
F. The male dancer leads the dance. Precision, boldness, strenght define his work. The demand for pre-eminence for the male dancer does not mean the abolition of all female dancers. Male and female elements manifest themselves not through the work records of the performers but in the predominance of various traits of aggressiveness or passivity that are transmitted in the dance.
G. Thematic task of the dance: it is either the manifestation of accents in movement (combat, defeat, passion, victory, etc.) or the reflection of contemporaneity. The images that surround us are celebrated in the rhythmic pattern of the dance. In the dance of savages can be seen stories of the fat gamebird, the slumbering forests, a battle with a favorable outcome. Our life creates dances of the sidewalks and speeding automobiles, and renders homage to the precision of machine functions, the quickness of flowing crowds, and the grandeour of skyscrapers. (Foregger 1975: 74-75)

Recognizing the plastic and the classical exercises needed for the training of today's dancer as a secondary element equivalent to acrobatics and sport, the schools found it necessary to establish their own system: the system of dance and physical training - tafiatrenage (EDITOR'S NOTE: French for "molasses-pulling.")
[...]
And so, the pattern of tafiatrenage exercises is constructed along two lines:

1. Exhaustive training of the dancer's body (musculature).
2. Training and increasing his psycho/physiological potentials (control, volitional impulses, reflex arousal, etc.).

The two groups are not isolated in the course of the work. They are closely wovened together, creating a chain of tasks ranging from the primitive (lifting the arm, which is mechanical, active, and passive, etc.) to the complex (group constructions). (Foregger 1975: 75)

The task of the school is to bring out and develop the series of qualities that the dancer needs. In ordinary life, a person is not aware of his body; he does not sense the functions of various muscles. Furthermore, Philistine wisdom asserts that only during an illness does one feel one's body. The dancer, however, must always be sensitive to his body's harmony and be aware of every contraction of the muscles. This leads, most importantly, to the development of the following skills:

1. Control of one's movements. Work on coordinating exercises for the separate parts of the body.
   Further tasks in the construction of the exercises are the same.
2. Speed of the plastic memory; attention to oneself and to one's partner (coupling). The trainer demonstrates the exercise several times and outlines it once. Exercises in pairs of larger groups.
3. Emotional coloring of the exercises.
4. precision and speed of reaction. Boldness. Interrupted movement. Arbitrary alternation of the chain of exercises.
5. Inventiveness and ingenuity. Development of plastic thought. Completion of the assigned exercise basics. A reciprocal movement in the sequence of construction. The shaping of the musical phrases, etc.

(Foregger 1975: 76)

The worker at the lathe, the soccer player in a game, already harbor within themselves the outlines of the dance. We must learn to recognize these features. (Foregger 1975: 77)

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Sparshott, Francis 1983. The Missing Art of Dance. Dance Chronicle 6(2): 164-183.

As I was bringingto completion a long piece of writing in which I tried to make plain the living importance of this way of articulating thought, it began to dawn on me, first, that I had said less about the art or arts of dance than I would have expected; second, that aesthetics in the last two centuries has shared this neglect of dance; and third, that some versions of the eighteenth-century systems of the fine arts did not underemphasize the art of dance, but actually excluded it from consideration. (Sparshott 1983: 164)

The relative neglect of dance by theorists of aesthetics is for at least three reasons. First, the practice of dance is at least as widely diffused as any other practice to which the name of art might be given. Second, no theorist will actually come out and say that dance is not an art, not an important art form, not one of fine arts, or anything like that. And third, more than one important line of thought has in fact assigned to dance a place of key importance in some context of which the philosophy of art should be expected to take note. (Sparshott 1983: 165)

At the other extreme of the philosophical spectrum, Condillac's Essay on the Origin of Human Knowledge of 1741, a work that some authorities regard as the most important writing in the development of the theory of language, borrows from William Warburton'sthen recent Essay on the Hieroglyphs an argument that gained some currency in the eighteenth century and assigned to dance an important role in human development. Warburton noted in the Old Testament the frequency with which the prophets used visual imagery to drive their messages home and argued that this "language of action" must have been a survival, kept up in religious and other solemn contexts, of a once-universalsign language of meaningful gesture. This language, Condillac argues, was nothing other than the original form of dance, which with the advance of civilization took on the stylized and regularized forms that we know and split into two genres: the expressive dance of gesture, as in the ancient pantomime, capable of expressing thoughts; and la danse des pas, the dance of steps, capable of expressing such feelings as joy. It is from this language of the body that our language of words develops. And he adds in another context that music and poetry as we know them are offshoots of this more ancient art of gesture, the art of dance: so that, he says, one may conjecture that among all peoples in every age, some form of dance, of music, and of poetry could be found. (Sparshott 1983: 165)

At a time when I thought I knew how Hegel's system worked but had not ransacked his lectures for obiter dicta, I presumed that Hegel's reason for silence might have been that an art of dance in the classical mode would be superfluous, on the ground that the moving human body, being "made in the divine image," is already perfectly expressive without art: any intelligently efficient action simply is the bodily form that mind takes. But it turns out that this is not Hegel's line at all. He does, in fact, recognize a classical art of dance. But he does so as part of what, when we assemble its parts, proves to be a rather subtle argument that has not been much noticed, but that is worth looking at.
Hegel begins by noting, following an argument already a century old, that we can see animal forms as beautiful because of their visible functionality. But, he goes on, we cannot see beauty in the movements of animals because we cannot see them as meaningfully unified. We cannot divine the purposefulness in them because the animal's purposes are not ones we immediately share - we have to try to work out intellectually what the animal is up to. On the other hand, being ourselves human, we can find beauty in human movement-we grasp the thread of its continuity without having to stop and think. And where we find beauty especially is, of course, in those movements where the human unity is inherent in the organizing principle of the movement itself as movement, not imposed by an ulterior end or by a message to be conveyed. So it is that we find beauty in the human movement of music and of dancing, which Hegel describes as "in itself regular, definite, concrete, and measured-even if we abstract altogether from the meaning of which it is the beautiful expression.' In fact, he sees the gestural art of pantomime as beautiful in just this way: "In this plastic music of bodily posture and movement the peaceful and cold work of sculpture is ensouled and animated into a dance, and music and plastic art are in this way unified." Similarly, as I have already intimated, the symbolic dances that portray the heavens are in fact danced for their plastic quality: "We do not dance in order to think about what we are doing, interest is restricted to the dance and the tasteful and charming solemnity of its beautiful movement." (Sparshott 1983: 172-173)

There is, however, a way of putting what is really the same point that is more favorable to Hegel. He discounts all values that are not constructively related to the formation of a human being as a citizen and a member of a rational society. Private enjoyments, special behaviors, all those arts that Aristotle classified as arts pros diagogen, arts "contributing to the course of life," are played down as inconsequential. None of the fine arts, as Hegel sees them, is appropriately judged by properly aesthetic values: the "beauty" of which he speaks is, in fact, always the manifestation of ideas that can be justified in terms of the general good, ultimately the Absolute. The connoisseur is despised because he fastens his attention on those aspects of art that have least relation to the central values of human life, and the virtuoso who caters to his taste is likewise dismissed as a master of irrelevance. It was this totalitarian insistence on public and universal dimensions of value that Kierkegaard claimed made Hegel not only the supreme philosophical genius of his age, but also repulsive and ridiculous. (Sparshott 1983: X)

In the literature of dance in Western civilization we find a recurrent contrast between the dance of athleticism and agility, centered on legs and feet, and the dance of eloquent gesture, centered on arms and hands. The classical dance would be a dance of the unified body, as the sculptor's chisel cuts everywhere with equal care; but our argument would now be that the unity must always be unstable, between mindlessly twinkling toes and abstractly gesturing hands. (Sparshott 1983: 177)

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Ruyter, Nancy Chalfa 1973. American Delsartism: Precursor of an American Dance Art. Educational Theatre Journal 25(4): 420-435.

In the American theatrical arts, the movement against formalism and a concurrent development toward respectability received their earliest impetus from the nineteenth-century field of study called "expression." The forerunner of expression had been elocution, a system of voice and speech training that gained increasing importance in American education from the 1820s onward. From the mid-century, instructors in elocution began to emphasize gesture and physical motion more and more. The term "expression" came into use and included physical culture, pantomime, dramatics, and interpersonal communication as well as professional training for public speaking. Training in the narrower field of elocution had originally been an important part of education for men-especially for clergymen, lawyers, public readers, and lecturers. As educational opportunities for women expanded, training in expression came to be considered as useful and appropriate for young ladies and society matrons as for educated men.
Expression was taught by various methods, but the best known and ultimately the broadest in application was associated with the name of Franqois Delsarte (1811-1871). This French music and drama teacher had spent many years studying the movements, gestures, facial expressions, and vocal behavior of people in all kinds of situations to develop what he hoped was a complete, scientifically-based system of dramatic expression. Underlying his technical system was an elaborate and mystical science of aesthetics deriving from his personal interpretation of the Christian Trinity. In America, the original Delsarte System was expanded upon. Emphasis was placed on the aesthetic theory and on physical culture and pantomime techniques that American Delsartians added to, or derived from, Delsarte's work. Because of these emphases, American Delsartism could be a more important influence on the development of an alternative dance art than any of the other schools of expression. (Ruyter 1973: 422)

Fundamental to the whole method were principles of relaxation and naturalness, and these fundamentals remained basic to the system throughout its three phases. In the words of a later Delsartian, the training was designed

to give symmetrical physical development, and to take out the angles and discords, to reduce the body to a natural,passivestate, and from that point to trainit to move in harmonywith nature's laws. The movements are without nervous tension, and all feats and exertions are discouraged.

The Harmonic Gymnastics were designed for the training of actors and public speakers. Yet inherent in such an approach to expressive movement was a potential alternative to the traditional ballet. (Ruyter 1973: 424)

There is no question that, in the last decades of the nineteenth century, expression was a popular and respected field of study in America, and that the Delsarte System, with its emphasis on physical culture, was the best known and the most widely dispersed approach to expression. (Ruyter 1973: 434)

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Arnold, Peter J. 1995. Objectivity, Expression, and Communication in Dance as a Performing Art. Journal of Aesthetic Education 29(1): 61-68.

The expression as process theory of art starts out with the assumption that the artist begins in an emotional state that perturbs him and leads him to search for a clearer conception of it. The process ends when he is able to give articulate expression to it. In this theory, it should be noted, the so-called artwork is mental rather than being of and existing in the world. It need not, in other words, necessarily result in an actual painting, poem, or piece of music. It is essentially something that has been borne only in consciousness. The concrete artifact, although useful for communicative purposes, is inessential to the primary task of achieving, as S. Mulhall puts it, "reflexive clarity through the articulate embodiment of feeling." (Arnold 1995: 62)

A second use of the word expression occurs when the onlooker of a work of art, a piece of sculpture perhaps, says that it invokes a feeling of tenderness in her. There is something about it that predisposes her to feel, think, or imagine it this way. Again, a piece of music may evoke or arouse in the listener a feeling of sadness. How this comes about is not our present concern. But it is important to note that although, as has been suggested, some writers acknowledge a derivative connection between real-life sadness and musical sadness (or any type of sadness evoked by an art form), there is also a difference in that the latter is abstracted and depersonalized; it can be appreciated, even enjoyed, because, as John Hospers explains, it is free of the accidents or causal conditions that in real life would accompany it. The telling point against the evocation thesis of expression, however, is that art may not evoke sadness in the way the theory claims at all. As George Dickie explains, "Music expressive of sadness certainly does not always evoke sadness; for example, a person might listen to a piece of music which expresses sadness, agree that it expresses sadness, and simply be too happy at the moment to feel sad." (Arnold 1995: 63)

A further complication is that unlike in such still arts as painting and sculpture, in the performing arts there is not just one defini tive art object to which reference can be made; rather, the work exists in many variants, each of them deriving from a common script, score, or notation. A performative art, in other words, normally admits to the possibility of multiple instances of the "same" work. (Arnold 1995: 65)

The performer can make or mar what the composer or playwright has created. In dance the situation is similar. Whatever the choreographer has created, the performance lies in the hands, or rather the personhood, of the dancer and his or her ability to express what is required by the dance. It falls to the dancer's interpretative and expressive powers to reveal what the dance is about and how best to present its potential emotional content. It should be noted that in fulfilling this task the dancer does not necessarily have to be having an emotion in order to express it. Expression results from her professionalism, her artistic "know-how," rather than the emotional state she may happen to be in. (Arnold 1995: 65)

It was said earlier that the primary task of performers is to present to the audience what is entailed by a particular work. To do this satisfactorily, they must first understand what the work is about. Only when its meaning (or an intelligible meaning of it) is discovered can the task (or process) of how to communicate or express this meaning begin. Here then is the fourth sense of expression: expression as communication. From the point of view of the dancer as a performer/artist, expression as communication consists in the intentional act of presenting to others a dance (or at least her role in it) in an artistic and articulate way so that its meaning is conveyed to them. On this view of expression, the dancer is seen as an expresser of meanings. The dancer tries literally to embody meaning and be discriminatingly expressive in the movements she makes. She knows what she wants to communicate and goes about it in such a way that it is clearly transmitted to others. (Arnold 1995: 66)

To communicate expressively in dance, the dancer must be more than the mere formulator and transmitter of a simple message. She must use her imagination, technique, and style to imbue the dance in a distinct and artistically interesting way with whatever meaning is to be conveyed, with the result that new shades, levels, and subtleties of meaning emerge and become intelligible to the audience. (Arnold 1995: 66)

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Arnold, Peter J. 2000. Aspects of the Dancer's Role in the Art of Dance. Journal of Aesthetic Education 34(1): 87-95.

What I am suggesting is that the dance as an art form can exist only insofar as it can be and is performed in an aesthetically interesting way. The dance does not lie in what has been notated but in the dynamic qualities the dance presents through the dancer. (Arnold 2000: 88)

Briefly put, the concept of an agent is prima facie the concept of a being who is, at least for some of the time, free to act in a way that he or she chooses and thinks is appropriate in a given context. What the concept of agency resists is that a dancer is but a body whose movements are like so many sequences of causally related happenings that go on in the world or that they are or should be entirely determined by the choreographer as if the dancer were some sort of puppet or programmed performer.
In order to develop this point it will be suggested that, broadly speaking, there are two types of dancers: those who are passive and those who are active. The passive dancer is one who is or who is perceived to be a willing and compliant vehicle in the hands of the choreographer. The dancer in this case submits herself to the control of the choreographer (or others who wish to determine what is to happen in a particular production) and attempts obediently and as skillfully as possible to carry out that which is dictated. The role of the passive dancer, whether seen from the perspective of the dancer or the choreographer, is essentially one of a tool or an instrument to be manipulated. Individuality and initiative are neither wanted nor encouraged.
The active dancer, on the other hand, is one who sees herself, or is seen by the choreographer and others, as a person who is both interested in and capable of informed collaboration. Neither the dancer nor the choreographer wishes the role of the dancer to be conditioned, subservient, or submissive but rather rational, imaginative, and contributive. The thematic parameters of a dance may be set by the choreographer, but they are open to being discussed, altered, or embellished by the active and encouraged involvement of the dancer. What characterizes the active dancer, unlike the merely technically proficient or obedient one, is that she knows what is required and performs her movements with understanding and purpose. (Arnold 2000: 89)

On such a vast topic little can be said here, but two points at least are worth making. The first is that there should be a systematic initiation into an understanding of such key aesthetic concepts as unity, balance, harmony, rhythm, line, theme and variation, development, and tension, so that they can be applied to the way in which movements and dance sequences can be perceived, analyzed, and evaluated. When such concepts as these have been grasped and are being used appropriately, a good basis has been provided that helps the dancer not only to make a dance but also to perform it with intelligence and insight. What is being argued then is that one important strand in a dancer's aesthetic education is the cultivation of a capacity to regard things, including the dancer's own dances, with a particular kind of informed and imaginative attention so that he or she becomes critically reflective and discriminating in relation to them. (Arnold 2000: 90)

Important as bodily structure and physicality are in the dance, the dance is concerned with more than apposite body types; it is concerned also with the grammar of motion. For this to be acquired, technique of the highest order is necessary, together with such associated qualities as strength, speed, endurance, and suppleness. Only when these have been mastered can the embodied form of the dancer be presented convincingly in the dance. Only when skills have been acquired and an expressive vocabulary built up will the dancer find freedom through discipline. Without technical competency any ability to communicate will remain limited and clumsy, if not be made impossible. (Arnold 2000: 93)

Inside Intuition

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Autor	Flora Davis
Pealkiri	Inside intuition: what we know about nonverbal communication
Ilmunud	McGraw-Hill
Link	http://books.google.ee/books?id=DvRJOyRiS-wC
Viide	Davis, Flora 1973. Inside intuition: what we know about nonverbal communication. New York: McGraw-Hill.

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I rarely do an article without being tempted to try out a new career. When I interview an anthropologist, I wind up wishing I could become one. If I spend an hour consulting a psychotherapist, I emerge into the gritty New York sunlight wondering why on earth I wanted to be a writer when i could conceivably have stuck with psychology in college and ended up a therapist. It's never so much the job that intrigues me as the subject itself. (Davis 1973: vii)

I do think that the day may come when you will be able to take courses in decoding nonverbal behavior, and I'm not at all sure that will be a good thing, especially if they promise too much.
Nevertheless, we all have the ability to decode to some degree. We call it intuition. We learn it in babyhood and use it all our lives on a subconcsious level, and that's much the most efficient way to do it. In a flash, we interpret a body movement or react to a tone of voice, and we read it in as part of the whole message, which is clearly better than consciously juggling several dozen different message components, some of which may actually contradict one another. (Davis 1973: ix)

Self-conciousness is a problem for many people when they first become aware of the fact that body motion communicates. It attacked me so acutely at times that I was momentarily half-paralyzed. Interviewing the scientists was particularly intimidating. By the time I'd listened to three of them talk about palm-presentation - an open-handed gesture often made by Anglo-Saxon women when they are attracted to a man - I was practically sitting on my hands. But eventually I came to accept what one of the experts suggested to me: that people can be as alike or as different as the leaves on a tree and that the scientists seldom take note of a gesture unless it's something really unusual. (Davis 1973: x-xi)

The concept of nonverbal communication has fascinated nonscientists for centuries. Sculptors and painters have always been aware of how much can be conveyed in a gesture or by a posture, and nonverbal skills are the actor's stock in trade. The novelist who relates that a character "stubbed out his cigarette vicariously" or "rubbed his nose thoughtfully" dips into a shared folklore of gesture. (Davis 1973: 1)

It seems that from the time a baby is born we tell it hundreds of times a day in subtle, nonverbal ways whether it is a boy or a girl. Most people actually hold a girl baby differently than they do a boy - in our society, boys, even at a very early age, are apt to be handled more roughly.
Every time a boy baby acts in a way that accords with our convictions about how a boy ought to act, we reinforce his behavior. The reinforcement can be something as subtle as an approving tone of voice or a fleeting approving facial expression, or it can be quite verbal and specific (indulgently: "Isn't that just like a boy?"). And of course we reward a girl for showing feminine traits. Little boys may not be scolded for wanting to play with dolls, byt they are seldom encouraged to. Perhaps the total absence of any response - the lack of positive vibration - tells the boy he is doing something boys are not meant to do. (Davis 1973: 6-7)

Among women the one most determinately feminine and sexy is often the least responsive to any real, personal approach. Birdwhistell has found a difference between a sexy woman and a sexual woman, a difference that is not hard to spot at practically any cocktail party. The sexual woman may start the evening standing on the sidelines looking uninteresting; but when she gets into conversation with a man she likes, her face and the whole way she holds her body change. A man who is aware of the change may feel that in some mysterious way he has made her beautiful.
The sexy woman, on the other hand, is the one in the low-cut dress who is surrounded by men. But the men she is surrounded by are men who do not really like women and are there because it is the safest spot in the room; the sexy woman is so busy sending signals that insist "I am a woman. I am a woman. I am a woman" that she demands nothing of the men she is with except their undivided attention, since she is too busy playing a part to have any real interest in them. Essentially, she is a tragic figure. Probably she was once a little girl who learned to be cute and pretty to please parents who used her as a showpiece, which taught her at the same time that people often treat each other as possessions. When she grew older, she began to be approached by men who did not like women. Because they needed to prove that they were men, they used her simply as what the feminists call a sexual object. In the end she becomes a brittle, anxious woman who presents a very simple picture of herself and sells a very simple commodity. She may even say, "Men are only interested in one thing." But that may actually be all she can offer; she has never learned to respond or to exchange with another human being. (Davis 1973: 12-13)

Pioneering studies on novnerbal communication in courtship have been done by the kinesicists, chiefly by Dr. Albert Scheflen, working with Ray Birdwhistell.
In analyzing films of courtship, Scheflen has documented the fact that love does sometimes make a woman - or a man - beautiful, and has even pinned down in detail just how this happens.
A woman, for example, becomes briefly beautiful when an emotional response, such as sexual attraction, triggers subtle changes in her body. In their deliberately dry way, the kinesicists speak of the whole delightful phenomenon as coming into a state of "high courtship readiness." (Davis 1973: 14-15)

Palming is the subtlest signal of all. Most Anglo-Saxon women habitually hold their hands curled and show only a rare flash of palm. Yet in courting, women palm all over the place. Even gestures ordinarily done palm in, such as smoking or covering a cough, in courting may be made palm out. (Davis 1973: 16)

A stage-by-stage analysis of human courtship, begun recently by Dr. Adam Kendon, a psychologist who has worked with Scheflen, has turned up other possibly universal features that can also be seen in animal courtship. Kendon's study, using films of couples that were taken in public parks, indicates that, for the woman, courtship combines two different elements. First, she shows off her sexuality to attract the man, then she reassures him with childlike behavior - coy looks, cocked head, and soft, babyish gestures. The man, in turn, demonstrates his male prowess, perhaps by standing tall and gesturing aggressively, and also reassures by becoming somewhat childlike.
The parallel animal behavior arises from the actual physical danger involved in the courtship situation among animals. The male of the species risks an ill-tempered attack if the female isn't feeling receptive, and when it's the female who makes the first approach, she sometimes takes a beating before the male is reassured, by the very fact that she doesn't fight back, that she's not a threat. So animal courtship also generally has two stages: first the individual must attract a sexual partner; then it must overcome the other's fear of close contact. Imitations of the young are sometimes used to reassure. The male woodpecker finch may invite the female into his nest by mimicking the gestures of a nestling begging for food. Male hamsters when courting imitate the baby hamster's call. (Davis 1973: 22-23)

Years of studying films such as this one have led a pioneering kinesicist, Ray Birdwhistell, to conclude that much of the real, bedrock business of human communication is carried out on a level below consciousness at which words are only indirectly relevant. He estimates that no more than thirty-five percent of the social meaning in any conversation is embedded in the words that are spoken.
There are times when the scientist is at least as fascinating as the science, times when an extraordinary degree the man's own views of the human condition shapes and informs his work. This is true of kinesics, which is very much the brain child of one man - Ray Birdwhistell - and the history of kinesics is primarily the history of the development of his thought.
Birdwhistell first conceived an interest in body motion in 1946, when he was doing an anthropological field study in western Canada and was living among the Kutenai Indians. It struck him then that the Indians looked entirely different when speaking English than they did when speaking Kutenai. Their smiles, head nods, movements of the eyebrows, all changed.
"It was something that haunted me after I left there," he said. (Davis 1973: 25-26)

An expert in kinesics can actually tell a European from an American by the way they move their eyebrows in conversation. (Davis 1973: 26)

an Italian, when he sees a pretty girl, may comment by tugging at one ear lobe; an Arabn in the same situation will stroke his beard, while an American makes two downwar, in-and-out movements with his hands as if outlining womanly curves. However, these gestures are often used in a kind of ironic comment when the woman in question isn't at all attractive, with the irony supplied by facial expression, posture, or some other body behavior. In the same way, an experienced army private, when he salutes, can convey anyting from approval to ridicule just by what he does with his face or body stance, or by the speed and duration of the arm movement, or simply by choosing to salute in a situation in which a salute isn't at all appropriate. (Davis 1973: 27-28)

Because human movement patterns are so complex, they can't be analyzed on sight; they must first be transcribed, a problem that has plagued most students of communication. Birdwhistell solved it years ago by inventing his own ingenious shorthand system, one that has been adapted and used by some other scientists since. (Davis 1973: 29)

#concursivity

Birdwhistell summed up his particular view of human communication for me this way:

Years ago, I started with the question: How do body motions flesh out words? Now I ask instead: When is it appropriate to use words? They're very appropriate to teach or to talk on the telephone, but you and I are communicating on several levels right now and on only one or two of them have words any relevance whatsoever. These days I put it another way: Man is a multisensorial being. Occasionally, he verbalizes.

(Davis 1973: 33)

One of the more startling theories put forward by communication experts is the notion that sometimes the body itself communicates - and not only by the way it moves or the postures it assumes. There can also be a message in the very shape of the body and even in the way the features of the face are arranged, according to Ray Birdwhistell, who believes that physical appearance is often culturally programmed.
Birdwhistell believes that we learn our looks - we're not born with them. When a baby is small, his features are generally soft and unfrmed: a blob of a nose above a small, urgent, almost lipless mouth, a face that's all cheeks and eyes with the potential to become almost anything. Even eyebors are subject to change, for they can be very mobile and only gradually become set at a certain distance above the eyes. Just how far above is something the baby learns from those around him, family and friends. Birdwhistell says that this helps to explain why the people of some regions look so much alike, when it can't be a matter of genes. Eyebrow level can be a very distinctive characteristic. There are people who are beetle browed, while others - some upper-class Englishmen, for example - wear their eyebrows so far above their eyes that, to Americans, they look perpetually surprised. (Davis 1973: 34-35)

THe cultural patterning of static signals.

The faces we learn and the way we present our bodies carry not just the signature of our culture, they're our own signatures as well. They are one way we tell society whether to reward us or not. THe attractive, vivacious child gets more attention and opportunities than the unattractive one. But not everyone wants to be a leader, and success, because it generally entails new responsibilities, actually frightens many people. By being somewhat ugly, people reduce their responsibilities. THey can also punishm themselves, their parents, their husbands or wives. Obesity, for instance, can be self-punishment; it can also be a way to insulate oneself against sexual approaches - and some people feel more confident, more imposing, when they're bigger. (Davis 1973: 38)

#self

There won't be any great leap forward in psychotherapy, Ekman feels, since therapists are already using the new knowledge about communication; but there will be tremendous commercial exploitation.

I expect to see training institutes set up to train salesmen and job applicants [he said]. I expect there will be widespread monitoring of facial expressions during personnel interviews. I expect to see measurements of facial behavior used to pretest commercials - I've been approached already myself to set up all these things. No, I haven't accepted. And I expect to see business do quite explicit grooming and training of employees' facial behavior right across the board. I think it's quite possible to teach people to be better deceivers.

Some of these are uncomfortable predictions, but when I said so, EKman's reply was that as soon as nonverbal behavior becomes part of public knowledge, it will begin to change. As soon as studies are published describing the ways in which people betray the fact that they're lying, those particular leaks will disappear, perhaps to be replaced by others. It presents an odd problem for the social scientist: his behavioral studies may eventually precipitate changes in behavior which may in turn invalidate his earlier research.
The idea of a personnel trained to "monitor" facial expressions is somewhat chilling, a reminder of George Orwell's 1984, where a man commited a "facecrime" when his facial expression gave away the fact that he was thinking forbidden thoughts. Told body movements communicate, some people feel exposed, helpless, shown up even in silence; after all, one can refuse to speak but one can hardly refuse to move a muscle. (Davis 1973: 61)

I once heard a man say to a woman, "Do you realize that you just crossed your legs and folded your arms? You're obviously feeling very defensive." Here was an intrusion upon privacy, which was as wrong as the reading and discussion of another person's mail. (Davis 1973: 62)

It is an intrusion. It is also concursive speech. And it is also a Pease-ism.

Goffman doesn't have a laboratory. Instead, he has a filing system. When he writes, he puts together things he has read, bits of novels, newspaper clippings, items from books of etiquette, and what he learned in a year he spent studying the social structure of a mental institution. To this he adds his own systematic observations made in social situations, from cocktail parties to public meetings. The results, in cool, precise, measured prose, are his books on face-to-face interaction. (Davis 1973: 199)

Eco on Peirce and semes

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Eco, Umberto 2005. Lector in fabula. Tõlkija: Ülar Ploom ; eessõna: Peeter Torop. Tartu: Tartu Ülikooli Kirjastus.

Semeem on virtuaalne text ja tekst on mingi semeemi ekspansioon [paisutus]. Väide pole muidugi originaalne. See väljendab implitsiitselt (välja arvatud seal, kus seda eksplitsiitselt väljendatakse, võib-olla isegi niisuguses kontekstis, kus seda nagu ei oskakski otsida) Peirce'i semiootikateoorias ja see on täiesti kooskõlas piiramatu semiosise ja keskse interpretandi mõistega. (Eco 2005: 1)

Ohjah. Tulebki Eesti keeles lugeda seda seminariteksti. Mitte just kõige vahvam, sest leheküljenumbridki paistavad täiesti puuduvat (minu tsitaatides algab lk 1 põhimõtteliselt 2. peatüki esimesest leheküljest). "Semiosis" on kummaline tõlge; semiosis on justkui tõlkimata jäänud - Eesti keeles on see "semioos". Ja tõlketekste lugedes juhtub muidugi see mida ma kardan kõige rohkem: tõlgitud mõisted ei haaku originaal- või inglisekeelsete mõistetega; siin ei tea ma näiteks mis võiks olla "keskne interpretant". Mis puudutab väidet ennast, siis "semeem on virtuaalne text" läheb minu jaoks kaduma. Mina tean, et semeem on B. Pottieri järgi hulk seeme minimaalses märgis (või morfeemis); või Greimasi järgi lihtsalt mingi sõna "partikulaarne tähendus". Sisuliselt ütleb Eco siin, et "sõna on virtuaalne tekst" - mis ei meiki väga palju senssi. F* it. Pärast pikki otsinguid leidsin, et see peatükk on avaldatud ka kogumikus The Role of the Reader.

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Eco, Umberto 1984. The Role of the Reader: Explorations in the Semiotics of Texts. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

An intensional semantics is concerned with the analysis of the content of a given expression. This kind of study assumed in the last two decades two forms, complementary and/or alternative to each other: the interpretive analysis with the format of a compositional spectrum of markers and the generative analysis in form of predicates and arguments. While the former approach seems to be exclusively concerned with the meaning of elementary lexical entities, the latter seems to fit the needs of a textual analysis which considers both the semantic and the pragmatic aspect of discourses. (Eco 1984: 175)

This makes more sense. Intensional semantics concerns content and is further divided into interpretive and generative approaches: generative with the syntax of language (predicates and arguments), of course, and interpretive with the meaning of lexemes.

I think, however, that such a clear-cut opposition should not be established. As it is proposed in Chapter 8 of this book, a sememe is in itselt an inchoative text, whereas a text is an expanded sememe. The author who has more clearly advocated such an assumption (implicitly as well as explicitly) is Charles Sanders Perice. Some elements of Peirce's thought can be reexamined in the light of such theoretical perspective: Peirce's theory of interpretant cannot but lead to a form of meaning analysis which fits both the requirements of an interpretative and a generative semantics and only from Peirce's point of view can many problems of contemporary text theories be satisfactorily solved. (Eco 1984: 175)

It is very clear that a lot got lost in the Estonian translation of this text. So much so that the Estonian translation seems more like the translator was pondering Eco's texts in his own mind and trying to make sense of it, instead of translating it. Perhaps this is the same problem that plagued Schleiermacher - if you write about interpretation and openness of interpretation then your text is going to be interpreted - instead of translated - itself. It is clear that the sememe is not a "virtual text", but an "inchoative text". define:inchoative - "Denoting an aspect of a verb expressing the beginning of an action, typically one occurring of its own accord." It is a very linguistic term. Wiki says that inchoative aspect refers to the beginning of a state. Thus, a sememe is something from which a text begins; and text in this sense is an "expanded sememe" - because it began from a sememe. Makes more sense.

According to the principles of compositional analysis, a semiotic expression (be it verbal item or any type of physical utterance) conveys, according to linguistic conventions, an organized and analyzable content, formed by the aggregate (or hierarchy) of semantic features. These features constitute a system, either closed or open, and belongs to different contents of different expresisons in different arrangements. Compositional analysis should describe and define a virtually infinite number of contents by means of a possibly finite ensemble of features, but this exigency of economy gives rise to many aporias. (Eco 1984: 176)

Already I'm reading this for my own nonverbalist purposes. Presumably, a "physical utterance" can be a nonverbal expression, as long as it is, in kinesic terms, organized (into meaningful patterns of finite elements, say kinemes) and conveys some kind of content (in kinesics this "content" is quite problematic).

As a further criticism we can add that a compositional analysis in terms of universal features does not say satisfactorily in which linguistic environments the item can be inserted without producing ambiguity. There are rules of subcategorization, establishing the immediate syntactic compatibility of a given item, and there are selectional rules establishing some immediate semantic compatibility, but these instructions do not go beyond the normal format of a dictionary. Some scholars have proposed a semantic representation with the format of an encyclopedia, and this solution seems to be the only one capable of conveying the whole information entailed by a given term; but the encyclopedic representation excludes the possibility of establishing a finite set of metasemiotic features and makes the analysis potentially infinite. (Eco 1984: 176)

Here I can remark on the Greimasian undertones of this text: compositional analysis is what Greimas dealt with and ultimately it was quite fruitless (or so my linguist supervisor claims). In any case it is clear that he is referring to Hjelmslevian metasemiotics and the problem of establishing semantic congruence - e.g., using appropriate words in appropriate discoursive contexts. Indeed, on page 177 he explicitly refers to Greimas.

I have elsewhere demonstrated that Peirce offers the theoretical opportunities of extending the problem of compositional analysis to every semiotic phenomenon (Eco, 1976), including images and gestures.
Nevertheless, in order to maintain a certain parallelism between the two poles of our inquiry, I shall limit the subject of section 7.2 and 7.3 to Pericean proposals and examples concerning verbal language, even though this methodological decision obliges me to underestimate the important relationship between symbols, icons and indices. Someone could object that this limitation is imposed by the very nature of my subject matter: Peirce has said that only symbols (not icons and indices) are interpretable. "Pragmaticism fails to furnish any translation of meaning of a proper name or other designation of an individual object" (5.429); qualities have "no perfect identities, but only likenesses, or partial identities" (1.418). Only symbols seem to be isntances of genuine Thirdness (since they can be interpreted), whereas icons are qualitatively degenerate and indices are reactionally degenerate, both depending on something else without any mediation (the icon from a quality, the idnex from an object) (2.92 and 5.73). Moreover, "it is not all signs that have logical interpretants, but only intellectual concepts and the like" (5.482). (Eco 1984: 178)

This is extremely intresting because I did now know about this (I'm not that familiar with Perice). In a weird way it justifies why I'm beginning my semiotic research of nonverbal communication with literary interpretation (body language in literature), as in literature there are symbols, Thirdness, that can be interpreted. This is not to say that semiotics couldn't deal with body motion in real-life social interaction but merely that it is easier to begin with textualizations of interactions.

The self-sufficiency of the universe of content, provided by a given culture, explains why signs can be used in order to lie. We have a sign-function when something can be used in order to lie (and therefore to elaborate ideologies, works of art, and so on). What Peirce calls signs (which to somebody stand for something else in some respect or capacity) are such just because I can use a representamen in order to send back to a fictitious state of the word. Even an index can be falsified in order to signify an event which is not detectable and, in fact, has never caused its supposed representamen. Signs can be used in order to lie, for they send back to objects or states of the world only vicariously. In fact, they send immediately back to a certain content. I am thus asserting that the relationship between signifiant and signifié (or between sign-vehicle and significatum, or between sign and meaning) is autonomous in itself and does not require the presence of the referred object as an element of its definition. Therefore it is possible to elaborate a theory of signification on the grounds of a purely intensional semantics. I am not saying that an extensional semantics is devoid of any function; on the contraty, it controls the correspondence between a sign-function and a given state of the world, when signs are used in order to mention something. But I am stressing the fact that an extensional semantics can be elaborated (and that processes of reference or mention can be established) only because na intensional semantics is possible a sa self-sufficient cultural construct (that is, a code or a system of codes). (Eco 1984: 179)

define:vicariously - "indirectly, as, by, or through a substitute; "she enjoyed the wedding vicariously"." More very useful stuff. Nonverbal communication via text, or what I call concursive communication is based exactly on this fabrication. The descriptions of bodily behaviour in literary text has no reference to a given state of the world, it has reference to a lie.

Can we say that the texts of Peirce entitle us to accept this perspective? Obviously, in the Pericean framework, when signs are applied to conrete experiences or haecceitates, they are related ot the indicated objects. (Eco 1984: 179)

In the Estonian translation this is completely incomprehensible: "On päris selge, et teises tekstis pole interpretant enam idee, vaid teine märk. Või kui siin ongi tegemist ideega, siis on see teise märgi idee, millel peab olema omaenda representamen tollest ideest sõltumata. Lisaks tuleb idee sisse selleks, et kitsendada tolle antud objekti haeccitas't: objekt on selline ainult niivõrd, kuivõrd sellest mõeldakse mingis kindlas profiilis. Sellest mõeldakse kui millestki abstraktsest, kui võimaliku (ja väga isikliku) kogemuse mudelist." (Eco 2005: 2) - Perhaps these are two different texts? In any case, this English version is lenghtier andmore elaborate (not to mention making much more sense). In any case, Haecceity (Latin ) translates as "thisness": "[it] denotes the discrete qualities, properties or characteristics of a thing which make it a particular thing. Haecceity is a person or object's "thisness". It is also remarked on wiki that "Charles Sanders Peirce later used the term as a non-descriptive reference to an individual." This term was also used in Studies in Ethnomethodology and A Thousand Plateaus so it might be one of those philosophical concepts that are worth getting into.

But it is not by chance that in 1.540 Peirce established a difference between sign and representamen; when he says that he uses the words 'sign' and 'representamen' differently, he means that the sign is the concrete, token element (the utterance) used in the conrete process of communication and reference, whereas the representamen is the type to which a coding convention assigns a certain content by means of certain representaments. "By sign I mean anything that conveys any definite notion of an object in any way, as such conveyers of thought are familiarly known to us. Now I start with this familiar idea and make the best analysis I can of what is essential to a sign, and I define a representamen as being whatever that analysis applies to. ... In particular all signs convey notions to human minds; but I know of no reason why every representamen should do so." I read this passage as the proposal of a difference between a theory of signification and a theory of communication. Representamens are type-expressions conventionally correlated to a type-content by a given culture, irrespective of the fact that they can be used in order to communicate effectively something to somebody. (Eco 1984: 180)

This is not as far off from later nonverbal communication theorizing as one might think. E.g., the distinction between behaviour, information and communication can follow this very logic: behaviour initself can be quite irrelevant-insignificant-inconsequent, information is what we glean from behaviour (that is, if we associate behaviour-token with some kind of information-type), and communication occurs when intentional behaviour conveys the same information to the addressee as the addresser intended (they have shared interpretants). Also, this is definitely the same (source) text from which the Estonian translation originates: the bit about haecceitates and a certain profile occurs on page 181. It is the case that the Estonian translation has merely thrown a lot out (and in the process, become unintelligible for me).

It is absurd to maintain that Perice intended by object a given concrete things. This would be possible, at most, when considering the expression 'that dog' (and in this case only the object is a hecceity, 5.434). But according to Peirce even 'to go, 'up', and 'whenever' are representamens. Obviously, for a realist such as Peirce, even these expressions are referred to concrete experiences; and also from the point of view of a theory of signification oppositions such as 'up' vs. 'down' or 'to go' vs. 'to come' are established as elements of the content insofar as they reflect and legitimize our conrete experiences of space and time relations. But according to Peirce 'to go' is an expression that has no identity other than the agreement between its several manifestations; therefore its object is only the natural existence of a law, and an idea is a thing even though it has not the mode of existence of a hecceity (3.460). As for an expression such as 'Hamlet was insane', Peirce says that its object is only an imaginary world (therefore the object is determined by the sign), whereas a command such as 'Ground arms!' has as its proper object either the subsquent action of the soldiers or 'the Universe of things desired by the Commanidng Captain at that moment" (5.178). The fact that in this passage Peirce mixes up the response of the soldiers and the intention of the captain by defining both as objects shows that there is something ambiguous in is definition of object. In fact, the first case represents an interpretation of the sign, as we shall see later. But in either case it is clear that the object is not necessarily a thing or a state of the world but a rule, a law, a prescription; it appears as the operational description of a set of possible experiences. (Eco 1984: 181)

Yet another point for concursivity: this is where the object is determined by the sign. Although my own original distinction went the other way also: when the verbal description is of an imaginary world it is creation, but when it reflects and textualizes events of the real world it is a form of recreation. In the first the described behaviour is "invented", in the second it is "modified". For future reference I leave here Peirce's 5.177 and 5.178:

177. [My definition of a sign is:] A sign is a Cognizable that on the one hand, is so determined (i.e., specialized, bestimmt,) by something other than itself, called its Object, while, on the other hand, it so determines some actual or potential Mind, the determination whereof I term the Interpretant created by the Sign, that that Interpreting Mind is therein determined mediately by the Object.
178. This involves regarding the matter in an unfamiliar way. It may be asked, for example, how a lying or erroneous Sign is determined by its Object, or how if, as not infrequently happens, the Object is brought into existence by the Sign. To be puzzled by this is an indication of the word determine being taken in too narrow a sense. A person who says Napoleon was a lethargic creature has evidently his mind determined by Napoleon. For otherwise he could not attend to him at all. But here is a paradoxical circumstance. The person who interprets that sentence (or any other Sign whatsoever) must be determined by the Object of it through collateral observation quite idnependently of the action of the Sign. Otherwise he will not be determined to thought of that object. If he never heard of Napoleon before, the sentence will mean no more to him than that some person or thing to which the name "Napoleon" has been attached was a lethargic creature. For Napoleon cannot determine his mind unless the word in the sentence calls his attention to the right man and that can only be if, idnependently, [a] habit has been established in him by which that word calls up a variety of attributes of Napoleon the man. Much the same thing is true in regard to any sign. In the sentence instanced Napoleon is not the only Object. Another Partial Object is Lethargy; and the sentence cannot convey its meaning unless collateral experience has taught its Interpeter what Lethargy is, or what that is that 'lethargy' means in this sentence. The Object of a Sign may be something to be created by the sign. For the Object of "Napoleon" is the Universe of Existence so far as it is determined by the fact of Nepoleon being a Member of it. The Object of the sentence "Hamlet was insane" is the Universe of Shakespeare's Creation so far as it is determined by Hamlet being a part of it. The Object of the Command "Ground arms!" is the immediately subsequent action of the soldiers so far as it is affected by the molotion expressed in teh command. It cannot be understood unless collateral observation shows the speaker's relation to the rank of soldiers. You may say, if you like, that the Object is in the Universe of things desired by the Commanding Captain at that moment. Or since the obedience is fully expected, it is in the Universe of his expectation. At any rate, it determines the Sign although it is to be created by the Sign by the circumstance that its Unvierse is relative to the momentary state of mind of the officer.

I think I need to return to this passage numerous times again.

The meaning of a proposition, as well as its interpretant, does not exhaust its possibilities of being developed into other assertions and in this sense is "a law, or regularity of indefinite future" (2.293). The meaning of a proposition embraces "every obvious necessary deduction" (5.165).
So the meaning is in some way entailed by the premise, and, in more general terms, meaning is everything that is semantically implied by a sign. One could thus say that, according to Peirce, the meaning of a sign inchoatively contains all the texts within which that sign can be inserted. A sign is a textual matrix. (Eco 1984: 184)

This is of course only true of verbal signs and verbal signs necessarily have semantic content. With nonverbal signs the matter is different. Also, it sounds just a bit too philosophical: the meaning of a sign inchoatively contains all the texts within which that sign can be inserted. Hmm. In nonverbal terms, would... the meaning of a behaviour inchoatively contain all the contexts within which that form of behaviour can be found? Here I am of course implying that verbal and nonverbal semiosis should follow the same logic, which they obviously do not.

This set of features (or marks) is destined to grow along with the growing of our knowledge of the objects; the rheme attracts, so to speak, as a lodestone, all the new marks that the process of knowledge attributes to it: "every symbol is a living thing, in a very strict sense that is no mere figure of speech. The body of the symbol changes slowly, but its meaning inevitably grows, incorporates new elements and throws off old ones" (2.222). All this seems to suggest that the term is in itself an encyclopedia containing every character it can aquire in every new general proposition. But all this is something more than a mere suggestion. (Eco 1984: 186)

Umberto is trying to drive home the point that a word is an encyclopedia of it's own meaning. Yet it remains very ambiguous, to what ontological degree: does a word become an encyclopedia in language (or culture) or in the person who uses it? Because my entry for the word "lodestone" is minimal. If I would have to explain it's meaning I would most likely fail.

TO generate a further question, it should be remembered that in some cases also the Dynamic Object of a sign can act as its interpretant. The most typical case is the command Ground arms! which has as its proper object either the subsequent action of the soldiers or "the Universe of things desired by the Commanding Captain at that moment" (5.178); a very ambiguous definition, since the response of the soldiers seems to be at the same time both the interpretant and the object of the sign. Undoubtedly, many subsequent behavioral responses, verbal asnwers, imagest inrepreting a caption, and vice versa are interpretants. Are they characters? (Eco 1984: 190)

The presumption is that "even though characters are interpretants - not all interpretants are mere characters." I'm not so sure what the difference is but hopefully it will become clear in the future.

On the other hand, the very fact that some soldiers, in different circumstances, accomplish a given regular action every time Ground arms! is uttered by an officer means that this behavior is already subsumed under a concept, has become an abstraction, a law, a regularity. In order to be inserted into this relation, the behavior of the soldiers has become, just as the quality of redness, something general, insofar as it is intended as a character. (Eco 1984: 191)

The automatic response to a command has become a "general" habit.

By producing series of immediate responses (energetic interpretants), a sign establishes step by step a habit, a regularity of behavior in the interpreter or user of that sign. A habit being "a tendency ... to behave in a similar way under similar circumstances in the future" (5.487), the final interpretant of a sign is, as a result, this habit (5.491). This is the same as to say that the correspondence between meaning and representamen has assumed the format of a law; but this also means that to understand a sign is to learn what to do in order to produce a concrete situation in which one can obtain the perceptual experience of the object the sign refers to.
But the category of 'habit' has a double sense, a behavioral (or psychological) sense and a cosmological one. A habit is a cosmological regularity: even the laws of nature are the results of habit taking (6.97), and "all things have a tendency to take habits" (1.409). If a law is an active force (a Secondness), order and legislation are a Thirdness (1.337): to take a habit is to establish or assume an ordered and regulated way of being. (Eco 1984: 192)

Explanation of what "habit" meant for Peirce.

It is true that signs cannot give us a direct acquaintance with objects, since they can only prescribe to us what to do in order to realize ths acquaintance. Signs have a direct connection with Dynamic objects only insofar as objects determine the formation of a sign; on the other hand, signs only 'know' Immediate Objects, that is, meanings. There is a difference between the object of which a sign is a sign and the object of a sign; the former is the Dynamic Object, a state of the outer world; the latter is a semiotic construction and should be recognized as a mere object of the inner world, except that, in order to describe this 'inner' object, one should make recourse to interpretants, that is, to other signs taken as representamen, therefore experiencing other subjects of the outer world. (Eco 1984: 193)

This if very useful indeed. It can quite easily be applied to literary semiosis.

A sign can produce an emotional and energetical interpretant. if we consider a musical piece, the emotional interpretant is our normal reaction to the charming power of muisc, but this emotional reaction may elicit a sort of muscular or mental effort. This kind of response is the energetic interpretant. But an energetic response does not need to be interpreted; rather, it produces (I guess, by further repetitions) a change of habit. This means that, after having received a series of signs and having variously interpreted them, our way of acting within the world is either transitorily or permanently changed. This new attitude, this pragmatic issue, is the final interpretant. At this point the unlimited semiosis stops (and this stopping is not final in a chronological sense, cine our daily life is interwoven with those habit mutations). The exchange of signs produces modifications of the experience. The missing link between semiosis and physical reality as practical action has been found. The theory of interpretants is not an idealistic one. (Eco 1984: 194)

In this exciting passage I meet for the first time notions such as emotional and energetic interpretants (it seems to be influenced by what Darwin wrote about music), and the energetic intepretant produces a change of habit and this change is assumed by Eco to be the link between semiosis and physical activity. Whether this is so I am not sure, because it seems more lika a partial answer, not a final one.

"...The habit conjoined with the motive and the conditions has the action for its energetic interpretant; but the action cannot be a logical interpretant, because it lacks generality." Thus, through pragmaticism, Peirce has joined His Scotist realism: the action is the place in which the haecceitas ends the game of semiosis. (Eco 1984: 195)

Here semiosis seems to be that which precedes and determines action.

In this sense Peirce verifies the behavioristic hypothesis in semiotics, to the extent that it can be useful: if one hears a strange sound in an unknown language and detects that, every time it is uttered, its receiver reacts with a facial expression of rage, one can legitimately infer that that word is a nasty one; the conventional behavior of the receiver becomes an interpretant of the meaning of the word. I do not know what it precisely means but I can begin to list it among insults, therefore acquiring a first definition of hyperonimy. In this dialectical opposition between semiosis and concrete action, Peirce displays what he calls his 'conditional idealism' (5.494): any sufficient inquiry in principle can lead to a sort of objective agreement on the concrete results of semiosis. The final interpretant is at the same time a result and a rule. (Eco 1984: 195)

This is one of the ways that nonverbal behaviour and language acquisition can be related.

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Eco, Umberto 2010 [1979]. Lector in fabula: La cooperazione interpretative nei testi narrativi. Milano: Tascabili Bompiani.

[Eco] In tal modo (e questo si intende per teoria testuale di seconda generazione) teoria del codici e teoria del testo risultano strettamente interrelate: in una semantica orientata alle sue attualizzazioni testuali il semema deve apparire come un testo virtuale e un testo altro non è che l'espansione di un semema (di fatto è il risultato dell'espansione di molti sememi, ma è teoreticamente produttivo assumere che esso possa essere ridotto all'espansione di un solo semema centrale: la storia di un pescatore altro non fa che espandere tutto ciò che un'enciclopedia ideale avrebbe potuto dirci del pescatore).

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[GT] In this way (and this is based on textual theory of second-generation) theory of codes and theory of the text are closely interrelated in a semantic-oriented update to its sememe the text should appear as a virtual text and a text is nothing more than the 'expansion of a sememe (in fact the result of the expansion of many sememes, but it is theoretically productive to assume that it can be reduced to the expansion of a single central sememe: the story of a fisherman does nothing but expand everything ideal encyclopedia could tell the fisherman).

Kooditeooria ja tekstiteooria on omavahel tihedalt seotud ja semantiliselt orienteeritud uuenduse läbi peaks semeem ilmnema virtuaalse tekstina ja tekst kui mitte midagi muud kui semeemi laiendus. See laiendus toimub tegelikult paljude semeemide põhjal, aga on teoreetiliselt tootlikum eeldada, et selle võib taandada ühe ainsa keskse semeemi laienemisele: lugu kalamehest ei tee midagi muud kui laiendab kõike mida ideaalne entsüklopeedia võiks öelda kalamehe kohta.

[Eco] Poco rimane da aggiungere prima di approfondire i vari punti qui proposti. Se non che - come già si era ampiamente detto nel Trattato - una volta assunta tale nozione, ampiamente comprensiva, di competenza enciclopedia, la nozione di Sistema Semantico Globale, some insieme strutturato di informazioni enciclopediche, diventa molto astratta, postulato della teoria e ipotesi regolativa dell'analisi. Il Sistema Semantico Globale teoricamente precede le sue realizzazioni testuali ma in pratica può essere ridotto alle sue descrizioni parziali solo quando si ha a che fare con un dato testo o gruppo di testi (vedi Eco, 1971 e 1975, 2.13; Schmidt, 1976b, 4.4.2.1).

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[GT] Little remains to be added before we delve into the various points here proposed. If you do that - as was widely reported in the Treaty - once assumed that notion, widely inclusive, pertaining encyclopedia, the notion of Global Semantic System, some structured set of encyclopedic information, it becomes very abstract postulate of the theory and assumptions regulatory analysis. The System Global Semantic theory precedes his accomplishments text but in practice can be reduced to its partial descriptions only when it has to do with a text or group of texts (see Eco, 1971 and 1975, 2.13; Schmidt, 1976b, 4.4 .2.1).

Kui kord juba eeldada, et meil on kõikehaarav entsüklopeedia või Globaalne Semantiline Süsteem, mingi stuktureeritud hulk entsüklopeedilist informatsiooni, saab sellest meie teooria väga abstraktne postulaat ja eeldab reguleeritud analüüsi. Globaalse Semantilise Süsteemi teooria ei eelne tekstidele vaid praktiliselt saab seda taandada osalisteks kirjelduseks ainult siis kui sellel on pistmist teksti või tekstide grupiga.

[Eco] Come vedremo le stesse "sceneggiature" ipercodificate sono il risultato di circolazione intertestuale precedente. La società riesce a registrare una informazione enciclopedica solo in quanto essa è stata fornita da testi precedenti. Enciclopedia o thesaurus sono il distillato (sotto forma di macroproposizioni) di altri testi.
Così semiotica del codice e semiotica del testo sono dialetticamente interdipendenti. Si tratta di una circolarità che non deve scoraggiare una ricerca rigorosa: il problema è solo di stabilire procedure rigorosa per dar conto di questa circolarità.

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[GT] As we will see the same "scripts" overcoded are the result of previous intertextual circulation. The company is able to record a encyclopedic information only insofar as it has been provided by previous texts. Encyclopedia or thesaurus are the distillate (in the form of macroproposizioni) other texts.
So semiotic code and semiotics of the text are dialectically interrelated. It is a circularity that should not discourage rigorous research: the problem is only to establish rigorous procedures to account for this circularity.

Need samad "stsenaariumid" on ülekodeeritud eelnenud intertekstuaalse ringluse tagajärjel. Ühiskond on võimeline registreerima neid entsüklopeedilisi informatsioonikilde ainult nii palju kui neid ühendusi on pakkunud eelnevad tekstid. Entsüklopeediasse on salvestatud makropropositsioonid teistest tekstidest.
Semiootiline kood ja semiootiline tekst on dialektiliselt omavahel seotud. See on ringlus mis ei peaks tagasi hoidma metoodilist uurimist: probleem on ainult saavutada metoodilised protseduurid mis arvestaksid seda ringlust.