Defining Pantomime for Language Evolution Research

Abstract

Although pantomimic scenarios recur in the most important historical as well as current accounts of language origins, a serious problem is the lack of a commonly accepted definition of ''pantomime''. We scrutinise several areas of study, from theatre studies to semiotics to primatology, pointing to the differences in use that may give rise to misunderstandings, and working towards a set of definitional criteria of ''pantomime'' specifically useful for language evolution research. We arrive at a definition of pantomime as a communication mode that is mimetic; non-conventional and motivated; multimodal (primarily visual); improvised; using the whole body rather than exclusively manual; holistic; communicatively complex and self-sufficient; semantically complex; displaced, openended and universal. So conceived, ''pantomime'' is a near synonym of ''bodily-mimetic communication'' as envisaged by Donald and Zlatev. On a wider plane, our work may help organise some of the terminology and discussion in language evolution, e.g. by drawing a clear distinction between gestural and pantomimic scenarios or by specifying the relation between pantomimic and multimodal scenarios.

Multimodal communication and language origins: integrating gestures and vocalizations

“…Outside of sign language systems, non‐vocal combinatorial structuring in humans seems to be prevalent in pantomime. Pantomime has been defined as non‐verbal and non‐conventionalized means of communication, which is executed primarily in the visual channel by coordinated, successive movements of the whole body, but might also incorporate non‐linguistic vocalizations (Żywiczyński, Wacewicz & Sibierska, ). These movements symbolically encode and communicate meaning independently of language (Xu et al, ), and can refer to a potentially unlimited repertoire of events, or sequences of events.…”

Demonstration and Pantomime in the Evolution of Teaching

“…As regards, (P3), Arbib (2012, pp. 217–218) writes: “Where imitation is the generic attempt to reproduce movements performed by another, whether to master a skill or simply as part of a social interaction, pantomime is performed with the intention of getting the observer to think of a specific action or event.” Another difference with respect to demonstration is that pantomime is displaced in the sense of Hockett (1960), that is, it can refer to entities not present in the immediate environment (Zywiczynski et al, 2016, section 3.8). For example, I can pantomime how to open a difficult door as part of describing for you how to get into my apartment that you are borrowing tomorrow.…”

“…One may take a more comprehensive perspective and take pantomime to encompass the combination of gestures for actions with gestures for object properties (or objects) and locations. Such an interpretation seems to be intended by Zywiczynski et al (2016, section 3.7), who write that “pantomimic acts are ‘the size of’ propositions or utterances rather than smaller component units; rather than being elements of a larger communicative whole, they express complete, self-contained communicative acts”. This proposal is consistent with Arbib’s (2012) idea that early communication consisted of holophrases (see also Zlatev et al, unpublished).…”

How Pantomime Works: Implications for Theories of Language Origin

“…By "iconic" we mean a type of representational gesturing that shows a strong spatial resemblance to its referent(s) (Perniss and Vigliocco, 2014). According to Zywiczynski et al (2018), other salient features of pantomime beyond its iconicity (Arbib, 2012) include that it is improvised, non-conventionalized, holistic, and open-ended, thus having a broad semantic potential. It is also referential, or triadic (Arbib, 2012;Zlatev, 2014).…”

“…It is also referential, or triadic (Arbib, 2012;Zlatev, 2014). While Zywiczynski et al (2018) argue that pantomime is a whole-body process (see also Zlatev, 2014), it is quite easy to think of counter-examples to this, such as when a person uses their index and middle fingers to represent somebody walking. Hence, while pantomime can indeed engage the full body, it can also employ body parts alone.…”