Interpretation of <Gesture and Speech>

Midterm Assignment of ARC3033 Zhengtao Hu_1001489301 Professor:John J. May Course:ARC3033 Date:February 24,2015

What is “mythography”(196)?

1. Emergence of Graphism During the period of Upper Paleolithic, “reflecPve thought had found concrete expression”(195).

AVerwards, this capability of representaPon developed into “two languages,which came into existence at the two poles of the operaPng field-­‐the language of hearing and language of sight”(195).The “language of sight”(195)can be “translated into the graphic symbols”(195).

2. To define Mythography One thing for sure we can draw from evidences like “small equidistant incisions”(188) and “some other traces at the end of the Mousterian period”(188), “it is that figuraPve representaPon moving away from the concretely figuraPve and proof of the earliest rhythmic manifestaPons”(188),namely, “graphism did not begin with naive representaPons of reality but with abstracPon”.(188)The true beginning of graphism belongs to before 30000, iniPally “expressing rhythms rather than forms”(190) and “suggesPng that figuraPve art was directly linked with language and was much closer to wriPng( in the broadest sense) than to what we understand by a work of art”(190) .The most significant characterisPc of graphism is that it “was inseparably from language and preceded from the pairing of phonaPon with graphic expression”(192).However,graphic symbols even precedes linear wriPng with “dimensional freedom”(195),despite that the invenPon of wriPng “completely subordinated graphic to phonePc expression”(195).In another word,graphic symbols is “support medium of an irretrievably lost oral context”(190).

On the other hand,according to records worldwide, it is found that “ the groups of figures represented are coordinated in accordance with a system that is completely foreign to linear organizaPon and consequently to any possibility of conPnuous phonePzaPon”(195). Considering the fact that “mythology and mulPdimensional graphism usually coincide”(195),and the role of “oral support medium”(190) graphism plays, “ mythography”(196), a neologism “based upon the manual”(196) is proposed, as a strict “counterpart”(196) to “‘mythology’-­‐ a mulPdimensional construct base upon the verbal”(196).

3. The real mythogram AVer 15000 BC, “a curious development has taken place: the representaPons of human beings seem to have lost all their realisPc character and are now oriented toward the triangles, rectangles, and rows of lines or dots with which the walls of Lascaux, for example, are covered.

The animals, on the other hand, are developing liele by liele toward realism of form and

movement”(191). The graphism with these features are “really ‘mythograms,’ closer to ideograms than to pictograms and closer to pictograms than to descripPve art”(191).“ An oral context with which the symbolic assemblage was associated and whose values it reproduced in space”(196), is accounted for the manner in which the figures in mythogram are organized. Such a mode of expression is “in the strict ethnological sense”(196) and “sPll prevails in the science, where the linearizaPon of wriPng is actually an impediment”(196).

4. Mythography and linear wriPng “The chief disPnguishing feature of ‘mythographic’ wriPng is its two-­‐dimensional structure which puts it at a remove from linearly emieed spoken language”(200), and “pictography is something other than wriPng in its ‘infancy’”(195).“The origins of wriPng have oVen been linked to the memorizaPon of numerical values”(192).AVer “mythical symbols ”(200) combined to “system of elementary bookkeeping”(200), “figuraPve representaPon were drasPcally simplified and arranged to form sequence”(200),giving birth to “the skeleton of the first system of notaPon”(200). Eventually, “wriPng was born of the complementary interacPon of two systems: ‘mythograms’ and phonePc linearizaPon”(205).

What general features characterize the “mode of thought”(205) associated with various mythographic representaConal systems?

1. The development of “Mode of thought”,from radial to linear For “organizaPon of primiPve thought”(211),the coordinaPon of “verbal language”(211) and “graphic figuraPve representaPon”(211) led to “‘pre-­‐logical’ reasoning”(211). The mode of thinking of “pre-­‐alphabePc anPquity was radial”(211) and “expression were sPll very diffuse”(211).Then,transiPon from “thinking individual’s conPnuing unity with environment”(211) to “disconPnuity”(211), happened with “agricultural sedentarizaPon”(211) and “early wriPng”(211).“In the first millennium before our era”(211),“mythological thought”(211) reached “the summit of perfecPon”(211) when “pre-­‐scienPfic knowledge”(211) was gradually developed.

Since the ideogram was processed with “phonePc transcripPon”(209) before 3000 BC,“wriPng thus tends toward the constricPon of images,toward a stricter linearizaPon”(212).This process eventually “subordinates graphsim to spoken language”(212), and “the whole of human linguisPc apparatus becomes a single instrument for expressing and preserving thought”(210).However, with “a certain level of personal symbolism is sPll preserved in alphabePc wriPng”(212),“a personal interpretaPon of phonePc maeer”(212) is sPll ensured.The linear wriPng “did not abolish all possibiliPes of recreaPon”(212).

2. “Mode of thought” in Chinese System The “mode of thought”(205) in Chinese system is “based on diffuse mulPdimensional configuraPons”(205).Unlike alphabets “viewing wriPng as an economical method of transcribing narrow but precise concepts”(209),Chinese characters don’t have “warranted restricPon of its meaning”(205) but “juxtapose symbols to create meaningful groups of images”(209) by “using the oldest system of graphic expression”(209).In earliest Chinese inscripPon, “figures assembled in groups with much wider meaning than that in linear wriPng”(205) and “ideogram used only to represent a sound”(204).“‘Mythographic’ in it is an assemblage of images whose interplay reflects the full depth of their ethnic context”.(205) For the reason of the “combinaPon of ideographic with phonePc notaPon in ideograms”(207), “It has created a highly symbolized relaPonship between the sound that is noted(audiPve poePc maeer) and its notaPon(a swarm of images)”(207). “ParasiPc images”(205)(the various figures), within one characters,“cause the reader’s thoughts to stray in a manner irrelevant to the real object of notaPon.”(205).