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Part of
Perspectives on Pantomime
Edited by Przemysław Żywiczyński, Johan Blomberg and Monika Boruta-Żywiczyńska
[Advances in Interaction Studies 12] 2024
► pp. 58–77

Chapter 2
The relations of demonstration and pantomime to causal reasoning and event cognition

| Lund University

This article deals with the role of showing in the evolution of human communication and how it has developed into telling. When a communicator is showing, she is performing, not just doing. Demonstration is a combination of doing and showing, while pantomime is only showing. I make a distinction between pantomime used for teaching and pantomime for communication and argue that this is central for the transition from showing to telling. Telling involves describing an event or a series of events. The evolutionary question then becomes: Which selective forces made hominins extend their communication from doing to showing and then to telling? My answer is that showing and, to a larger degree, telling require advanced forms of causal cognition and event representation that are not found in other species. I analyze how event cognition is relevant for demonstration and pantomime and how this type of cognition influences the structure of language.

Keywords: demonstration, pantomime, cognitive evolution, causal cognition, event representation
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction: From doing to showing to telling
  • 2.Causal cognition
    • 2.1Non-human primate reasoning about causes
    • 2.2Human reasoning about forces
  • 3.Event cognition
    • 3.1A cognitive model of events
    • 3.2Event cognition and planning
  • 4.Demonstration and two kinds of pantomime
    • 4.1Characteristics of demonstration
    • 4.2Characteristics of pantomime
    • 4.3Theory of mind and communicative intentions
    • 4.4Pantomime for communication
  • 5.The role of event cognition in pantomime for communication
  • 6.Influence on the structure of language
  • 7.Conclusion
  • References
Published online: 15 February 2024
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ais.12.02gar
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Cited by (3)

Cited by 3 other publications

Arbib, Michael
2024. Chapter 1. Pantomime within and beyond the evolution of language. In Perspectives on Pantomime [Advances in Interaction Studies, 12], ► pp. 16 ff. DOI logo
Mineiro, Ana & Mara Moita
2024. Chapter 7. The pantomime roots of Sao Tome and Principe Sign Language. In Perspectives on Pantomime [Advances in Interaction Studies, 12], ► pp. 159 ff. DOI logo
Żywiczyński, Przemysław, Marek Placiński, Marta Sibierska, Monika Boruta-Żywiczyńska, Sławomir Wacewicz, Michał Meina & Peter Gärdenfors
2024. Praxis, demonstration and pantomime: a motion capture investigation of differences in action performances. Language and Cognition ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo

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