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.
