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CINEMATIC OBSERVATION IN LINGUISTICS AND BEYOND: TOWARDS AN EMPIRICAL SCIENCE // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2022. Issue 2 (32). P. 9-29

The article raises the problem of methodology in the language science and discusses a possible way of solving this problem by recognizing films as a source of observational scientific data. The article claims that the reliance of classical linguistics upon logical analysis and interpretation as a sufficient method of research with texts as primary sources of data is a a fallacy. This fallacy is accounted for by a number of epistemological factors. Firstly, science generally concerns itself not with what things are, but how they appear to the standard observer in the process of interaction. Language, oppositely, is studied as a self-sufficient sign system in and of itself. Secondly, any science constructs its object and produces valid knowledge about this object on the basis of empirical data put together in a logical way, which means that theory and observation are two co-dependent technologies of science ensuring that any claim about the experiential world is verified and “life-tested”. In linguistics, conversely, such an empirical test and verification of claims is replaced by a logical procedure of interpretation and analysis on the basis of texts, which is far from empirical evidence, but rather appears as another set of claims. In other words, texts take on the role of empirical data in linguistics, which is wrong for one simple reason that texts are logical interpretations devoid of any perceptual dynamics and, therefore, unable to be observed. In order to break with such a product-oriented approach and the logico-positivist tradition, and study language beyond written texts only, especially given that illiterate people are language users too, linguistics needs to take an empirical turn. To make this turn possible, linguists need to reconsider the empirical role motion pictures play in the study of how a human’s experiential world is enacted and constructed into a coherent story. Recognizing that films make the work of somebody else’s imagination observable, linguists and cognitive scientists as well could make practical use of cinematic observations as a primary source of evidence for claims about how a human imagines things, constructs meanings, communicates with others, and uses language in general to make all of those things possible. The article elaborates on the cinema-mediated empirical methodology of language studies and specifies what types of observable actions (or their implications) upon linguistic objects we can find in films, including attentional processes, the dynamics of the lived experience, emotioning and sensorimotor activity. As opposed to apparatus theory, the conception of language as experiential dynamics observable in films fits in with the philosophy of radical constructivism and enactivism according to which a human, by analogy with an actor, enacts the world as a (biological, social and cultural) history of her previous actions, these enactments becoming the world itself.

Keywords: primary sources of evidence, language data, experiential world, lived experience, eigenbehavior, enactivism, radical constructivism

Irreality and counterfactual thinking in the semiotics of cinema: A cognitive-psychological aspect // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2024. Issue 3 (41). P. 58-90

Modern literature and cinema increasingly draw on possible world semantics to tell stories about alternative realities, parallel universes and counterfactual events. Imagining the world from a plurality of perspectives, envisaging several life scenarios for one and the same developing story, undoing the past and rewriting history are only a few interesting ways in which our alternative (counterfactual) thought can flow as we engage in the changing and unpredictable experiences our environment affords. In this research, I view irreality as a linguistic product of counterfactual thinking analyzable on the level of both text and cinematic observation. Given that irreal semantics has been mostly investigated so far in terms of logic and information processing, I aim to explore the bodily experience in which our imagination of what could (not) be is grounded. With such a focus on the empirical and psychological aspects of irreality construction in thought and action, I turn to films and filmmaking techniques observable on screen as enactments of irreal meaning and irreal description of the world. In doing so, I analyze the features of polymodal construction of irreality in cinematic discourse. Using four feature films as research material – The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Atonement, Sliding Doors, and Desperate Housewives – I investigate the dynamics of attention, bodily movements, perception and intellectual operations that are enacted on screen through the audio-visual semiotics to enable coherent alternative thinking and produce irreal descriptions of the situation. I argue a conclusion that in polymodal cinematic discourse, irreality “emerges” as a result of the subject’s operating with his/her past perceptual experience and re-configuring this experience in temporal terms in accordance with certain pragmatic goals and interests. In particular, I distinguish the following cognitive-psychological functions of irreality: undoing (canceling the lived experience), rescripting (rewriting, or re-evaluating and reconceptualizing, the lived experience), exploration of options (thinking of an experience in its alternatives), and scenario planning (acting on such experiential alternatives). I establish that imagining an alternative reality is not rejected by a film character as a perception-distorting fantasy but accepted instead as a useful cognitive and psychological tool that helps deal with uncertainty and solve various life problems. Through irreality, filmmakers manage to construct reversible time out of the characters’ non-linear flow of experience by enacting changes in their understanding of familiar events and objects of the surrounding world. A conclusion can be made that irreality and counterfactual thought in films are emplotted experiential configurations reproducible through the audio-visual semiotics of recorded video sequences.

Keywords: polymodal discourse, alternative thinking, undoing, rescripting, scenario planning, exploration of options