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Article published In:
Child-Robot Interaction: Design, Evaluation, and Novel Solutions
Edited by Marta Couto, Shruti Chandra, Elmira Yadollahi and Vicky Charisi
[Interaction Studies 23:2] 2022
► pp. 289–321

What’s in a mime?

An exploratory analysis of predictors of communicative success of pantomime

 | Nicolaus Copernicus University | Lund University
 | Nicolaus Copernicus University
 | Nicolaus Copernicus University
 | Nicolaus Copernicus University
Several lines of research within developmental psychology, experimental semiotics and language origins studies have recently converged in their interest in pantomime as a system of bodily communication distinct from both language (spoken or signed) and nonlinguistic gesticulation. These approaches underscore the effectiveness of pantomime, which despite lack of semiotic conventions is capable of communicating complex meanings. However, very little research is available on the structural underpinnings of this effectiveness, that is, the specific properties of pantomime that determine its communicative success. To help fill in this gap, we conducted an exploratory rating study aimed at identifying those properties of pantomime that facilitate its understanding. We analysed an existing corpus of 602 recordings of whole-body re-enactments of short transitive events, coding each of them for 6 properties, and found out that the presence of salient elements (conspicuous objects in a specific semantic space), image mapping (representing the physical orientation of the object), and gender markers (distinguishing between the represented characters) increased the guessability of pantomimes.
Keywords: pantomime, bodily mimesis, non-verbal communication, communicative success
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Study
    • 2.1Dataset
    • 2.2Method
      • 2.2.1Operationalisation of communicative success
      • 2.2.2Selection of predictors
      • 2.2.3Coding procedure
      • 2.2.4Statistical methods
  • 3.Results
    • 3.1Statistical analyses
    • 3.2Qualitative post-analyses
  • 4.Discussion
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at [email protected].

Published online: 24 March 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/is.22002.sib
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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

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