Chapter 5. Can pantomime narrate?

Abstract

Adopting the conceptual-empirical loop of cognitive semiotics, we define narrative as a three-part structure consisting of Narration, Story and Event-sequence and primary narrativity as the process of interpreting a narrative from the former to the latter two. We distinguish between simple narratives with chronological mappings between Story and Event sequence, and complex narratives, where this is not the case; for example, by beginning the narration with the final event. Understanding pantomime as a prototype-based concept grounded in iconic gesture, we ask if it affords primary narrativity, in the case of both simple and complex narratives. We proceed by reviewing and elaborating a recent experimental semiotic study where communicators inter-semiotically translated three-event stories from language to pantomime, and interpreters had to match these performances with three-image cartoon strips. The results showed that pantomime was successful when the narratives were simple, but much less so when they were not. To be able to distinguish between the two, the participants spontaneously introduced various markers of event order. When they conventionalized these markers, they introduced elements of protolanguage, thus going beyond the narrative potentials of pantomime.