Irene Mittelberg (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam):

Metonymic ‘slices of life’: Schematized objects and concrete ideas in gesture and abstract art

Vortrag im Rahmen von „Das Konkrete als Zeichen“, 12. Internationaler Kongress der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Semiotik (DGS), Stuttgart, 9. bis 12. Oktober 2008; Sektion „Gesten in der Kommunikation: Prozesse der Konkretisierung und Abstraktion“.

 

 

This paper explores modes of sign constitution and reference in spontaneous co-verbal gestures and modern abstract paintings. It intends to demonstrate that comparing such different semiotic systems can illuminate the material and structural properties of each of them and provide insights into the abstractive capacities of the human mind. The focus is on two principal figures of thought which are assumed to motivate ad hoc processes of both abstraction based on concrete objects and actions (metonymy) and concretization of abstract ideas and structures (metaphor).

Inspired by Peirce’s (1955) notions of similarity and contiguity, Jakobson (1956) argued that certain poets and art schools exhibit a tendency for either the metaphoric or metonymic style. Cubism, for instance, appears to be inherently metonymic (“the object is transformed in a set of synecdoches;” Jakobson 1956:130). While being highly abstract, Cubist art portrays essential features of objects taken from familiar living environments; the signifieds can still be considered as “slice[s] of life” (Lodge 1977:109). Similarly, when producing spontaneous gestures, speakers seem to be handling common objects or performing mundane manual actions metonymically alluded to by a certain hand configuration, motor routine, or a trace drawn in the air (Bouvet 2001; Mittelberg 2006, 2008; Müller 1998, fc.). Based on gestural representations of grammar, this paper shows that gestures depicting abstract entities, structures and relations may be as minimal and geometric as Cubist and other abstract signs (Mittelberg fc.).

However, co-speech gestures are dynamic, largely unconsciously created motor signs which may, in each moment of an ongoing discourse, portray those attributes of objects or actions that are pragmatically salient, i.e., locally and not necessarily globally essential. The body may also spontaneously concretize aspects of intangible entities and as such personify the metaphorical principle by excellence (Cienki & Müller 2008, Mittelberg & Waugh fc.). Gestures thus provide metonymic ‘slices’ not only of speakers’ outer, physical living context, but also of their inner, mental life: their imagination and abstract reasoning.

 

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