A language in action. A semiotic reflection on iconicity in sign languages

Il presente lavoro cerca di restituire una visione delle lingue dei Segni, in particolare dell’iconicità che caratterizza questi linguaggi, mediante un approccio semiotico e insieme filosofico che si distacca dall’impostazione che la tradizione linguistica ha costruito su di essi. Attraverso l’atteggiamento assunto si intende anzitutto analizzare le peculiarità di questi sistemi senza ricondurle forzatamente a un modello verbale costituito sulle lingue parlate. Partendo da analisi sviluppate da autori come Tommaso Russo e Frederik Stjernfelt, le caratteristiche espressive di queste lingue verranno descritte facendo leva sul carattere operazionale della nozione di icona proposta da Peirce, presentando in questo modo l’iconicità che le contraddistingue come uno strumento linguistico funzionale e perfettamente integrato con la loro arbitrarietà. Sulla base di queste premesse, il lavoro intende collocare più correttamente queste lingue all’interno del dibattito, oggigiorno al centro delle Humanities, sul rapporto stesso tra linguaggio, pensiero ed esperienza. Rispetto a esso, ci si posizionerà cercando di abbandonare antichi dualismi e visioni riduzionistiche, descrivendo tale rapporto nei termini di una relazione dinamica e circolare tra i meccanismi di significazione e l’essere-in-situazione da cui essi emergono. Per queste ragioni, la tesi approfondisce più specificatamente le proprietà di quella che la recente letteratura ha definito come action-based iconicity. Tramite essa il segnante articola una raffigurazione della realtà esplicitando le azioni che compie su di essa, rimettendo per così dire in atto, sul piano della rappresentazione linguistica, gli abiti di azione che lo relazionano a un oggetto. Una fondamentale nozione, questa, appartenente alla semiotica e al pragmatismo di Peirce, che come si sosterrà offrono un utile frame teorico in grado non solo di descrivere le caratteristiche di questo fenomeno, ma di rendere conto della corrente necessità degli studi di riconfigurare il ruolo dell'azione, dei suoi prodotti e del contesto in cui essa si realizza.Focusing on sign languages iconicity, the thesis proposes a semiotic and philosophical view able to detach itself from the approach these systems by the linguistic tradition. First of all, through this theoretical viewpoint the work wants to describe the structures of these languages without forcing them into a model of verbal language directly derived from the spoken ones. Starting from the reflections of authors such as Tommaso Russo and Frederik Stjernfelt, sign languages iconicity is analysed stressing the operational definition of icon which was in fact proposed by C. S. Peirce. According to this standpoint, this feature appears to be a linguistic and creative tool of languages, perfectly integrated with their arbitrariness. On the basis of these premises, the dissertation aims to propose a more general collocation of sign languages inside the debate nowadays interested in understanding the relationship between language, cognition and experience. Regarding this discussion, the argumentation tries to abandon ancient dualisms as well as reductionist visions, describing a dynamic and circular connection between our processes of signification and the experience of being-in-the-world from which they emerge. More specifically, the work focuses on the so-called action-based iconicity of sign languages, a term recently utilised in order to describe the modalities by which their users re-enact, in their representations, the practices related to the items they are talking about. As it will be proposed, with this strategy signers represent reality through the habits with which they interact with it: a fundamental notion that belongs to Peircean Pragmatism, a philosophical framework useful not only to describe this linguistic phenomenon, but to offer a theoretical background for the current needs to reconfigure the role of action, its products and its context of realization

Language development beyond the here‐and‐now: Iconicity and displacement in child‐directed communication

Most language use is displaced, referring to past, future, or hypothetical events, posing the challenge of how children learn what words refer to when the referent is not physically available. One possibility is that iconic cues that imagistically evoke properties of absent referents support learning when referents are displaced. In an audio‐visual corpus of caregiver–child dyads, English‐speaking caregivers interacted with their children (N = 71, 24–58 months) in contexts in which the objects talked about were either familiar or unfamiliar to the child, and either physically present or displaced. The analysis of the range of vocal, manual, and looking behaviors caregivers produced suggests that caregivers used iconic cues especially in displaced contexts and for unfamiliar objects, using other cues when objects were present

Emanuele Fadda, Peirce, Roma, Carocci, 2013, pp. 246

Recensione del volume 'Peirce' di Emanuele Fadd

Un linguaggio in azione: alcune riflessioni sull’uso dell’iconicità action-based nelle lingue dei Segni.

Starting from some issues of the current debate directed to understanding the so-called action-based iconicity, I will focus on the modalities by which the latter is used by signers in order to represent both actions and objects, i.e. when the Core Nouns of their lexicon are articulated through the use of Handling Handshapes. This analysis will show to what extent Sign language users re-enact the practices related to the items they are talking about, representing reality through the habits with which they interact with it. This fundamental notion, which belongs to Peircean Pragmatism, is at the very center of the idea that there is a fundamental link between the ways we act on reality and the ways we confer meaning to it, which has been also emphasized by contemporary research on mind. From these assumptions, I will illustrate that this philosophical framework could be useful not only to look at iconicity in Sign languages, but also to show that these semiotic systems use the same relational dimension highlighted by situated approaches to cognition and language

Pensiero e azione: l’habit peirceano tra enattivismo e cognizione distribuita

The proposal of this paper is to show how the pragmatist approach to meaning developed by Pearce reveals important relations with some central trends of contemporary cognitive science. These theories, like Peircean philosophy, detach themselves from the dualistic idea of a completely inner thought, conceiving external expressions as authentic part of the cognitive system. In order to argue this, I will show how: i) the concept of belief, whose aim is to produce a readiness to act, presents interesting parallels with the enactivist conception of habit, interpreted as an immediate “know-how”; ii) the notion of habit, arising from a cultural and social dimension, puts Peircean cognitive semiotics in contact with those theories that conceive cognition as a distributed activity; i.e. situated both pragmatically and within a social and cultural environment. Assuming these reference points, I will show how Peircean pragmatism represents an interesting theoretical background of the current needs to reconfigure the role of action, its products and its context of realization

Usi linguistici, strumenti sociali: uno sguardo semiotico su esperienza, linguaggio e percezione

Starting from some semiotic issues on language and perception, we will discuss some concerns in the field of cognitive sciences, describing how an inquiry on the simultaneous constitution of language and thought is nowadays clearly revealed in both fields of researches. Following the proposal of Fusaroli (2011), we will try to show how it is possible to draw (and choose) another path between embodied and/or distributed cognition, i.e. an habit-based conception of language inspired by the semiotics and pragmatism of C.S. Peirce, taking into account both situated and social dimensions. More precisely, this framework could be interesting for some contemporary researches on language and cognition (in particular, the words as tools theory (BORGHI & CIMATTI 2009)), whose aim consists in considering linguistic uses as embedded in an experiential dimension and, at the same time, as social tools able to reframe it. In this brief review, we will also try to highlight that this theoretical frame could be useful to establish a connection between embodiment and structural linguistic, articulating a proposal able to fully take account of the dynamic relationship between language and perception

Language is less arbitrary than one thinks: Iconicity and Indexicality in real-world language learning and processing

In the last decade, a growing body of work has convincingly demonstrated that languages embed a certain degree of non-arbitrariness (mostly in the form of iconicity, namely the presence of imagistic links between linguistic form and meaning). Most of this previous work has been limited to assessing the degree (and role) of non-arbitrariness in the speech (for spoken languages) or manual components of signs (for sign languages). When approached in this way, non-arbitrariness is acknowledged but still considered to have little presence and purpose, showing a diachronic movement towards more arbitrary forms. However, this perspective is limited as it does not take into account the situated nature of language use in face-to-face interactions, where language comprises categorical components of speech and signs, but also multimodal cues such as prosody, gestures, eye gaze etc. We review work concerning the role of context-dependent iconic and indexical cues in language acquisition and processing to demonstrate the pervasiveness of non-arbitrary multimodal cues in language use and we discuss their function. We then move to argue that the online omnipresence of multimodal non-arbitrary cues supports children and adults in dynamically developing situational models

The role of iconicity in word learning: Insights from child-directed language(CDL)

Understanding how children acquire language remains a challenge of language research. Most research assumes that labeland referent are linked by arbitrary convention alone. However, in addition to being indisputably arbitrary, language isalso iconic. Recent evidence has shown that children are sensitive to iconic mappings and that these may bootstrap wordacquisition. However, we know little about the presence of iconicity in the language input children are exposed to. Thistalk focuses on iconicity in English CDL across vocal and visual channels: phonology (meow), prosody (loooooong),gestures (stirring) and hand actions (stirring with spoon). We discuss evidence that caregivers exploit iconicity in CDL,and use iconicity differentially depending on whether referents talked about are present or not, and familiar or not to thechild. An analysis of the type and amount of iconicity used in CDL is crucial for understanding the role of iconicity insupporting referential mapping