Performing depictions in everyday discourse

• Event: Seminar
• Lecturer: Herbert Clark
• Date: 04 May 2017
• Duration: 2 hours
• Venue: Gothenburg

Depicting is a basic method of communication on a par with describing and pointing (or indicating). The idea is that people use their hands, arms, head, face, eyes, voice, and body, with and without props, to stage physical scenes for others, generally as composite parts of utterances along with describing and pointing. Performing depictions, I will show, is inherently interactive, and people choose depictions to communicate things they could not do with language or pointing.