Kristiina Jokinen, Silvi Tenjes, and Ingrid Rummo
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- May 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199641635
- eISBN:
- 9780191760020
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199641635.003.0006
- Subject:
- Linguistics, Psycholinguistics / Neurolinguistics / Cognitive Linguistics, Semantics and Pragmatics
Ability to form symbolic concepts and understand meanings is an important part of human communication. In this chapter we investigate how hand movements and body posture bring forth the meaning in ...
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Ability to form symbolic concepts and understand meanings is an important part of human communication. In this chapter we investigate how hand movements and body posture bring forth the meaning in communicative situations. We focus on a young girl with the mosaic variant of Patau syndrome. The main point of interest is the embodiment of semiotic categories in the girl’s communication and the meaning constructed in space through her hand gestures. She extracts intricate information through gestures and body postures and is also able to impart meaning with hand gestures in communication situations. The analysis is based on the theories of semiotic categorization of signs, cooperative communication, and studies on hand gestures. The chapter is one of the first studies on the communicative behaviour of people with Patau syndrome. It contributes to explaining the communicative capability of people with this diagnosis, and shows how our ability to form symbolic concepts and understand meanings is reliant not so much on spoken language as on the human inherent ability to observe and interact with the surrounding world.Less
Ability to form symbolic concepts and understand meanings is an important part of human communication. In this chapter we investigate how hand movements and body posture bring forth the meaning in communicative situations. We focus on a young girl with the mosaic variant of Patau syndrome. The main point of interest is the embodiment of semiotic categories in the girl’s communication and the meaning constructed in space through her hand gestures. She extracts intricate information through gestures and body postures and is also able to impart meaning with hand gestures in communication situations. The analysis is based on the theories of semiotic categorization of signs, cooperative communication, and studies on hand gestures. The chapter is one of the first studies on the communicative behaviour of people with Patau syndrome. It contributes to explaining the communicative capability of people with this diagnosis, and shows how our ability to form symbolic concepts and understand meanings is reliant not so much on spoken language as on the human inherent ability to observe and interact with the surrounding world.
Luciano Fadiga, Alice Catherine Roy, Patrik Fazio, and Laila Craighero
- Published in print:
- 1993
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199231447
- eISBN:
- 9780191696510
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199231447.003.0019
- Subject:
- Psychology, Cognitive Psychology
This chapter reviews experimental evidence and presents new data supporting the idea that human language may have evolved from hand/mouth action representation. Some of the findings include the ...
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This chapter reviews experimental evidence and presents new data supporting the idea that human language may have evolved from hand/mouth action representation. Some of the findings include the discovery that the listener's motor system becomes active as if pronouncing the listened words during speech listening and that hand gestures where the hand is not explicitly visible activate the hand-related mirror neuron system, including Broca's region. This chapter concludes that the property of recursion, considered peculiar to human language, may have been introduced to hand actions by the fabrication of tools.Less
This chapter reviews experimental evidence and presents new data supporting the idea that human language may have evolved from hand/mouth action representation. Some of the findings include the discovery that the listener's motor system becomes active as if pronouncing the listened words during speech listening and that hand gestures where the hand is not explicitly visible activate the hand-related mirror neuron system, including Broca's region. This chapter concludes that the property of recursion, considered peculiar to human language, may have been introduced to hand actions by the fabrication of tools.
Anthony Paraskeva
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- May 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780748684892
- eISBN:
- 9780748695249
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748684892.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies
This chapter looks at Beckett’s Nacht und Träume, revealing a complex referential structure by demonstrating how each minute gesture, taking its meaning by association with other hand gestures in ...
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This chapter looks at Beckett’s Nacht und Träume, revealing a complex referential structure by demonstrating how each minute gesture, taking its meaning by association with other hand gestures in Beckett, strives to achieve the symbolic properties of a micro-language. The chapter then reads the aesthetics and politics of Catastrophe as a critique of the modernist tendency to impose legibility on the body, and of naturalism’s mimesis of text and performance, its desire to induce identification in the mind of an audience. The chapter also reads the play as a self-critique of Beckett’s own tendency as a writer-director to formalise gestures within a self-enclosed and immanent structure. By foregrounding the partial opacity and double aspect of the stage directions, their sketch of gestures invisible to the eye, Beckett imputes an openness and indeterminacy to the text, leaving the central figure with choices to make, allowing him to be the author of himself in the play’s climactic moment.Less
This chapter looks at Beckett’s Nacht und Träume, revealing a complex referential structure by demonstrating how each minute gesture, taking its meaning by association with other hand gestures in Beckett, strives to achieve the symbolic properties of a micro-language. The chapter then reads the aesthetics and politics of Catastrophe as a critique of the modernist tendency to impose legibility on the body, and of naturalism’s mimesis of text and performance, its desire to induce identification in the mind of an audience. The chapter also reads the play as a self-critique of Beckett’s own tendency as a writer-director to formalise gestures within a self-enclosed and immanent structure. By foregrounding the partial opacity and double aspect of the stage directions, their sketch of gestures invisible to the eye, Beckett imputes an openness and indeterminacy to the text, leaving the central figure with choices to make, allowing him to be the author of himself in the play’s climactic moment.
Rita M. Gross
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520255852
- eISBN:
- 9780520943667
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520255852.003.0013
- Subject:
- Religion, Buddhism
This chapter concerns the visual forms that are central to Vajrayana Buddhist sadhana meditation-rituals. Meditation per se is not exactly a ritual. Nevertheless, to the observer, and even to the ...
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This chapter concerns the visual forms that are central to Vajrayana Buddhist sadhana meditation-rituals. Meditation per se is not exactly a ritual. Nevertheless, to the observer, and even to the practitioner, it has some kinship with ritual. One observes people in a very specific posture, often in very precise spatial arrangements vis-à-vis each other and a shrine. In Vajrayana Buddhism, there are two types of meditation, formless and with form. Formless meditation is the silent focus on the breath and is found in all forms of Buddhism. Meditation with form, which is much less well known to the general public, means that not just the mental stability of the meditator is emphasized. This meditation involves many forms, liturgies, visualizations, hand gestures etc, which means that meditations with form are much more akin to ritual, both to the observer and to the participant.Less
This chapter concerns the visual forms that are central to Vajrayana Buddhist sadhana meditation-rituals. Meditation per se is not exactly a ritual. Nevertheless, to the observer, and even to the practitioner, it has some kinship with ritual. One observes people in a very specific posture, often in very precise spatial arrangements vis-à-vis each other and a shrine. In Vajrayana Buddhism, there are two types of meditation, formless and with form. Formless meditation is the silent focus on the breath and is found in all forms of Buddhism. Meditation with form, which is much less well known to the general public, means that not just the mental stability of the meditator is emphasized. This meditation involves many forms, liturgies, visualizations, hand gestures etc, which means that meditations with form are much more akin to ritual, both to the observer and to the participant.
