Linguistic influences on gesture’s form

Gesture ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 157-195 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Gerwing ◽  
Janet Bavelas
Keyword(s):  
Common Ground ◽  
Symbolic Form ◽  
Communicative Function ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Original Action ◽  
New Information ◽  
Physical Form ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Given ◽  
Linguistic Influences

Hand gestures in face-to-face dialogue are symbolic acts, integrated with speech. Little is known about the factors that determine the physical form of these gestures. When the gesture depicts a previous nonsymbolic action, it obviously resembles this action; however, such gestures are not only noticeably different from the original action but, when they occur in a series, are different from each other. This paper presents an experiment with two separate analyses (one quantitative, one qualitative) testing the hypothesis that the immediate communicative function is a determinant of the symbolic form of the gesture. First, we manipulated whether the speaker was describing the previous action to an addressee who had done the same actions and therefore shared common ground or to one who had done different actions and therefore did not share common ground. The common ground gestures were judged to be significantly less complex, precise, or informative than the latter, a finding similar to the effects of common ground on words. In the qualitative analysis, we used the given versus new principle to analyze a series of gestures about the same actions by the same speaker. The speaker emphasized the new information in each gesture by making it larger, clearer, etc. When this information became given, a gesture for the same action became smaller or less precise, which is similar to findings for given versus new information in words. Thus the immediate communicative function (e.g., to convey information that is common ground or that is new) played a major role in determining the physical form of the gestures.

Rationalism, Platonism and God

2007 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Moral Theory ◽  
Common Ground ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Common ◽  
Constructive Criticism ◽  
The Given ◽  
Platonic Tradition

This book comprises three main chapters on Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz, with extensive responses. It explores the common ground of the great early-modern rationalist theories, and provides an examination of the ways in which the mainstream Platonic tradition permeates these theories. One chapter identifies characteristically Platonic themes in Descartes’s cosmology and metaphysics, finding them associated with two distinct, even opposed attitudes to nature and the human condition, one ancient and ‘contemplative’, the other modern and ‘controlling’. It finds the same tension in Descartes’s moral theory, and believes that it remains unresolved in present-day ethics. Was Spinoza a Neoplatonist theist, critical Cartesian, or naturalistic materialist? The second chapter argues that he was all of these. Analysis of his system reveals how Spinoza employed Neoplatonist monism against Descartes’s Platonist pluralism. Yet the terminology — like the physics — is Cartesian. And within this Platonic-Cartesian shell Spinoza developed a rigorously naturalistic metaphysics and even, Ayers claims, an effectually empiricist epistemology. The final chapter focuses on the Rationalists’ arguments for the Platonist, anti-Empiricist principle of ‘the priority of the perfect’, i.e. the principle that finite attributes are to be understood through corresponding perfections of God, rather than the reverse. It finds the given arguments unsatisfactory but stimulating, and offers a development of one of Leibniz’s for consideration. These chapters receive informed and constructive criticism and development at the hands of, respectively, Douglas Hedley, Sarah Hutton and Maria Rosa Antognazza.

Circles, Trees, and Bears: Symbols of Power of the Weenuche Ute

2012 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 103-130
Author(s):  
Robert McPherson
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Heritage ◽  
Great Basin ◽  
Common Ground ◽  
Religious Expression ◽  
Indian Culture ◽  
Cultural Survival ◽  
Ghost Dance ◽  
The Past ◽  
New Information ◽  
The Common

The Ute community of White Mesa, comprised of approximately 315 people, sits in the corner of southeastern Utah, eleven miles outside of Blanding. The residents, primarily of Weenuche Ute and Paiute ancestry, enjoy a cultural heritage that embraces elements from plains, mountain, and desert/Great Basin Indian culture. Among their religious practices are the Worship Dance, Ghost Dance, Sun Dance, and Bear Dance. Although each ceremony is unique, and performed for a variety of reasons, the common ground among them cannot be missed. Healing the sick, renewing necessities for survival, connecting spiritually with ancestors, communicating with the Land Beyond, establishing patterns for life, and sharing symbols that unify religious expression—such as the circle, tree, and bear—are elements that characterize the faith of these people as expressed in these ceremonies. Their origin sheds light on the relevance of these practices as they blend traditions from the past with contemporary usage. As symbols imbued with religious relevance, they make the intangible visible while continuing to teach and protect that which is important in Ute cultural survival. This article looks at these shared elements while offering new information about the origin and symbolism of the Ghost Dance as practiced in the Worship Dance. Circles, trees, bears, and other emblems provide not only themes from past teaching but empower the Ute universe today.

Epistolary cognition: The family letters of Rosalie Calvert

2020 ◽  
pp. 096394702095458
Author(s):  
Jennifer R Harding
Keyword(s):  
Common Ground ◽  
Cultural Norms ◽  
Conceptual Blending ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Cultural Conditions ◽  
The Face ◽  
Full Analysis ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Letter Collection

This article argues for the distinctive nature of cognition involved in correspondence, arguing that this cognition is highly creative and in corollary, arguing that this cognition is positioned within social and cultural conditions that must be considered in a full analysis. The author argues that letters are often written from the perspective of an “embodied epistolary present,” the letter writer’s temporal, spatial, and corporeal viewpoint depicted through the use of present tense and other markers. The author further elaborates the relationship between correspondence and common ground. The embodied epistolary present facilitates the “imagined copresence” of writer and recipient (possible through conceptual blending), which the author describes as “the fictitious conceit that a recipient is present to serve as an interlocutor during the writer’s embodied compositional present.” Like the face-to-face conversation that it simulates, epistolary discourse depicted with imagined copresence relies on the common ground shared by the writer and recipient; the author argues that the common ground also shapes other discourse modes present in correspondence including narrative episodes and reporting. The author further shows that epistolary discourse reflects cultural norms, shaping what writers include and elide. To demonstrate all these points, the author draws examples from the letter collection Mistress of Riversdale: The Plantation Letters of Rosalie Stier Calvert, 1795–1821, edited by Margaret Law Callcott (1992). Calvert was a plantation mistress in postrevolutionary Maryland who corresponded with intimate relatives in Belgium; as such, Calvert’s letters demonstrate both the imaginative work that letters deploy and the common ground that shapes epistolary content.

scholarly journals Old Is the New New: The Rhetoric of Anchoring Innovation

2021 ◽  
pp. 243-260
Author(s):  
Ineke Sluiter
Keyword(s):  
Reference Point ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Common Ground ◽  
Motor Systems ◽  
New Information ◽  
Linguistic Representations ◽  
Anchoring Effects ◽  
The Common ◽  
At Home

AbstractIn life, language, and argument, we need to feel at home. “Anchoring” connects whatever seems “new” to what is considered familiar. This paper studies the argumentative use of “anchoring” in the wider context of its role in language use. “Anchoring” provides a unifying perspective in analyzing linguistic and rhetorical elements identified by different schools of thought (Sect. 2). Several features of language, elsewhere studied in the context of “discourse linguistics”, direct the addressee on how to anchor new information to the common ground. Categorizing, labeling and naming (topics from philosophy and psychology) can be considered anchoring functions. And formal linguistic iconicity anchors linguistic representations in evolutionarily older senso-motor systems. Section 3 discusses the anchoring effects of some specific discourse types: genealogy, mythology, aetiology, and etymology. All of these frequently take the form of narrative and are used in affective, “engaged” argumentation. Finally, the rhetorical and argumentative implications of the terminology of “new” and “old” itself are discussed, and one specific “anchoring trope” is analyzed, which sets up an anchor as a reference point for something new: the phrase “X is the new Y” (Sect. 4).

THE EU SUGAR MARKET PROFILE AND ITS MAIN DRIVERS

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lubos SMUTKA ◽  
Irena BENEŠOVÁ ◽  
Patrik ROVNÝ ◽  
Renata MATYSIK-PEJAS
Keyword(s):  
Market Failure ◽  
Current System ◽  
Quota System ◽  
Considerable Debate ◽  
Sugar Market ◽  
The Common ◽  
The One ◽  
Production Capacities ◽  
The Given ◽  
The Eu

Sugar is one of the most important elements in human nutrition. The Common Market Organisation for sugar has been a subject of considerable debate since its establishment in 1968. The European agricultural market has been criticized for its heavy regulations and subsidization. The sugar market is one of the most regulated ones; however, this will change radically in 2017 when the current system of production quotas will end. The current EU sugar market changed is structure during the last several decades. The significant number of companies left the market and EU internal sugar market became more concentrated. The aim of this paper is presentation characteristics of sugar market with respect to the supposed market failure – reduction in competition. The analysis also identifies the main drivers and determinants of the EU especially quota sugar market. In relation to paper’s aim the following results are important. The present conditions of the European sugar market have led to market failure when nearly 75 % (10 million tonnes) of the quota is controlled by five multinational companies only. These multinational alliances (especially German and French one) are also taking control over the production capacities of their subsidiaries. In most countries, this causes serious problems as the given quota is controlled by one or two producers only. This is a significant indicator of market imperfection. The quota system cannot overcome the problem of production quotas on the one hand and the demand on the other; furthermore, it also leads to economic inefficiency. The current EU sugar market is under the control of only Sudzucker, Nordzucker, Pfeifer and Langen, Tereos and ABF.

The Still Life of Objects – Heidegger, Schapiro, and Derrida reconsidered

2015 ◽  
Vol 60 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-102
Author(s):  
KErstin Thomas
Keyword(s):  
Still Life ◽  
Work Of Art ◽  
Concrete Material ◽  
Vincent Van Gogh ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Specific Object ◽  
Truth Claims ◽  
The Common ◽  
Critical Intervention ◽  
The Given

Kerstin Thomas revaluates the famous dispute between Martin Heidegger, Meyer Schapiro, and Jacques Derrida, concerning a painting of shoes by Vincent Van Gogh. The starting point for this dispute was the description and analysis of things and artworks developed in his essay, “The Origin of the Work of Art”. In discussing Heidegger’s account, the art historian Meyer Schapiro’s main point of critique concerned Heidegger’s claim that the artwork reveals the truth of equipment in depicting shoes of a peasant woman and thereby showing her world. Schapiro sees a striking paradox in Heidegger’s claim for truth, based on a specific object in a specific artwork while at the same time following a rather metaphysical idea of the artwork. Kerstin Thomas proposes an interpretation, which exceeds the common confrontation of philosophy versus art history by focussing on the respective notion of facticity at stake in the theoretical accounts of both thinkers. Schapiro accuses Heidegger of a lack of concreteness, which he sees as the basis for every truth claim on objects. Thomas understands Schapiro’s objections as motivated by this demand for a facticity, which not only includes the work of art, but also investigator in his concrete historical perspective. Truth claims under such conditions of facticity are always relative to historical knowledge, and open to critical intervention and therefore necessarily contingent. Following Thomas, Schapiro’s critique shows that despite his intention of giving the work of art back its autonomy, Heidegger could be accused of achieving quite the opposite: through the abstraction of the concrete, the factual, and the given to the type, he actually sets the self and the realm of knowledge of the creator as absolute and not the object of his knowledge. Instead, she argues for a revaluation of Schapiro’s position with recognition of the arbitrariness of the artwork, by introducing the notion of factuality as formulated by Quentin Meillassoux. Understood as exchange between artist and object in its concrete material quality as well as with the beholder, the truth of painting could only be shown as radically contingent. Thomas argues that the critical intervention of Derrida who discusses both positions anew is exactly motivated by a recognition of the contingent character of object, artwork and interpretation. His deconstructive analysis can be understood as recognition of the dynamic character of things and hence this could be shown with Meillassoux to be exactly its character of facticity – or factuality.

Giving and Promising

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean-Yves Lacoste ◽  
Oliver O’Donovan
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Present Experience ◽  
The World ◽  
The Given

Giving and promise must be thought together. Being-in-the world entails being-with the other, who is both “given” and bearer of a gift promised. But any disclosure may be understood as a gift; it is not anthropomorphic to speak of “self-giving” with a wider reference than person-to-person disclosure. Which implies that no act of giving can exhaust itself in its gift. Present experience never brings closure to self-revealing. Yet giving is crystallized into “the given,” the closure of gift. “The given” is what it is, needing no gift-event to reveal it. But the given, too, is precarious, and can be destabilized when giving brings us face to face with something unfamiliar. Nothing appears without a promise of further appearances, and God himself can never be “given.”

The Semantics of Evidentials

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah E. Murray
Keyword(s):  
Recent Work ◽  
Common Ground ◽  
Formal Semantics ◽  
Empirical Support ◽  
Propositional Content ◽  
Primary Data ◽  
Truth Conditional ◽  
The Common ◽  
Issue Content

This book gives a compositional, truth‐conditional, crosslinguistic semantics for evidentials set in a theory of the semantics for sentential mood. Central to this semantics is a proposal about a distinction between what propositional content is at‐issue, roughly primary or proffered, and what content is not‐at‐issue. Evidentials contribute not‐at‐issue content, more specifically what I will call a not‐at‐issue restriction. In addition, evidentials can affect the level of commitment a sentence makes to the main proposition, contributed by sentential mood. Building on recent work in the formal semantics of evidentials and related phenomena, the proposed semantics does not appeal to separate dimensions of illocutionary meaning. Instead, I argue that all sentences make three contributions: at‐issue content, not‐at‐issue content, and an illocutionary relation. At‐issue content is presented, made available for subsequent anaphora, but is not directly added to the common ground. Not‐at‐issue content directly updates the common ground. The illocutionary relation uses the at‐issue content to impose structure on the common ground, which, depending on the clause type (e.g., declarative, interrogative), can trigger further updates. Empirical support for this proposal comes from Cheyenne (Algonquian, primary data from the author’s fieldwork), English, and a wide variety of languages that have been discussed in the literature on evidentials.

Can Groups Assert That P?

2019 ◽  
pp. 326-344
Author(s):  
Deborah Tollefsen
Keyword(s):  
Common Ground ◽  
Speech Act ◽  
Single Individual ◽  
Constitutive Rule ◽  
The Past ◽  
Group Members ◽  
The Common ◽  
Declarative Statement ◽  
John Macfarlane

When a group or institution issues a declarative statement, what sort of speech act is this? Is it the assertion of a single individual (perhaps the group’s spokesperson or leader) or the assertion of all or most of the group members? Or is there a sense in which the group itself asserts that p? If assertion is a speech act, then who is the actor in the case of group assertion? These are the questions this chapter aims to address. Whether groups themselves can make assertions or whether a group of individuals can jointly assert that p depends, in part, on what sort of speech act assertion is. The literature on assertion has burgeoned over the past few years, and there is a great deal of debate regarding the nature of assertion. John MacFarlane has helpfully identified four theories of assertion. Following Sandy Goldberg, we can call these the attitudinal account, the constitutive rule account, the common-ground account, and the commitment account. I shall consider what group assertion might look like under each of these accounts and doing so will help us to examine some of the accounts of group assertion (often presented as theories of group testimony) on offer. I shall argue that, of the four accounts, the commitment account can best be extended to make sense of group assertion in all its various forms.

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