Language as Sensuous Action: Sir Richard Paget, Kenneth Burke, and Gesture-Speech Theory

Hawhee, Debra

doi:10.1080/00335630601080393

Cited by 94 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 21 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Human beings unintentionally move mouth-imitating attributes of the referents of words. Speech sounds arise in the process of the mouth, tongue, and lips involuntarily imitating body movements (Hawhee, 2006 ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Bouba/Kiki in Touch: Associations Between Tactile Perceptual Qualities and Japanese Phonemes

Sakamoto

Watanabe

2018

Front. Psychol.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Several studies have shown cross-modal associations between sounds and vision or gustation by asking participants to match pre-defined sound-symbolic words (SSWs), such as “bouba” or “kiki,” with visual or gustatory materials. Here, we conducted an explorative study on cross-modal associations of tactile sensations using spontaneous production of Japanese SSWs and semantic ratings. The Japanese language was selected, because it has a large number of SSWs that can represent a wide range of tactile perceptual spaces with fine resolution, and it shows strong associations between sound and touch. In the experiment, we used 120 everyday materials to cover basic material categories that could be associated with fundamental dimensions of tactile perception. Upon contact with these materials, participants expressed their tactile sensations by using Japanese SSWs, and at the same time, evaluated the tactile sensations by semantic differential scales using adjective pairs. Thanks to the variety of testing materials, we were able to demonstrate the existence of systematic associations between sounds and tactile fundamental perceptual dimensions in a more detailed and comprehensive way than ever done so before. In particular, we found that for vowels, positive tactile ratings were associated with the back vowel (/u/), while negative ratings were associated with the front vowels (/i/ and /e/). The central vowels (/o/ and /a/) were mainly associated with rough, hard, and dry feelings. Consonants were categorized based on vocal features and articulation. The category of the voiced consonants (e.g., /dz/ and /g/) corresponded to feelings of roughness, while that of voiceless consonants (e.g., /ʦ/, and /s/) corresponded to feelings of smoothness. The categories of the bilabial plosive (/p/ and /b/) and voiced alveolar nasal (/n/) consonants were mainly related to soft, sticky and wet feelings, while that of voiceless alveolar affricate (/ʦ/) and voiceless velar plosive (/k/) consonants were related to hard, slippery and dry feelings.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Bouba/Kiki in Touch: Associations Between Tactile Perceptual Qualities and Japanese Phonemes

Sakamoto

Watanabe

2018

Front. Psychol.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Inspired by Darwin's observation, Paget remarks that the movements of the lips and other articulators "echo" the movements of the hand. This forms the basis for his hypothesis that human speech originated in unconscious imitation of hand movements by the lips, tongue and other articulators (Hawhee, 2006). Between 1939 and, no new solutions to the problem of the origin of language were proposed; nevertheless, a great number of works, mainly psychological, referred to the problem of the emergence of language.…”

Section: Anthropology and Psychology On The Beginnings Of Languagementioning

confidence: 99%

The Evolution of Language: Towards Gestural Hypotheses

Żywiczyński¹,

Wacewicz²

2019

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

the science of language evolution for the Polish reader who has not had access to the English literature on the subject: excellent introductions by Sverker Johansson (2005) and Tecumseh Fitch (2010) and other forms of secondary and tertiary literature on language evolution, such as a handbook of language evolution by Maggie Tallerman and Kathleen Gibson (2011) or James Hurford's broad-scope monographs -The Origins of Meaning (2007) and The Origins of Grammar (2011). Hence, our presentation is for the most part confined to sketching an outline of the problems of contemporary language evolution, and not an in-depth, extensive discussion of these problems.Working on the English version, we have decided to reduce the number of supplementary texts, particularly in Chapters 2 and 3. We have also radically shortened the Chapter 1 on the historical context out of which the modern-day science of language evolution emerged. This area is certainly underexplored, but after the publication of Przemysław Żywiczyński's book Language Origins: From Mythology to Science (2018), we felt there is no reason to repeat what can be found there, in a more extensive form.Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man (1871) For Darwin (1871), language was the greatest invention of humankind alongside fire. Maynard Smith and Szathmáry (1995) consider the emergence of language to be the last of the greatest evolutionary breakthroughs, and its explanation was called to be the most difficult problem in science (Christiansen and Kirby, 2003b). 1 Language is a unique communication system in which symbolic units can be combined into larger wholes with the use of syntactic rules, and since it is human-specific, language also defines our uniqueness.This book is the first monograph written originally in Polish on the evolution of language -a new field of science, which emerged at the end of the 20 th century. As a field, it is developing dynamically, which should not be surprising, given that rapid development is an inherent aspect of youth. The evolution of language, by being a thoroughly interdisciplinary enterprise, derives its impetus from other sciences, such as modern evolutionary theory, genetics, linguistics, neuroscience, palaeoanthropology, comparative psychology, and primatology, to name only a few. Yet, the evolution of language, as a scientific project, is successful because of the questions which determine the direction of its investigations: "Where does language come from, and why do, out of all living forms, only humans have it?" Language is the feature that unambiguously shows the difference between humans and other animals. Contemporary science provides a wealth of evidence that other traits, which traditionally were considered to be humanspecific, are actually possessed by other species, mainly other apes. We can cite self-awareness, for example. Comparative psychologists have assumed the so-called "mirror test" (developed by Gordon Gallup, 1970) as a rough indicator, which showed self-awareness not only in all great apesthe chimpanzee,...

show abstract

“…Attending to these issues of experience in places of memory, especially in relation to the body, is not at all inconsistent with rhetoric's roots, as Hawhee's (2005Hawhee's ( , 2006Hawhee's ( , 2007 work illustrates. Like Frentz and Nienkamp, she persuasively argues that what we now conceive of as the rhetorical tradition is in fact a much narrower conceptualization than was utilized in classical times.…”

Section: Persons Re-collectingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Like Frentz and Nienkamp, she persuasively argues that what we now conceive of as the rhetorical tradition is in fact a much narrower conceptualization than was utilized in classical times. In particular, Hawhee (2006) points out that the cognitive dimensions of rhetoric have come to dominate our approach, although ''rhetoric has long been intertwined with bodily matters; it's just that our Aristotelian commitments to thought and reason have historically produced trained incapacities, most notably our difficulty theorizing the body's relationship to rhetoric'' (p. 349). For example, several scholars (e.g., Connerton, 1989;Pezzullo, 2003;Taylor, 2003) have illustrated how embodied performances are a powerful and effective means of perpetuating collective memory.…”

Section: Persons Re-collectingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Re-Collection: A Proposal for Refining the Study of Collective Memory and its Places

Aden

Han

Norander

et al. 2009

Communication Theory

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This article outlines a theory of re-collection as a means of enhancing and enriching the study of collective memory. Re-collection seeks to generate insights into two underdeveloped threads of collective memory research: (a) its processual and dynamic nature and (b) its largely emplaced character. In particular, this article argues that places of memory are not finished texts, but sites of re-collection in which individuals and groups selectively cull and organize re-collected versions of the past. Grounded in Michael McGee's concept of rhetorical fragments, the theory of re-collection involves attending to discursive fragments of memory that circulate within and around the memory site-as well as the fragments brought to the site by individuals and collectives. Re-collection thus requires analytical tools beyond those traditionally used in rhetorical criticism-as is illustrated in a case study proposal for exploring the process of re-collection surrounding the Space Window in Washington National Cathedral.

show abstract

Language as Sensuous Action: Sir Richard Paget, Kenneth Burke, and Gesture-Speech Theory

Cited by 94 publications

References 21 publications

Bouba/Kiki in Touch: Associations Between Tactile Perceptual Qualities and Japanese Phonemes

Bouba/Kiki in Touch: Associations Between Tactile Perceptual Qualities and Japanese Phonemes

The Evolution of Language: Towards Gestural Hypotheses

Re-Collection: A Proposal for Refining the Study of Collective Memory and its Places

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About