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Lecture 9: Body Chapter Terms

 

Major types of bodily codes, each with minimal units having meaning (like phonemes)

  1. kinesic: from bodily movements
  2. facial: expressive qualities of the face and eye contact
  3. proxemic: social distances people feel are appropriate (differs cross-culturally)
  4. tactile: meanings of certain touch patterns
  5. gestural: properties of the hand

 

Biosemiotic movement:

  1. looking at cross-species semiosis
  2. trying to understand how human semiosis is unique

 

Medium/media of messages—vehicle through which messages are transmitted

  1. natural media
  2. artifactual media
  3. mechanical media

 

Interconnectedness Principle

  1. “a specific meaning considered vital by members of a culture will be encoded in various verbal and nonverbal ways throughout a culture’s signifying order"
  2. can compare to core symbols (symbolic anthro) and key metaphors

 

Deixis: all kinds of pointing or indicating signs (secondness signs in Peircean terminology, e.g., indexical signs)

 

People to keep in mind:

  1. Thomas A. Sebeok (1920- )—associated with biosemiotic movement
  2. Charles Hockett—his typology allows concrete comparison between animal and human communication systems