Abstract
Taking its cues from reflections of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and C. S. Peirce on the map, this chapter will focus on the interesting dialectic that characterizes our object of study, that is to say maps of places of origin. The chapter argues that the drawings collected in this study are constructed around a dialogue between a situated experience, realized by moving through a familiar space, and the representation of that experience which illuminates its objects even from an unbridgeable distance. This dialogue between immersion and distance – a theoretical cornerstone of our whole work–will be analyzed not only with regard to the spatial perspective chosen in the drawings, but also in the use of signing space in sign languages. When recounting the spaces they have drawn, signers have consistently changed their point of view: from a map-like description realized using their hands in order to describe spaces from above, to the adoption of a perspective from the inside in which the signers’ whole body becomes the vehicle for signification. In particular, this change of viewpoint is at times realized through the so-called Role Shift, with which the signer adopts a first-person perspective internal to the event narrated. This spatial and enunciative shift allows the signer to interpret the role of himself once again: in this way, he re-enacts an agency directly performed in the places represented in the maps, retranslating them as a subjective experience.
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Notes
- 1.
Bonazzi (Personal communication during one of our workshops).
- 2.
Pozzato (Personal communication during one of our workshops).
- 3.
The natural attitude is characterized by a pragmatic and manipulatory behavior with respect to the world. According to Husserl, this is emblematic of being immersed in the world through an incorrect philosophical posture, based on the naïvely realistic assumption of the existence of reality without questioning the characteristics of its being there (Husserl 1952). This posture has to be necessarily substituted with a subjectivity that stands in front of the world and does not take part in it, reflecting on one’s lived experience as absolute evidence in a Cartesian fashion. It is in this sense that the subject is qualified in the Cartesian Meditiations in terms of an impartial and detached spectator (Husserl 1931).
- 4.
This dimension has been studied in the phenomenological idea of one’s own body. In Merleau-Ponty’s description, this concept emerges as a third way between the body as object (Körper intended as one thing among others in the physical space) and the represented, cognitively reproduced image of the same body. In fact, the human body transcends the dualistic opposition of object/representation in two respects: firstly, it is not concerned with the constitution of objects in space – the body is something through which we constitute the world, but that cannot be wholly constituted. Secondly, the body’s reality cannot be determined once and for all, but can only be defined dynamically and circularly by the practical relationship that it establishes with the world. By describing the agent and the world that is acted upon as two poles of the same relationship–two dimensions that can be separated from each other only analytically, but that are in actual fact intimately intertwined-this notion allows us to focus on the idea of a perceived and lived body as a locus of interaction with the environment.
- 5.
For this particular aspect of Peirce’s semiotics, which is cogent of our study, we refer to the Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce that will be cited in the text by specifying the volume and the page. For the complete bibliographic information about this work, see the references.
- 6.
A similar cartographical paradox, which extends Peirce’s observations, can be found in the image formulated by Borges in his Del rigor en la ciencia (1958) – showing how the map represents an interesting object of reflection for philosophy and literature alike. In his work, Borges tells the story of a map that covers the dimensions of the Empire it illustrates. In this case, not just one, but all the points of the chart coincide with what they represent. Eco (1992) is just one among several scholars who have been fascinated by this narrative, and has discussed the possibility and the theoretical difficulties that a map represented in 1:1 scale can pose from a semiotic point of view.
- 7.
This mirrors Peirce’s idea of semiosis as a process which is essentially mediated, from which it derives that it is only through the intercession of the sign that reality becomes accessible. This vision stems from a profoundly anti-intuitive and anti-cartesian philosophy that has characterized the author’s gnoseology since the New List and his 1868–69 essays.
- 8.
In this respect, sign and spoken languages profoundly differ with regard to their medium of articulation: while spoken languages exploit a linear acoustic-vocal medium, sign languages are realised through what has been defined as a visual-gestural modality. Nonetheless, research on language production, evolution and acquisition is nowadays increasingly claiming the necessity to integrate a “narrow” view of human language with a multimodal approach based on the assumption that both spoken and sign languages use multiple channels of realization. Following this view, also those aspects, such as visual information, that are “particularly salient” in sign languages are present in the spoken ones thanks to the meaningful and systematic use of co-speech gestures in utterance construction (Vigliocco et al. 2014). These components, in addition with others, have been therefore proposed to be investigated as an integral part of what we consider to be language.
- 9.
As distinct from pantomime representations, through which it is possible to articulate any movement using any part of the body, in these languages acts of articulation are performed only within the so-called signing space, that occupies a circumscribed area. In LIS, the language considered in this study, such an area extends from the pelvis to the head. In the same way as other elements, this can also be explained by factors connected with motor perceptive possibilities – the signing space coincides with the space that can be most easily articulated by the signer, and the one that shows the maximum perceptual acuity on the part of the observer – as well as choices operated by the language system. This is confirmed by the fact that its extension changes along with a change of languages.
- 10.
In sign languages grammatical information is instantiated in the tridimensional dimension of space: verbal personal pronouns, for example, have a conventional localisation and their pairing with some verbs is realized by directing movement towards those points in space (Klima and Bellugi 1979; Emmorey 1996; Lillo-Martin and Meier 2011). However, it is possible to suggest that the realization of the first and the second personal pronouns depends on specific semiotic mechanism. In fact, while other pronouns are articulated through different points in space – whose codification is independent from the real position of the subjects they refer to – the linguistic articulation of the first and second personal pronouns depends on the real presence of the enunciator and the enunciatee in the here and now of the enunciation, and overlaps completely with the position of their bodies. The I of the signed discourse coincides with the corporeality of the signer that produces the text, and is nominated through a deictic act aimed at that very body that also coincides with the point in space from which the verbs having the signer as subject originate (Meir et al. 2007). The same process also characterizes the ‘you’. In relation to this, it is possible to note the particular case of the third person: Benveniste’s reference (1970) to Arabic grammar, in which the third person is indicated as “that who is absent” – precisely because, contrary to the first two, this is not part of the situation of discourse (Coquet 2007) – finds its corporeal realization in sign languages. The third person is in fact represented through a deictic act of the hand which points outside the I-you space, towards an external place where the enunciator’s gaze, usually focusing on the enunciatee, is also directed.
- 11.
- 12.
- 13.
The maps have been collected in ENS (Ente Nazionale Sordi) in Florence in May 2015. The instructions for the authors of the map have been produced in sign language by the author of this chapter who has a third level competence in LIS. For details on the modality of the survey see the introduction in this volume.
- 14.
This process was finally codified with Law 517 dated 1977; it was later perfected with Law 104 in 1992. Its aim was to systematically promote the right to school and university education. These legislative acts aimed at equal opportunities and accessibility to education, also provide by the introduction of specialized professionals such as Communication Assistants, as well as interpreting services.
- 15.
It is interesting to note that, only thanks to a comparison with Google Maps F. realized that all the area in the upper part on the right – i.e. the countryside–has now disappeared as a result of recent urbanization.
- 16.
Greimas’ semiotics has discussed the complex phenomenon of enunciation by borrowing and developing a concept that belongs to Jakobson’s (1957) linguistics, i.e. the idea of shifter. This category refers to all those grammatical elements that, like the personal pronouns, show the presence of the subject in his/her enunciation
s. This concept has been developed with reference to the dynamics between two fundamental moments: the débrayage, intended as dis-junction and separation between the I-here-now dimension of the enunciation and the one of the utterance, and the following moment that sees a return or embrayage (Bertrand 2000). - 17.
A similar corporeal dynamic, connected with the relationship between the direction of the gaze and the modality of the enunciation, has also been noted in studies of visual semiotic (Schapiro 2002).
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Murgiano, M. (2018). Into the Map: The Re-enactment of Experience in Sign Languages’ Representation of Places of Origin. In: Visual and Linguistic Representations of Places of Origin. Perspectives in Pragmatics, Philosophy & Psychology, vol 16. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-68858-9_8
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