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During scenic opera rehearsals, the participants create performance bodies – fictive behaviours that portray the characters in the libretto. They use depictions – interactional practices comprised of short scenes staged for the other participants – to propose and negotiate performance bodies that suit the developing aesthetics of the production. In this paper, we focus on non-serious proposal depictions: depictions that become treated as laughable and not suitable for the performance. Non-serious depictions can accomplish joint fictionalizations, especially with teasing (Cantarutti, 2022), and are used in contrast with an ideal performance (Keevallik, 2010). Building on this work, we analyze how non-serious depictions are used to decide what the wished performance will be. We discuss two types of non-serious depictions in the workplace setting of the opera rehearsal process and show how negotiations over the seriousness of depictions achieve aesthetic intersubjectivity among the colleagues. The ambiguity between serious and non-serious proposals is exploited as a resource when navigating the unknown territories of a piece of art under development. The material consists of 20 h of video-recorded opera rehearsals in Swedish and English, with an Italian libretto. • Opera rehearsal participants use depictions in proposals to create a performance. • Depictions can be designed as either serious or non-serious. • This paper focuses on how depictions are designed and treated as non-serious. • Non-serious depictions can be treated as tangential to the interactional agenda. • They can also be a tool to manage aesthetic intersubjectivity and affiliation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is often observed that images—including mental images—are in some sense representationally ambiguous. Some, including Jerry Fodor, have added that mental images only come to have determinate contents through the contribution of non-imagistic representations that accompany them. This paper agrees that a kind of ambiguity holds with respect to mental imagery, while arguing (pace Fodor) that this does not prevent imagery from having determinate contents in the absence of other, non-imagistic representations. Specifically, I argue that mental images can represent determinate types of outlays of properties without help from any non-imagistic representations, yet can only become involved in the representation of particular objects through pairing with a non-imagistic representation of the right sort. These points are defended through reflection on the "Picture Principle," the nature of depiction, and general principles for typing and individuating mental states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Çeşitli hayvanları tasvir etme geleneği Paleolitik Çağ’da başlayıp çağlar boyunca devam etmiştir. Kültürel sürekliliğe işaret eden bu durum çerçevesinde birçok toplumda ya hayvanlar kutsal kabul edilmiş ya da bazı yerlerde onlara tapınılmıştır. Tapınılan hayvanlar arasında özellikle leopar, aslan, boğa ve geyik tanrıçanın zoomorf tasvirleri olarak karşımıza çıkmaktadır. Tanrıçalarla ilişkili olarak betimlenen bu hayvanlar, dinsel ve mitolojik özellikleri ile dikkat çekmektedir. Neolitik Çağ’da genellikle benekli postu ile betimlenen leopar benekleri muhtemelen doğumla ilgili bir konuya işaret etmektedir. Nitekim Boğazköy’de bulunmuş metinlerden leoparın, Tanrıça Teteşhapi ve Güneş Tanrıçası ile yakın ilişki içinde olduğu anlaşılmaktadır. Anadolu’da genellikle koruyuculuğu simgeleyen ve sık sık tasvir edilen aslan ise Çatalhöyük’ten leopar benzeriyle başlayarak tanrıçayla özdeşleşen en güçlü hayvandır. Kedigillerin tanrıça ve kadın ile ilişkilendirilmesi süreklilik arz etmektedir. Öyle ki bu süreklilik siyah kedili cadı geleneğiyle günümüze kadar gelmiştir. Üreme, çoğalmayı sembolize eden boğa ve büyüsel bir amacı olduğu düşünülen geyik de Paleolitik Çağ’dan itibaren kutsal bir varlık olarak düşünülmektedir. Ayrıca Paleolitik Çağ mağaralarında ana tema olarak işlenen boynuzlu hayvan kompozisyonlarının sık sık resmedilmesi, bundan sonraki çağlarda -Neolitik, Kalkolitik, Tunç Çağı ve devamında- tarih sahnesine yerleşen bir köklü inanışın habercisidir. Dolayısıyla boğa/inek ve geyiğin mağara duvarlarında başlayan sanatsal serüveni yüzyıllar boyunca devam etmiştir.

Although research into multimodal stance-taking has gained momentum over the past years, the multimodal construction of so-called stacked stances has not yet received systematic attention in the literature. Mocking enactments are a prime example of such complex social actions as they are layered both interactionally and stance-related, and they rely significantly on the use of bodily visual resources, depicting rather than describing events and stances. Using Du Bois’ Stance Triangle as a framework, this study investigates mocking enactments as a case study to unravel the multimodal aspects of layered stance expressions. Drawing on three data sets—music instruction in Dutch, German, and English, spontaneous face-to-face interactions among friends in Dutch, and narrations on past events in Flemish Sign Language (VGT)—this study provides a qualitative exploration of mocking enactments across different communicative settings, languages, and modalities. The study achieves three main objectives: (1) illuminating how enactments are used for mocking, (2) identifying the layers of stance-taking at play, and (3) examining the multimodal construction of mocking enactments. Our analysis reveals various different uses of enactments for mocking. Aside from enacting the target of the mockery, participants can include other characters and viewpoints, highlighting the breadth of the phenomenon under scrutiny. Second, we uncover the layered construction of stance on all axes of the Stance Triangle (evaluation, positioning, and alignment). Third, we find that mocking enactments are embedded in highly evaluative contexts, indexed by the use of bodily visual resources. Interestingly, not all mocking enactments include a multimodally exaggerated depiction, but instead, some merely allude to an absurd hypothetical scenario. Our findings contribute to the growing body of literature on multimodal stance-taking, by showing how a nuanced interpretation of the Stance Triangle can offer a useful framework for analyzing layered stance acts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Selcuk University Social Sciences Institute / Selçuk Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü Dergisi is the property of Journal of Selcuk University Social Sciences Institute and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Acting as a bridge over the river of "academic" and "artistic" contributions to this special edition, this article explores zones of chance (with a particular focus on Surrealist objective chance and the work of English Professor Wendy Wheeler); environment (often relating to the motion of a river and the mention of various of insects, revolving around the author's attempts to listen with tinnitus to the environment, and to listen with the environment to tinnitus); and depiction (notably the work of the painters Edvard Munch and Gastone Novelli, the poet Robert Grenier, and the philosopher Michel Serres). Placed in relation to the author's own lived experiences with tinnitus, these zones are channeled into the undulation of a wave symbol (〰), in an attempt to acknowledge, hold, and communicate different lived experiences and possibilities of tinnitus. As such, each zone may be read either as part of as whole, in any order. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study elaborates on the intrinsic link between science and poetry. As one of the contemporary health concerns, cancer remains one of the stumbling blocks to most medical researches. Cancer consists in a diseased growth in the human body which causes anatomic mutations. Such a clinical reality has lent subject matter to the poetry Jo Shapcott, a British poet who has provided an exquisite representation of cancer in its chemotherapeutic aspects in Of Mutability. The purpose of this study is to use the semiotic method in order to highlight how Jo Shapcott aesthetically explores imageries and tropes in order to represents cancer in its clinical manifestations and the impacts cancer has on the morale and social relations of patients living with the ail. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although research into multimodal stance-taking has gained momentum over the past years, the multimodal construction of so-called stacked stances has not yet received systematic attention in the literature. Mocking enactments are a prime example of such complex social actions as they are layered both interactionally and stance-related, and they rely significantly on the use of bodily visual resources, depicting rather than describing events and stances. Using Du Bois’ Stance Triangle as a framework, this study investigates mocking enactments as a case study to unravel the multimodal aspects of layered stance expressions. Drawing on three data sets—music instruction in Dutch, German, and English, spontaneous face-to-face interactions among friends in Dutch, and narrations on past events in Flemish Sign Language (VGT)—this study provides a qualitative exploration of mocking enactments across different communicative settings, languages, and modalities. The study achieves three main objectives: (1) illuminating how enactments are used for mocking, (2) identifying the layers of stance-taking at play, and (3) examining the multimodal construction of mocking enactments. Our analysis reveals various different uses of enactments for mocking. Aside from enacting the target of the mockery, participants can include other characters and viewpoints, highlighting the breadth of the phenomenon under scrutiny. Second, we uncover the layered construction of stance on all axes of the Stance Triangle (evaluation, positioning, and alignment). Third, we find that mocking enactments are embedded in highly evaluative contexts, indexed by the use of bodily visual resources. Interestingly, not all mocking enactments include a multimodally exaggerated depiction, but instead, some merely allude to an absurd hypothetical scenario. Our findings contribute to the growing body of literature on multimodal stance-taking, by showing how a nuanced interpretation of the Stance Triangle can offer a useful framework for analyzing layered stance acts.

Two major types of quotation theories can be distinguished according to whether they regard marks of quotation as necessary (type-1) or not necessary (type-2) for quotation. I argue that taken at face value, the empirical evidence disqualifies type-1 theories. I then show that even if we accept that surface appearances can be deceptive – ‘unmarked’ quotations are simply not quotations, or absent marks are underlain by marks in hidden syntactic structure – type-1 theories still prove inadequate. By contrast, a particular form of type-2 theory, depiction theory, is consistent with the empirical evidence, proves compatible with syntactic analyses that posit a covert quotative operator, and is equipped to account for the grammatically deviant behavior of certain categories of quotations.

Egyptian archaeologists used different terms to express the accuracy and ingenuity of ancient Egyptian artists' work in conveying the truth they witnessed and transforming their artwork into an accurate reflection of their life. Using eight examples of writings in ancient Egyptian art clearly showed that the term portrait accurately depicted artwork in ancient Egypt and the strict religious rules that artists adhered to. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ayşe Taşkent ve Nicole Kançal-Ferrari editörlüğünde Aralık 2021 tarihinde yayın hayatına kazandırılan, Türkçe ve İngilizce hazırlanan, Osmanlı Kültür Ortamında Miraç ve Yolculuk Durakları başlıklı iki ciltten müteşekkil eser, İslâm tarihinde hususî bir öneme sahip olan miraç hadisesini; felsefî, tarihî, tasavvufî, edebî ve sanat boyutlarıyla ele alan kapsamlı bir çalışmadır. Kitap, T.C. Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı, Topkapı Sarayı ve Türk ve İslam Eserleri Müzesi gibi çeşitli saygın kurumların desteğiyle yürütülen kapsamlı bir projenin çıktısıdır. Projenin devamında on sekiz müellifin katılımıyla, yirmi altı makale ve yaklaşık iki yüz görselden oluşan kitap çalışması ilim dünyasına sunulmuştur.

Port Harcourt cosmopolis grappled with a continual rise in municipal solid waste (MSW) generation. The increase is a consequence of an advance in population rise and consumption pattern. The paper reports an approximate valuation and depiction of municipal solid waste with emphasis from questionnaire survey on socio-economic status of the inhabitants in the zones that make up the cosmopolis. The methodology and procedure for this investigation obtained using vehicle selection approach centered on ASTM D5321 standard test method for ascertaining the constituents of municipal solid waste. Specimens were sorted into fourteen waste classifications of paper; 6.22%, pasteboard; 2%, plastic film; 9.05%, dense plastic; 2.73%, glass; 2.3%, iron-based metal; 3.03%, non-iron based metal; 1.13%, putrescibles; 56.3%, textiles; 1.85%, misc-ignitable; 2.83%, non-misc ignitable; 3.35%, E-waste; 2.33%, household waste; 4.88% and fine elements; 2.03%. The outcome shows an average 56.3% of municipal solid waste specimens discovered to be biodegradable. This is suitable for composting activities. Aside biodegradables, there exist, paper glass, dense plastics, and iron-based metals, which are recyclables. This is significant for providing gainful employments to the inhabitants of the cosmopolis. On the contrary, there were about 2.83% of misc-ignitable. This is suitable for energy recovery. There was a variation in specimens of MSW in all the zones that make up the cosmopolis, attributing it to changes in disparity in incomes. It is necessary for government to legalize, recycling and composting activities, which based on the waste management hierarchy process in a manner that ensures environmental sustainability, economic sustainability, and global acceptance.

This paper examined the (re)presentation of South African politicians in Tony Leon's regular column, On the contrary, which appeared in The Times newspaper from 2012 to 2017. This period in South African politics is made interesting by the fact that it coincides with the time when there was mounting pressure for the then president, Jacob Zuma, of the ruling party, the African National Congress (ANC), to step down, especially between 7 January 2015 and 21 March 2017. Tony Leon, who also once served as a councilor for the Democratic Party (DA), one of the major opposition parties in South Africa is the columnist who at the time authors the on the contrary column. This creates interesting research on how the columnist and the newspaper are able or not to maintain ethical journalism. In conducting the study, this article employs the framing theory and critical discourse analysis (CDA) as research tools to assess the columnists' objectivity and bias in his depiction of the then president and several prominent politicians during the examined period. Data analysis constitutes six newspaper articles which were purposively selected to obtain a representative sample. The results indicated that these articles were well-researched in respect of the information they presented. At the same time, biased tendencies were noted in favor of the political party aligned to the columnist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I present an analysis of the depictive properties of deepfakes. These are videos and pictures produced by deep learning algorithms that automatically modify existing videos and photographs or generate new ones. I argue that deepfakes have an intentional standard of correctness. That is, a deepfake depicts its subject only insofar as its creator intends it to. This is due to the way in which these images are produced, which involves a degree of intentional control similar to that involved in the production of other intentional pictures such as drawings and paintings. This aspect distinguishes deepfakes from real videos and photographs, which instead have a non-intentional standard: their correct interpretation corresponds to the scenes that were recorded by the mechanisms that produced them, and not to what their producers intended them to represent. I show that these depictive properties make deepfakes fit for communicating information in the same way as language and other intentional pictures. That is, they do not provide direct access to the communicated information like non-intentional pictures (e.g., videos and photographs) do. Rather, they convey information indirectly, relying only on the viewer's assumptions about the communicative intentions of the creator of the deepfake. Indirect communication is indeed a prominent function of such media in our society, but it is often overlooked in the philosophical literature. This analysis also explains what is epistemically worrying about deepfakes. With the introduction of this technology, viewers interpreting photorealistic videos and pictures can no longer be sure of which standard to select (i.e., intentional or non-intentional), which makes misinterpretation likely (i.e., they can take an image to have a standard of correctness that it does not have). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a theoretical reduction of the existence of perspective taking in discourse to the combination of two basic methods of communication: iconic simulation, and description by means of conventional symbols. This includes an integration of the depiction theory of quotation and a pragmatic version of the theory of signs. Perspective taking is argued to be a consequence of the iconic simulation of acts, linguistic acts in particular. The basic fact that a single utterance can comprise both depictive and descriptive components is in turn the basis for the occurrence of different variants of speech and thought representation, which are traditionally discussed under the rubric of indirect and free indirect discourse. On this basis, it is argued that the phenomena can actually be analyzed more insightfully (and more simply) directly in terms of interactions between specific linguistic items and the distinction between depiction and description. In addition, this “composite utterance” approach to perspective taking combines abstract conceptual clarity and simplicity with a high degree of flexibility in the way such interactions can work out in specific situations, which allows it to also serve as a basis for the analysis of “multiperspectival” and “doublevoiced” discourse.

This paper addresses a serious challenge to some recent semantic accounts of quotation: the existence of 'non-constituent hybrid quotations', as in Vera said she was 'very happy and incredibly relieved' by the supreme court's decision. These pose a threat to theories that have to make the assumption that hybrid quotations must be co-extensive with syntactic constituents. Responses to the challenge have been proposed, first a quote-breaking procedure, and subsequently unquotation. I argue that these responses fall short of providing empirically satisfactory accounts of the phenomena. Other theories of quotation are not under threat of non-constituent hybrid quotations. I single out a particular family of theories, depiction theories, which have the added advantage of doing justice to the core mechanisms at the heart of quoting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The stylistic study is one of the most prominent features of the critical development in understanding the aims of literary texts, especially poetry. This is due to its abundance in the study of the text through its multiple levels. This study traced the stylistics of the image and the production of semantics in the poem Khaf Al-Qatin (They Quickly Left), by al-Akhtal, in praising (Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan) and clarifying loyalty, according to the pictorial and semantic levels. It highlights the functions of the poetic image and the relationship of the subject of the poem with the structure. It includes the poetic image (simile and metaphor) and the poetic image by metaphor). The second axis includes the semantic effect of the compositional construction of the poem, the effect of structure in guiding the meanings, and an application of the dialectic of the utterance and the semantics in the text, and the significance of repetition in intensifying the meaning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Anuario Colombiano de Historia Social y de la Cultura is the property of Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Facultad de Ciencias Humanas, Departamento de Historia and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article emphasizes the significance of depicting God throughout history and in the church, while also presenting the Orthodox tradition’s approach to such depictions. In Orthodoxy, an icon signifies the presence of the depicted person while maintaining its transcendence. This presence is considered hypostatic and personal, as emphasized by Zizioulas. Following a brief overview of the fundamental doctrines of Orthodox iconography, the article addresses a challenging question raised by some theologians: whether the Holy Trinity can be depicted in creation. The possibility of depicting the Holy Trinity is affirmed, stemming from the depiction of the Logos, the Son of God, as the Holy Trinity coexists in Christ. The subsequent topic explores the apocalypse of God. Zizioulas draws upon the works of the fathers and the liturgical life of the church to create icons and symbols as a unique means of integrating creation with God. The hypostasis imparts truth and reality to the symbol. Only through the icons and symbols offered by the church, with its mysteries, can we experience a union of God and creation, akin to what was accomplished in Christ. Finally, Zizioulas echoes St. Maximus, asserting that the eternal presence, presently hidden by the icons, will only be revealed in the eschaton. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In theater as a bodily-spatial art form, much emphasis is placed on the way actors perform movements in space as an important multimodal resource for creating meaning. In theater rehearsals, movements are created in series of directors' instructions and actors' implementations. Directors' instructions on how to conduct a movement often draw on embodied demonstrations in contrast to verbal descriptions. For instance, to instruct an actress to act like a school girl a director can use depictive (he demonstrates the expected behavior) instead of descriptive (“can you act like a school girl”) means. Drawing on a corpus of 400 h video recordings of rehearsal interactions in three German professional theater productions, from which we selected 265 cases, we examine ways to instruct movement-based actions in theater rehearsals. Using a multimodally extended ethnomethodological-conversation analytical approach, we focus on the multimodal details that constitute demonstrations as complex action types. For the present article, we have chosen nine instances, through which we aim to illuminate (1) The difference in using embodied demonstrations versus verbal descriptions to instruct; (2) typical ways directors combine verbal descriptions with embodied demonstrations in their instructions. First, we ask what constitutes a demonstration and what it achieves in comparison to verbal descriptions. Using a typical case, we illustrate four characteristics of demonstrations that all of the cases we studied share. Demonstrations (1) are embedded in instructional activities; (2) show and do not tell; (3) are responded to by emulating what was shown; (4) are rhetorically shaped to convey the instruction's focus. However, none of the 265 demonstrations we investigated were produced without verbal descriptions. In a second step we therefore ask in which typical ways verbal descriptions accompany embodied demonstrations when directors instruct actors how to play a scene. We distinguish four basic types. Verbal descriptions can be used (1) to build the demonstration itself; (2) to delineate a demonstration verbally within an instruction; (3) to indicate positive (what should be done) and negative (what should be avoided) versions of demonstrations; (4) as an independent means to describe the instruction's focus in addition to the demonstration. Our study contributes to research on how embodied resources are used to create meaning and how they combine with and depend on verbal resources.

This study investigated the acquisition of depicting signs (DS) among students learning a signed language as their second-modality and second-language (M2L2) language. Depicting signs, broadly described, illustrate actions and states. This study sample includes 75 M2L2 students who were recruited from college-level American Sign Language (ASL) courses who watched and described three short clips from Canary Row the best they could in ASL. Four types of DS were coded in the students' videorecorded retellings: (1) entity depicting signs (EDS); (2) body part depicting signs (BPDS); (3) handling depicting signs (HDS); and (4) size-and-shape specifiers (SASS). Results revealed that SASS and HDS increase in instances as students advance in their ASL learning and comprehension. However, EDS expressions did not have a relationship with their ASL comprehension. ASL 2 students produced less DS than the ASL 1 students but did not differ from the ASL 3+ students. There were no differences in instances of BPDS among the three groups of L2 learners although their ability to produce BPDS was correlated with their ASL comprehension. This study is the first to systematically elicit depicting signs from M2L2 learners in a narrative context. The results have important implications for the field of sign language pedagogy and instruction. Future research, particularly cross-sectional and/or longitudinal studies, is needed to explore the trajectory of the acquisition of DS and identify evidence-based pedagogical approaches for teaching depicting signs to M2L2 students.

In the sense of phenomenology, actions are special cases of acts of consciousness. Within semiotics, first Jan Mukařovský and then A. J. Greimas have established, in different terms, a distinction between instrumental actions and actions which carry their meaning in themselves. But this is insufficient to account for the variety of actions which comprises everything from the creation of artefacts, dance, sporting events, theatre, rituals, and much else. Already those actions mentioned relate in different ways to instrumentality and intrinsic meaning, as well as to (depictive) iconicity and plasticity. In this paper, I will be particularly concerned with dancing, especially classical ballet, trying to delimit it from sporting events and theatre. Apart from the sign function and the spectacular function, I will notably have recourse to what I have elsewhere term secondary (depictive) iconicity as well as to plasticity. In the process, I hope to be able to throw some light also on the nature of sport, by comparing and contrasting it to dance, as well as to the theatre as well as, more incidentally, to some other types of action. In a wider perspective, my ambition is to contribute to a general inquiry into the semiosis of actions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Already at a relatively early stage, modern sign language linguistics focused on the representation of (actions, locations, and motions of) referents (1) through the use of the body and its different articulators and (2) through the use of particular handshapes (in combination with an orientation, location, and/or movement). Early terminology for (1) includes role playing, role shifting, and role taking and for (2) classifier constructions/predicates and verbs of motion and location. More recently, however, new terms, including enactment and constructed action for (1) and depicting signs for (2) have been introduced. This article provides a brief overview of the history of enactment and depiction in the sign linguistic literature but mainly focuses on issues related to terminology (and terminology shifts). First, we consider the relation between role shifting and constructed action. We question the idea that these terms can be used interchangeably and rather suggest that they capture different, but related functions. Subsequently, we zoom in on the conceptualization of depicting signs, indicating verbs, pointing signs and fully lexical signs and the relation between these signs and the method of depicting. Where earlier research often associates depicting with the use of specific types of structures, we promote the idea that depicting is a semiotic diverse practice. In doing so, we show that the conceptualization of the different sign types and the terms that are used to refer to these phenomena do not accurately capture the way these signs are used in actual signed discourse and propose a reconceptualization of the different sign types in the lexico-grammar of Flemish Sign Language (VGT) as composite signs that can describe, depict and indicate meaning in various ways. In this way, this article illustrates (1) the risks that may come with the execution of terminology shifts and (2) the importance of making a clear distinction between form and function, i.e., we show that it is important to be careful with assuming a (too) exclusive relation between a certain function and one or more particular forms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Differences in language use and structures between signed and spoken languages have often been attributed to so-called language "modality." Indeed, this is derived from the conception that spoken languages resort to both the oral-aural channel of speech and the visual-kinesic channel of visible bodily action whereas signed languages only resort to the latter. This paper addresses the use of enactment, a depictive communicative strategy whereby language users imitate referents in signed and spoken languages. Reviewing comparative research on enactment, this paper highlights theoretical and methodological shortcomings in prior works. First, a broader set of causal explanations needs to be taken into account when interpreting differences between signing and speaking communities. A more comprehensive conceptual toolbox ensures that differences are not automatically attributed to modality. In particular, lessstudied factors of language diversity, like sociolinguistic and cultural ecologies, and how they interact with other factors should be considered. Second, diversity in enactment across signed and spoken languages is shown to be inadequately and insufficiently documented. It is argued that by comparing enactment across more diverse signing and speaking communities and using large, directly comparable corpora, solid analyses can be carried out, enabling a better understanding of how and why different communities use enactment in similar or different ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reformulation is remarkably frequent in discourse and has been the subject of much work in spoken languages, both on written and oral data. Because of its metalinguistic nature, combined with its general aim of clarifying an expression, the act of reformulation offers a window to the way speakers process and adjust their expression in discourse. However, to date, the study of reformulation has hardly taken into account the now increasingly recognized multimodal and semiotically composite nature of language. This study aims to revisit the notion of reformulation from a multimodal perspective by comparing the use and semiotic composition of reformulations in the discourse of speakers and signers, as well as in the productions of interpreters. In doing so, we lay the foundations for a comparative study of discourse in signed and spoken language that accounts for the multimodality and semiotic complexity of language practices in different human ecologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Greek interwar period is indicative of the formation of the social class and moral profile of women in the rest of the twentieth century. It is the period during which small, but significant changes were observed in the personal and social status quo of the hitherto oppressed women in the province, but also in the large urban centers of the country. At the same time, many innovative changes took place in several mass production fields, rendering thus the interwar period an important experimental, but also pioneering era. One of these changes was the decision of the local tobacco companies to expand the sale of their products to the female consumer audience, following the promotion and sales model of western markets. The depiction of the female figure on Greek cigarette packs constituted a bold business initiative, as it was believed that in this way women would initially become familiar with and later would fervently adopt a product that was traditionally addressed to a male market. This research focuses on the dual interpretation of the use of sensual female figures in cigarette packets of the Greek interwar period both through the concepts of emancipation and liberation on the part of female consumers and through the concepts of sexism and gender inequality on the part of male consumers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Deep learning algorithms are rapidly changing the way in which audiovisual media can be produced. Synthetic audiovisual media generated with deep learning—often subsumed colloquially under the label “deepfakes”—have a number of impressive characteristics; they are increasingly trivial to produce, and can be indistinguishable from real sounds and images recorded with a sensor. Much attention has been dedicated to ethical concerns raised by this technological development. Here, I focus instead on a set of issues related to the notion of synthetic audiovisual media, its place within a broader taxonomy of audiovisual media, and how deep learning techniques differ from more traditional approaches to media synthesis. After reviewing important etiological features of deep learning pipelines for media manipulation and generation, I argue that “deepfakes” and related synthetic media produced with such pipelines do not merely offer incremental improvements over previous methods, but challenge traditional taxonomical distinctions, and pave the way for genuinely novel kinds of audiovisual media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Differences in language use and structures between signed and spoken languages have often been attributed to so-called language “modality.” Indeed, this is derived from the conception that spoken languages resort to both the oral-aural channel of speech and the visual-kinesic channel of visible bodily action whereas signed languages only resort to the latter. This paper addresses the use of enactment, a depictive communicative strategy whereby language users imitate referents in signed and spoken languages. Reviewing comparative research on enactment, this paper highlights theoretical and methodological shortcomings in prior works. First, a broader set of causal explanations needs to be taken into account when interpreting differences between signing and speaking communities. A more comprehensive conceptual toolbox ensures that differences are not automatically attributed to modality. In particular, less-studied factors of language diversity, like sociolinguistic and cultural ecologies, and how they interact with other factors should be considered. Second, diversity in enactment across signed and spoken languages is shown to be inadequately and insufficiently documented. It is argued that by comparing enactment across more diverse signing and speaking communities and using large, directly comparable corpora, solid analyses can be carried out, enabling a better understanding of how and why different communities use enactment in similar or different ways.

Already at a relatively early stage, modern sign language linguistics focused on the representation of (actions, locations, and motions of) referents (1) through the use of the body and its different articulators and (2) through the use of particular handshapes (in combination with an orientation, location, and/or movement). Early terminology for (1) includes role playing, role shifting, and role taking and for (2) classifier constructions/predicates and verbs of motion and location. More recently, however, new terms, including enactment and constructed action for (1) and depicting signs for (2) have been introduced. This article provides a brief overview of the history of enactment and depiction in the sign linguistic literature but mainly focuses on issues related to terminology (and terminology shifts). First, we consider the relation between role shifting and constructed action. We question the idea that these terms can be used interchangeably and rather suggest that they capture different, but related functions. Subsequently, we zoom in on the conceptualization of depicting signs, indicating verbs, pointing signs and fully lexical signs and the relation between these signs and the method of depicting. Where earlier research often associates depicting with the use of specific types of structures, we promote the idea that depicting is a semiotic diverse practice. In doing so, we show that the conceptualization of the different sign types and the terms that are used to refer to these phenomena do not accurately capture the way these signs are used in actual signed discourse and propose a reconceptualization of the different sign types in the lexico-grammar of Flemish Sign Language (VGT) as composite signs that can describe, depict and indicate meaning in various ways. In this way, this article illustrates (1) the risks that may come with the execution of terminology shifts and (2) the importance of making a clear distinction between form and function, i.e., we show that it is important to be careful with assuming a (too) exclusive relation between a certain function and one or more particular forms.

Since the beginning of signed language research, the linguistic units have been divided into conventional, standard and fixed signs, all of which were considered as the core of the language, and iconic and productive signs, put at the edge of language. In the present paper, we will review different models proposed by signed language researchers over the years to describe the signed lexicon, showing how to overcome the hierarchical division between standard and productive lexicon. Drawing from the semiotic insights of Peirce we proposed to look at signs as a triadic construction built on symbolic, iconic, and indexical features. In our model, the different iconic, symbolic, and indexical features of signs are seen as the three sides of the same triangle, detectable in the single linguistic sign (Capirci, 2018; Puupponen, 2019). The key aspect is that the dominance of the feature will determine the different use of the linguistic unit, as we will show with examples from different discourse types (narratives, conference talks, poems, a theater monolog). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In collaborative reasoning about what causes the seasons, phases of the moon, and tides, participants (three to four per group) introduce ideas by gesturing depictively in personal space. Other group members copy and vary these gestures, imbuing their gesture spaces with similar conceptual properties. This leads at times to gestures being produced in shared space as members elaborate and contest a developing group model. Gestures in the shared space mostly coincide with conversational turns; more rarely, participants gesture collaboratively as they enact a joint conception. An emergent shared space is sustained by the joint focus and actions of participants and may be repositioned, reoriented, or reshaped to meet changing representational demands as the discourse develops. Shared space is used alongside personal spaces, and further research could shed light on how gesture placement and other markers (such as eye gaze) contribute to the meaning or function of gestures in group activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]