1 Introduction ... 1-5
2 What is a spatial act? ... 5-6
2.1 What is an act according to Deleuze and Guattari (1988) ... 6-82.2 What counts as a spatial act …... 8
-11
2.3 Spatial acts in analogy to speech acts ...
11-16
3 Communicative aspects of spatial acts ... 16
3.1 Communicative modalities of spatial acts ...16-19
3.2 Communication model accounting for spatial acts ...
19-21
3.3 How agents perform spatial acts, anticipating their meaning ...
21-23
3.4 How agents perceive spatial acts, conceiving their meaning ...
23-26
3.5 Spatial acts performed in situations ...
26-29
4 Reconstruction of spatial acts ... 29
4.1 Reconstruction scheme …...29-32
4.2 Reconstructing spatial acts in linguistic terms ...
32-34
5 Conclusion ... 34-37
References ... 38-40
The reconstruction of Spatial Acts 1 Introduction
In our everyday lives we have the capacity to communicate with peers with a variety of means: linguistic contributions, gestures, facial expressions, etc. Frequently, we communicate using combinations of means and the two hypothetical examples that follow exemplify cases where linguistic and spatial contributions work together.
(1) John is a policeman writing a fine to Peter who is a traffic offender. While John is writing, Peter grabs the pen from John's hand, and says “this is unfair”.
(2) Cain calls his neighbour Abel to come over to his house and says: Cain: Your dog took a shit on my doorstep again.
Abel: Well... what can you do, dogs are dogs.
Cain: I think dog owners can do something, and they should.
[and he moves his coat to reveal a gun strapped to his waist]
What is clear in these two examples is that both linguistic and spatial means are combined to contribute meaningful content to the communication. In the first example, the meaning that Peter puts forward with his words and actions can be “Stop writing because this is unfair”. In the second example, the meaning that Cain puts forward his words and actions can be “If you don't do something about your dog, then I will kill you”.
If these interactions are analysed with an approach that only focuses on the linguistic contributions, as it has been accustomed by communication analysts (Kendon, 1997, p. 110; Birdwhistell, 1968, p. 12), then part of the meaning coming from spatial means would remain an unexpressed contribution and will not be systematically accounted for. This would be detrimental for the proper analysis of the meaning conveyed in such interactions and an alternative route would have to be sought after. By taking a multimodal approach which allows the accounting for the various means employed in everyday interactions (Kress, 2012; Van Leeuwen, 2005), the analysis of the interaction may attain a more holistic account for the conveyed meaning and be able to account for the meaning from both the means of speech and spatial contributions. By taking such an approach, the contributions made in the interaction with speech or spatial means may be taken systematically into account and be considered as explicitized by the contributors.
What is also clear from the examples is that the contributions that the participants make with spatial means involve not only the actions performed by agents, but also material objects. This implies that a systematic analysis of the meaning conveyed through spatial means would have to be able to account for both these types of spatial contributions. If an attempt was made to analyse the acts that agents perform in an interaction to find their meaning, it will be soon realized that each
different action that an agent may employ in an interaction has a different meaning. Two examples which show that two different acts, in the same interaction, have different meanings could be example (2) and its variation that follows:
(3) Cain calls his neighbour Abel to come over to his house and says: Cain: Your dog took a shit on my doorstep again.
Abel: Well... what can you do, dogs are dogs.
Cain: I think dog owners can do something, and they should... [and he moves his coat to put his hands in his pockets, a gun is revealed strapped to his waist]
While in example (2) the act of revealing the gun that Cain made in the interaction, allows to understand that Cain is threatening to kill Abel. In example (3), The act of Cain to put his hand in his pockets and by that allow Abel to see that he has a gun, is not an act that may be considered as a direct threat against Abel. Examples (2) and (3) show is that a small variation in the acts performed affects substantially their meaning in the interaction.
Example (4) is a follow up of the interaction that Cain and Abel had in example (2), that shows how the same act -as the one Cain made to reveal the gun in example (2)- in a different situation has a totally different meaning.
(4) Abel goes to his other neighbour, George, and discusses what has just happen with him and Cain. George says:
George: Crazy little Cain... don't worry Abel...
[and he moves his coat to reveal a gun strapped to his waist]
The meaning that comes about from the act of George in example (4), even though is the same act as the act of Cain in example (3), it has a different meaning in this situation. In example (3), the meaning is a threat issued against Abel and in example (4) is a pledge to protect him.
Examples (2), (3) and (4) demonstrate that to analyse the acts that an agent performs in an interaction to find their meaning, then it must be considered that every act has a different meaning and that the meaning of an act changes depending on the situation that it occurs. This applies also to the objects that agents employ to communicate in interactions. A comparison between examples (3) and (4) shows that the same object employed in different situations may have different meanings. In example (5), which is a variation of example (4), a different object is employed in the interaction altering the meaning of the contribution.
(5) Abel goes to his other neighbour, George, and discusses what has just happen with him and Cain. George says:
George: Crazy little Cain... don't worry Abel...
The meaning that comes about from the employment of the banana instead of the gun, even though the act and situation is the same as in example (4), it has a different meaning. The meaning in example (4) is a pledge to protect Abel, and in example (5), probably to make fun of Cain, or of the situation that Abel is in. What examples (4) and (5) reveal, is that different objects have different meanings when employed in an interaction.
What examples (1)-(5) reveal, is that to analyse the meaning of interactions a multimodal approach must be considered so to account for both linguistic and spatial means employed. And that to account for the meaning that is conveyed in the interaction through spatial means, the acts and objects that agents employ in an interaction and the situation that they are in, must be taken under consideration. Another thing that must be considered is that the situation of an interaction affects the meaning that acts and objects have in a situation, as it does in linguistic contributions (Grice, 1990).
Pragmatic approaches such as speech act theory (Searle, 1965) and conversational implicature (Grice, 1990) have been widely used by analysts to account for the intentions of agents and for the meaning of linguistic contributions in context. Spatial means of communication however, do not have an equivalent account, or term, with which to elucidate the intentions of agents and the meaning of spatio-material transformations in interactions. This lacking of a pragmatic approach to spatio-material means of communication poses a problem to the analysis of the meaning of interactions where both linguistic and spatial means are employed.
This investigation undertakes the task to tackle this problem and proposes the term of spatial acts to define the minimal units of spatio-material communication that agents employ to convey meaning in an interaction (cf. Searle, 1965, p. 39). The aim is to define what spatial acts are, and to find a way with which these spatial acts may be reconstructed so to be analysed along the linguistic means that are employed in an interaction. This investigation pursues such a reconstruction because it allows spatial acts to be included in pragmatic approaches to discourse analysis and argumentation theory facilitating a multimodal accounting of the meaning that is conveyed in interactions.
To define what spatial acts are the investigation aims to examine the various aspects that need to come under consideration so that spatial acts would become an analogous term of speech acts which may permit the use of spatial acts in pragmatic analyses of interactions. When the terms speech and spatial acts are contrasted, it can be assumed that the agent necessarily performs an act in doing either. Thus in section 2.1, I elaborates on acts by incorporating insights from the ontology of Deleuze and Guattari (1988) who take such a perspective on acts as to allow the accounting of any possible act. Since this definition permits an account for all acts, then it may be considered as a common ground of the speech and spatial acts that agents perform in interactions. However, the definition of Deleuze and Guattari is too broad since it takes generally all acts under consideration. Hence in section 2.2 the investigation clarifies which acts may be considered as appropriate for the
performance of a meaningful spatial act. In section 2.3, speech and spatial acts are compared to examine the analogy of the two terms, based on trichotomy of Austin (1952) of the locutionary, the illocutionary and the perlocutionary act. The investigation examines this analogy because it can establish that spatial acts are a pragmatic term analogous to speech acts.
To find a way with which spatial acts may be reconstructed and be used in discourse analysis and argumentation theory, the investigation aims to build a theoretical framework with which spatial acts may be analysed and reconstructed in linguistic terms. In building the theoretical framework the investigation conducts an exploration into various disciplines to find insights that may function as “building blocks” for its construction. These building blocks may allow the framework to analyse interactions where speech and spatial acts are employed and reconstruct the meaning that they have in an interaction. Having the meaning that the agent intends in the interaction and the meaning that the perceiving agent gets, spatial acts may be translated in linguistic terms which would further allow spatial acts to be used in discourse analysis and argumentation theory. The investigation resorts to these “building blocks” and explains how they work for the analysis of speech and spatial acts using the interaction of Cain and Abel in example (2) to explain how the framework works.
In chapter 3 the investigation focuses on the communicative aspects of spatial acts and in section 3.1 it resorts to insights of communication analysis which takes on the various modalities that agents use to communicate: language, paralanguage, kinesics, proxemics, etc. Since as examples (1)-(5) show agents may employ various of these modalities while communicating, in section 3.2 I propose a communication model which takes a multimodal approach accounting for the speech and spatial acts that agents employ in interactions. The proposed model permits the elucidation of the cognitive functions of the agents who participate in the interaction and it addresses both the performing and perceiving agents.
In section 3.3 the framework clarifies how an agent may perform an act and how he may anticipate the meaning to be conveyed by it. By resorting to insights from the theory of affordances and skilled intentionality it is shown how the acts that an agent performs are afforded to be performed, and how they conform to known ways of acting. In section 3.4 the framework clarifies how the other agent may perceive the performed act and how he may conceive its meaning. By resorting to insights on the perceptual schemes of attention and on the previous perceptual schemes stored in memory, the investigation reveals how an agent may perceive speech or spatial acts and how he may conceive their meaning in predications. In section 3.5 the investigation resorts to the cooperation principle (Grice, 1990) to specify the necessary array of affordances that agents need to grasp on while communicating so that speech and spatial acts may contribute to the back and forth of the interaction.
In chapter 4, the investigation reconstructs the interaction of Cain and Abel in example (2) to show how spatial acts may be reconstructed in linguistic terms so to be use in discourse analysis and argumentation theory. In section 4.1 it is explained how the interaction may be reconstructed in a scheme as it happens, in the back and forth manner, and how each of the contributions of the
agents may be analysed based on the model of communication proposed in section 3.2. In section 4.2, I explain how the speech and spatial acts that Cain and Abel employed in example (2) are analysed and reconstructed by the framework in linguistic terms revealing their in between relations. In this way, the analysis and reconstruction of the framework permits spatial acts to be included in pragmatic approaches to discourse analysis and argumentation theory facilitating multimodal accounting of the meaning conveyed in an interaction.
2 What is a spatial act?
To be able to analyse the pragmatic meaning of interactions where agents employ both linguistic and spatial contributions, a problem needs to be addressed first. Linguistic contributions may be analysed by making use of a concept such as the speech act (Austin, 1962; Searle, 1965) which may reveal their pragmatic meaning. Whereas spatio-material contributions do not have an analogous pragmatic concept with which to analyse their meaning. To tackle this problem, the term spatial acts is proposed, and analogously to speech acts (cf. Searle, 1965, p. 39), aims to define the minimal units of spatio-material communication, that agents may employ to convey meaning.
Another approach which aims to define an overarching concept to cover both linguistic and spatial means employed, is the case of the “pragmene” (Mey, 2010). This approach however does not allow the analysis of the means that agents employ in the interaction so to account for the meaning that each of them has in distinction. In other words, in situations where both linguistic and spatial means are employed to convey meaning, a pragmene, does not allow the framework to account for the difference in the means employed, neglecting in this way, the differences in the modes which are used to communicate, the speech, the gesture, the facial expression, etc. The term of spatial acts, that I propose in distinction to the pragmene and analogously to speech acts, serves to distinguish the pragmatic meaning based on the the spatial modes that agents employ to communicate. That is, allow the framework to account for modes of communication pertaining to space which may complement pragmatic discourse analytical efforts depended only on speech acts for their analyses.
When an agent performs a speech or spatial act in an interaction it can may be considered that he necessarily performs an act. Because of this, in section 2.1 the framework incorporates insights from the philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari (1988) to elaborate on acts. The definition of the act that these two authors give, allows the accounting for contributions in either speech or spatial form, which reveals a common ground to begin the investigation. The definition that Deleuze and Guattari give to acts however, accounts for all possible acts which may make the definition of spatial acts too vague. In section 2.2 the investigation defines which acts may be appropriate for the performance of a meaningful spatial act to avoid a vague definition of spatial acts. In section 2.3, speech acts and spatial acts are compared based on the trichotomy of the locutionary, the illocutionary and the perlocutionary act (Austin, 1952) to examine the analogy of
the two terms. The investigation examines this analogy because it can establish that spatial acts are a pragmatic term analogous to speech acts.
2.1 What is an act according to Deleuze and Guattari (1988)
In considering the acts that agents perform in interactions, it can be perhaps readily understood that by acting agents introduce in the world a spatio-material transformation that alters the world somehow. The conditions of the spatial relations and the material distribution that are shaped in the situation are being transformed by the performance of the act and this is something that it may be considered as occurring in the performance of either speech or spatial acts. In other words, when an agent performs an act, he is affecting the environment that the other agents are perceiving which allows him to communicate with them.
The agents who perform an act to communicate something to other agents resort to their available communicative modes from which they employ -speech, facial expressions, body postures, gestures, etc. If these modes of communication are considered, then it becomes clear when a communicative act is performed by an agent then necessarily a spatio-material transformation would have to be performed too, since when he act he would moved his body, head, face, hand, etc. This holds for linguistic contributions too since when an agent uses speech then he would have moved his jaw, tongue, lips, etc. Moreover, the sound waves which travel in space to reach the perceiving agent, may still count as a spatio-material transformation with which an agent contributes meaning in the interaction.
However, this consideration about the effects of communicative acts on the world is something that it may be held true for any act that an agent may employ not only communicative ones. Deleuze and Guattari (1988) ontological approach defines the act as a stratification on the world, a stratum which is constituted by the performance of the act -by its externalization- and stratifies on the existing situation.
According to their theory an act is a stratum which is articulated in a double articulation always. “What is articulated is a content and an expression” (p. 584). The articulation of the content is a territorialization and concerns the formed materiality (De Landa, 2010, p. 33). How the material substratum (the spatial relations and the material distribution) is transformed by the act that the agents introduce. The articulation of the expression is an encoding and deals with a material expressivity (p. 33), what the spatio-material transformation may come to mean to the agents who experience it. De Landa (2010), distinguishes the two articulations, by saying that the first articulation is what becomes “visible”, what is seen; and the second what becomes “say-able”, what can be said about the spatio-material transformation that appears (p. 33).
Deleuze and Guattari considered that both the content and expression of the act are compiled by substances and forms (pp. 584-585). To explain the substances and the forms of the act, the act of uttering a word is used as an example. The substances of the content in uttering a word are the various manipulations and positions that an agent needs to put his lips, tongue, air
exhaling, etc., while uttering. Substances take these manipulations and positions as they may be considered individually, as a selection of the possible manipulations that agents may do -a molecular perspective on the uttering.
When the act of uttering a word is performed, the forms of the content are the ordering of these body manipulations into a more stable structure that produces new and larger in scale material entities (De Landa, 2010, p. 33). It is the flow of the air through the vocal tract, activating sounds while shifting between the molecular positions of the lips, tongue, etc. Figure (1), shows how the manipulations and positions of the vocal tract may be measured in relations of distances (Echternach, et al., 2016). It reveals the various positions that the vocal tract resorts to in producing a sound. It reveals the molecular, the control points of the vocal tract in uttering specific sounds. Figure (2), shows how these manipulations and positions are ordered in a form, revealing the molar, the vocal tract as a system for uttering the word.
In the second articulation, the substances of expression in uttering a word are the various phonemes, the molecular expression of sound, dependable on the knowledge and training of the agent to produce those sounds. The form of expression in the second articulation is the ordering of these phonemes in the words to be uttered, it is the establishing of “functional, compact, stable structures” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1988, p. 47) which produce the larger entity of the word used in a culture.
The definition of the act of Deleuze and Guattari suggests permits the utterance of a word or the performance of a gesture to be considered a stratification in a situation with a double articulation. On one hand, the first articulation pertains to the formed materiality. The material substratum on which the act stratifies and transforms. Where the formations and manipulations of the vocal tract or the postures and movements of the body are territorializing. On the other hand, the second articulation pertains to the material expressivity; what the spatio-material transformation may come to mean to the agents who experience it. The expression that is brought about by the formed materiality of the act. The encoding of the various sounds from the phonemic to the lexical or the encoding of gestures, facial expressions etc.. The definition of acts that Deleuze and Guattari propose may be considered to account for any act which implies the accounting for
Figure (1): Image: Measured distances in each frame of the MRI scan while singing.
(Echternach, et al., 2016)
Figure (2): Video: MRI scan while man singing. (Echternach, et al., 2016). Available at:
acts in either speech or spatial form revealing a common ground to begin the investigation.
However, the definition of the spatio-material transformations that Deleuze and Guattari describe is far broader than the one that this investigation is after. Specifically, the definition of Deleuze and Guattari builds on geological terms describing all evolutionary acts and adaptations on the planet and universe, in their words, the “creation of the world from chaos, a continual, renew creation” (p. 584). In other words, acts are spatio-material transformations, which span over the “physico-chemical, organic, and anthropomorphic (or alloplastic)” (p. 584). The definition of the act that Deleuze and Guattari suggests can be considered as quite broad since it considers any possible act. This is problematic if spatial acts would be adequately defined and be distinguished from speech acts. This, brings the necessity to define the appropriate spatio-material transformations that an agent may employ for the performance of a meaningful spatial act. In the next section, the definition of the relevant spatio-material transformations that an agent may employ in an interaction so to perform a spatial act is narrowed down based on the consideration that speech and spatial acts both have communicative and pragmatic aspects.
As a term that defines an act, I will use the term spatio-material transformation to allow the fine spectrum with which Deleuze and Guattari see acts to remain in the investigation. In text however, the terms of act and spatio-material transformation will be used interchangeably.
2.2 What counts as a spatial act
The definition of the act of Deleuze and Guattari accounts for any possible activity that happens in the world as a spatio-material transformation that stratifies on the world and alters it. This definition has a very wide perspective accounting for all possible acts thus it must be clarified what is implied by the term spatio-material transformations in regard to performing spatial acts. In other words, if spatio-material transformations are the means with which a spatial act may be performed, then a clarification should be made about which spatio-material transformations may or may not be considered appropriate for the performance of spatial acts.
A first issue that must be considered while spatio-material transformations are discussed is that there is not a particular need that a transformation would have to be performed so meaning would emerge in the interaction. This is exemplified in the examples that follow:
(6) Matthew is a company manager working late, he returns to his office and finds the janitor -Lucas- sitting on his chair, with his feet on his desk, talking on the mobile phone.
Matthew: What's up Lucas?... Are we relaxing a little bit? [and smiles] Lucas: [hears and sees Matthew entering, quickly brings his feet on the ground and stands, putting his phone in his pocket.]
(7) Matthew is a company manager working late, he returns to his office and finds the janitor -Lucas- sitting on his chair, with his feet on his desk, talking on the
mobile phone.
Matthew: What's up Lucas?... Are we relaxing a little bit? [and smiles] Lucas: [hears and sees Matthew entering, continues his phone call, without moving.]
What example (6) shows, is that by performing a spatio-material transformation with his body, Lucas makes Matthew understand that he considers what he was just doing as inappropriate. In example (7) however, Lucas is not performing any spatio-material transformation and makes Matthew understand, that he considers what he is doing as reasonable and that he would continue doing it. What is revealed from example (7) in comparison with example (6), is that even without a spatio-material transformation happening a distinct meaning is conveyed by the behaviour of Lucas. These examples clarify that the spatio-material transformations which may be used for the performance of a spatial act are not transformations per se, but the spatio-material statuses that agents form in the environments that they share with other agents that perceive them. It is the shift from act to act in a conversational turn taking. While this clarifies that transformations are not necessary for performing a spatial act, in this paper I would continue to use the term “transformations”, since the vast majority of spatial acts employs spatio-material transformations to convey meaning.
Taking under consideration the concept of spatio-material transformations, it can be said that it is a quite broad category which includes a vast number of events. In the broadest sense, whenever a material object moves in space it may count as a spatio-material transformation. It may include natural phenomena such as earthquakes or the drop of a fruit from a tree which are naturally occurring incidences that affect the environment of a perceiving agent, who may thus come in a position to conceive a meaning about them.1 For example, in the case of the earthquake, the agent may conceive that it is a good idea to get under a table, and in the case of the fruit, conceive that it has ripen. A borderline case of a natural phenomenon, could the example of yawning. Yawning may be considered a something that occurs naturally and it is a common held assumption that when one yawns he is either tired or bored (Sonkin, 2011). Thus, if a person yawns in an interaction it may be conceived by the other participants that he is tired or bored. Despite the naturally occurring yawn, an agent may mimic a yawn intentionally so to deliver a message to another agent, as in example (8) that follows.
(8) Philip and Thomas are two friends having coffee at a cafe. Philip is telling Thomas about his recent brake-up with his girlfriend, when Michael arrives.
Philip: … I don't think it was meant for us to be together. Michael: [arrives at the table, and says] What's up guys?
1 While we may consider that there is a tendency to attribute agency and intentionality to natural occurring spatio-material transformations, such as attributing earthquakes, etc., to a god, soul or any other metaphysical entity who is communicating something with the spatio-material transformation. I prefer to avoid any such references in this investigation, preserving an immanent account of intentionality lending itself to empirical investigations of intentionality.
Thomas: Philip is telling me about his brake up.
Michael: [mimics a yawn, and says] Boring!... Let's talk about new girlfriends.
As example (8) shows, Michael employs the yawn with the intention to say, “I am bored, because the subject we are discussing is boring”. Thus, as it is revealed, an agent may perform a naturally occurring yawn with which other agents may conceive that he is bored or tired, but he may also employ a mimicked yawning to make a point in the interaction. Although natural spatio-material transformations may deliver meaning and may affect the situation that an agent perceives, for the performance of a spatial act an agent employs intentionally a spatio-material transformation to deliver a meaning with it. This condition distinguishes natural from intentional spatio-material transformations clarifying that spatial acts employ intentional spatio-material transformations.
However, the spatio-material transformations that agents intentionally perform may be performed without communicating anything to another agent. For example, an agent who is hiking on the hilltop alone can not communicate anything to somebody else even if he intends to. As long as there is not another agent to perceive them, then these kind of spatio-material transformations do not deliver meaning. Thus a condition for spatial acts is that the performing agent can perform a spatial act only if he performs a spatio-material transformation which has a perceiving agent. The condition of having a performing and a perceiving agent is a condition of any communication (Birdwhistell, 1968), and it may be considered as reasonable that this condition applies to spatial acts. Hence a spatial act may be performed when the spatio-material transformation that is employed in the interaction has a performing and a perceiving agent.
Another consideration to take into account is that there are examples where an agent A conceives a meaning from a spatio-material transformation performed by agent B, but agent B does not direct it to agent A. An example of such a case is the one that follows:
(9) Andrew is standing on a chair, trying laboriously to put a screw on the wooden frame of the kitchen door, using a knife as a screwdriver. Anna enters the room from that door, and stands by to see what Andrew is doing. She then goes to a drawer, opens it, picks up a screwdriver, and hands it over to Andrew.
In example (9), Andrew is performing the spatio-material transformations of handling the knife and pushing the screw in the frame and when the tip of the knife slips from the head of the screw he tries again. Anna who sees these spatio-material transformations performed by Andrew is in position to conceive that a screwdriver would be something that Andrew would want, and goes to the drawer to get one for him. What this example shows, is that even though Andrew does not direct his spatio-material transformations to Anna and all he is doing is putting the screw in the frame, still besides his intentions, Andrew communicates something to her with the spatio-material transformations he performs. Although Andrew does not employ a spatial act to deliver meaning to Anna, it is considered that Anna employs a spatial act with the spatio-material transformations to
hand him a screwdriver since with it she delivers meaning specifically to Andrew. The condition that example (9) reveals is that spatial acts must be directed.
The conditions mentioned in this section distinguish that the spatio-material transformations an agent may employ to perform a spatial act, are those spatio-material transformations which agents intentionally perform and direct to another agent that may perceive them. These conditions of spatial acts limit down the spatio-material transformations from the great array of all possible to those being relevant for the performance of a spatial act. The conditions for performing a spatial act assumes an intentional agent who performs a spatio-material transformation and directs it to another agent who may perceive it. The conditions for performing a spatial act qualify which spatio-material transformations may be employed in performing a spatial act and they reveal that spatial acts have pragmatic and communicative aspects. In section 2.3 the investigation discusses pragmatic aspects of spatial acts in an analogy to speech acts to establish that spatial acts may qualify as a pragmatic term. The communicative aspects of spatial acts are discussed in chapter 3.
2.3 Spatial acts in analogy to speech acts
According to Searle (1965), speech acts are the minimal units of linguistic communication that agents may employ in their interactions revealing their intentions (p. 39). These are the things that agents may do with words and include things like, assert, request, criticize, welcome, threat, etc. While there may be over a thousand such expressions (p. 39), these may be analysed using the trichotomy of Austin (1962). According to this trichotomy:
...a speech act is, first of all, a locutionary act, that is, an act of saying something. Saying something can also be viewed from three different perspectives: (i) as a phonetic act: uttering certain noises; (ii) as a phatic act: uttering words “belonging to and as belonging to, a certain vocabulary, conforming to and as conforming to a certain grammar”; and (iii) as a rhetic act: uttering words “with a certain more-or-less definite sense and reference” [...]. Now, to perform a locutionary act is also in general to perform an illocutionary act; in performing a locutionary act, we perform an act with a certain force: ordering, warning, assuring, promising, expressing an intention, and so on. And by doing that, we will normally produce “certain consequential effects upon the feelings, thoughts or actions of the audience, or of the speaker, or of other persons” [...] that Austin calls perlocutionary. (Korta & Perry, 2015)
The trichotomy that Austin (1962) proposes for the analysis of speech acts may establish that spatial acts are analogous to speech acts and be able to be analysed analogously. To make the trichotomy of the spatial act, the elements that appear in the trichotomy of speech acts have to be related to analogous elements that may appear in spatial acts. In figure (3), the locutionary, the illocutionary, and the perlocutionary aspects of speech and spatial acts are brought forward. The figure is compiled in such a way as to relate speech and spatial acts by matching the locutionary,
the illocutionary and the perlocutionary aspects of both acts.
Speech acts Spatial Acts
Locutionary act
Phonetic act: utter certain sounds.
Phatic act: belonging to a vocabulary, conforming to a grammar.
Rhetic act: definite sense or reference.
Make a spatio-material transformation “visible” (sensorial) act.
The performed spatio-material transformation belongs to common, familiar ways that others may conceive, a kind of spatial vocabulary, Conforming the act to known ways of performing the act, a kind of grammar for the act.
The act has a definite sense or reference.
Illocutionary act
Acting with a force: assert, request, criticize, etc. Acting with intention to bring an effect.
Acting with a force: assert, request, criticize, etc. Acting with intention to bring an effect.
Perlocutionary
act Consequential effects of the action. Consequential effects of the action.
As it is shown in figure (3), speech and spatial acts are related revealing what constitutes a locutionary, an illocutionary and a perlocutionary acts for each of the two. Speech and spatial acts, as they are shown here, may be considered to be largely similar. They both have perlocutionary effects when employed in an interaction, since it can be normally expected that the perceiver of either act would conceive it and react somehow to it. They both have illocutionary aspects which means that the agent is performing the act with a specific force, e.g. to criticize, to request, etc., and that the agent is performing the act to bring that effect intentionally. Examples (10) and (11) that follow, clarify how an agent by acting, with either speech or spatial acts, performs similar illocutionary and perlocutionary acts.
(10) Simone is a 14 year old girl, who is getting ready to go out with her friends. Marcus, is her father, and he is in the living-room. He is watching tv, waiting for her to get ready, so he can give her a lift.
Simone: [goes into the living-room] Dad... I need some money.
(11) Simone is a 14 year old girl, who is getting ready to go out with her friends. Marcus, is her father, and he is in the living-room. He is watching tv, waiting for her to get ready, so he can give her a lift.
Simone: [goes into the living-room] Dad... [and she puts her hand, palm facing up, in front of Marcus]
Example (10), shows how an agent may perform a request with a speech act, and example (11) shows, how an agent may perform a request with a spatial act. These two examples, reveal how an agent is acting, with a speech act and a spatial act, and accomplishes similar illocutionary and perlocutionary acts.
However, speech and spatial acts differentiate in the performance of the locutionary act. The differentiation of spatial acts from speech acts, as it is portrayed in figure (3), amounts to the employment of different means to deliver the message. Speech acts by performing the locutionary act, they simultaneously perform, a phonetic act, a phatic act, and a rhetic act. As Austin defines it, the locutionary act consist in:
...the utterance of certain noises, the utterance of certain words in a certain construction, and the utterance of them with a certain 'meaning'[...] i.e. with a certain sense and with a certain reference. (p. 94)
The performance of the locutionary act in spatial acts, as it is shown in figure (3), is performed simultaneously with the spatio-material transformation that agents make “visible” to other agents. This could be something visual as in example (11), but it can also be something auditory, like the knock on a door, which may count as a summon (Schegloff, 1968). Thus, the analogous of the phonetic act in spatial acts, it may be considered that it is a sensible act, something that one agent reveals to the other agent through the spatio-material transformation that he employs.
Phatic act as it is defined by Austin (1962), suggests that to be performed, a phonetic act would have to be perform too, and that what is sounded with the phonetic act, it is conforming to a vocabulary and it is grammatically constructed. The example that Austin (p. 96) gives, “cat thoroughly the if”, reveals the employment of a common vocabulary but the failure to conform with the grammar. The equivalent term of phatic acts in spatial acts, as it is portrayed in figure (3), relates to these features. The performed visible acts, are conforming to common and familiar ways of acting, typifying into a vocabulary. For example, yawning, cannot happen by an agent scratching his head, he needs to employ those parts of his body that it is known to be employed to perform it. On the other hand, the grammar that yawning conforms to, would be to perform the act in an ordered way, which it is known in performing it. In yawning, it consists in the simultaneous inhalation of air and the stretching of the eardrums, followed by an exhalation of breath. It may be also accompanied, by the action of bringing the hand in front of the mouth. As it is shown with the example of yawning, spatial acts relate with speech acts in the performance of the phatic act, by having a kind of spatial vocabulary and grammar that the agent conforms to, while performing them.
The last way that spatial acts relate with speech acts, is that in performing any of them simultaneously a rhetic act is performed. According to Austin the rhetic act in speech acts consists in the utterance having a certain sense and a certain reference. Example (11), shows a spatial act which has a certain sense and a certain reference since the act of Simone in that particular context allows her father to understand that she is referring to money and that makes sense to him because
it has a particular meaning. Austin however, gives some examples where there is a failure in performance of the rhetic act.
If the sense or reference is not being taken as clear, then the whole or part is to be in quotation marks. Thus I might say: 'He said I was to go to the "minister", but he did not say which minister' or 'I said that he was behaving badly and he replied that "the higher you get the fewer" ' (p. 96)
In the first example that Austin gives, the reference is not definite, and in the latter example, the sense. A similar example in spatial acts, which has no clear sense or reference can be the one that follows:
(12) Philip and Thomas are two friends having coffee at a cafe. Philip is telling Thomas about his recent brake-up with his girlfriend.
Philip: … I don't think it was meant for us to be together. Thomas: [puts his hand, palm facing up, in front of Philip]
In this example, Philip is not in a position to understand if Thomas is requesting something to be given to him, and what that something is; or if he just wants to hi-five (type of handshake). The meaning of the spatial act in example (12) is not clear, and Philip is not in a position to get it. As example (11) shows in performing a spatial act the agents are simultaneously performing a rhetic act since the spatial act has a certain sense and reference. As example (12) shows, the spatial act may be performed and not have a certain meaning conforming to the rules that Austin set for the rhetic acts.
This analysis reveals that spatial acts can be considered an analogous term of speech acts, and that both speech and spatial acts may be analysed in the trichotomy that Austin proposed. When an agent is performing a speech or spatial act simultaneously he is performing a locutionary, an illocutionary, and a perlocutionary act. This establishes that spatial acts may be considered a pragmatic term able to reveal the intentions of the agent who employs a spatio-material transformation in the interaction to bring about a meaning.
The insights from Deleuze and Guattari (1988) and the insights from Austin (1962) reveal that the double articulation of acts corresponds to the territorialization of the act at the material substratum and the codification of the act at the locutionary level. In accounting for the illocutionary act, Deleuze and Guattari consider that the illocutionary act emerges from further codification of the locution at a social level. De Landa (2010) reads Deleuze and Guattari and see that the double articulation brings about “the visible and the sayable” (p. 36). The visible, corresponds to content and territorialization, the sayable, corresponds for the codification and the emergence of the illocution. More specifically, De Landa sees that the codification that Deleuze and Guattari (1988) propose is whatever it can be said about the visible by its perceiver. This implies that the perceiver of the visible, is in position to see the illocutionary act, because of the overall codification that he was trained to while he was socializing.
The perspective of Austin (1962) however, does not take into consideration the material substratum and he begins his analysis at the locutionary level with the sounds that agents produce. This perspective neglects that when an agent is performing the sounds he resorts to the means offered to him by the material substratum. By combining these two perspectives -Deleuze and Guattari (1988) and Austin (1962)- as it is done in figure (4), the investigation can acquire a point of view that shows that the locutionary and illocutionary acts to exist, the agent needs to resort not only in the sounds produced -the vocabularies and grammars- but also in the material substratum which necessarily participates in the act. The inclusion of the material substratum in the analysis of speech acts, as in figure (4), shows how speech acts and spatial acts have as a common origin the material substratum.
Speech acts Spatial Acts
Material
Substratum The material substratum preexists
the interaction.
The agent employs his vocal tract, with which he brings the spatio-material transformation.
The material substratum preexists the interaction.
The agent employs his various body parts and objects that may exist in his vicinity, with which he brings the spatio-material transformation. Locutionary act Phonetic act. Phatic act. Rhetic act.
Spatial equivalent of phonetic act. Spatial equivalent of phatic act. Spatial equivalent of rhetic act.
Illocutionary act
Acting with a force. Acting with intention.
Acting with a force. Acting with intention. Perlocutionary
act Consequential effects of the action. Consequential effects of the action.
In performing a speech act an agent employs means from the material substratum in this case his vocal tract. By employing the vocal tract, what appears and stratifies in the interaction is the spatio-material transformations of the vocal tract and the sounds that travel in space. The sounds conform to a codification that the agent already knows, and as such, they may appear meaningful to the perceiving agent as long as they both have a shared knowledge of the codification employed. In performing a spatial act the agent employs means from the material substratum, in this case, the hands, the body, the face, etc. By employing these means, what appears and stratifies in the interaction are the “visible” actions of the agent. The visible actions conform to the codification that the agent already knows -the spatial vocabulary and the spatial grammar- and in this way they appear meaningful to the perceiving agent, as long as both agents share knowledge of
the codification employed.
In this section it is shown that spatial acts may be considered analogous to speech acts and that speech acts and spatial act relate if considered in the trichotomy of Austin, revealing that when an agent performs any of them he is performing at the same time a locutionary, an illocutionary and a perlocutionary act. To explain how speech and spatial relate using the trichotomy of Austin, it is shown how speech and spatial acts may be related on the three elements -phonetic, phatic, rhetic- of the locutionary act in speech acts. Moreover, it is shown that to perform a speech or spatial act implies that the agent employs the material substratum which functions as the common starting point of both acts.
However, the perspective that it is taken in this section focuses on the agent who acts and not on the overall description of the communication between two agents who perform and perceive acts. Thus in the following chapter the investigation takes this perspective and discusses the communicative aspects of spatial acts when they are employed by agents in interactions.
3 Communicative aspects of spatial acts
In this chapter, the investigation aims to elucidate these communicative aspects of spatial acts by accounting for the various modalities used. I propose a multimodal communication model that depicts the functions that agents engage to when spatio-material transformations are employed in communication. In explaining the model, in section 3.2, the investigation first focuses on the agent who is performing the act, and in section 3.3, it focuses on the agent who is perceiving it. In section 3.4 the investigation clarifies how the agents engage in communication and the contextual factors that affect the meaning conveyed. By taking a multimodal approach, it is aimed that the theoretical framework would be able to take into account both speech and spatial acts when employed in interactions and thus be able to elucidate the meaning of the interaction.
3.1 Communicative modalities of spatial acts
As spatial acts are defined thus far they are communicative spatio-material transformations that agents employ in interactions. The spatio-material transformations that agents employ come from the various communicative modes used in human interactions as speech, hand-gestures, facial expressions, eye contact, body distances, artifacts, etc. To examine these modes scholars in communication analysis consider that they may be grouped to form modalities. Modalities are abstract ways of categorizing and studying acts in relation to the five senses of the interacting agents. As Birdwhistell (1968) sees however:
Communication is not a matter of speaking and moving, of listening and watching. Rather, structured behaviors from all sensorily related modalities seem to require interdependent structuring, the component actions codified before such behavior will
support or be systematically relevant to communication (p. 10).
Birdwhistell considers that the communicative acts that agents perform are structured to the ways that the other agent may perceive them, forming modalities that interrelate with one another. The modalities according to Poyatos (1983, p. 130), are the ways in which a “sender” and a “receiver” of a message encodes and decodes meaning. The codes that the agents use to communicate messages to one another are already known to agents and they are particularized in the cultures that the agents participate. Thus modalities conform to the codes that the other agent already knows and may decode.
Communication analysis scholars have suggested lists of modalities that agents may use to communicate which include: language, the study of the lexico-morphologico-syntactical complex; paralanguage, the study of intonation, pitch, hesitation noises, etc.; kinesics, the study of body movements, gestures, facial expressions, etc.; olfactory, the study of natural or artificial body odors; dermal, the study of activities such as touch, flushing, etc.; thermal, the study of rise or fall in body temperature; proxemics, the study of the use of space, i.e. interpersonal distancing, etc.; chronemics, the study of the role of time in communication; artifacts (semiotics), such as dress, cosmetics, objects, etc. (Duncan, 1969, p. 118; Poyatos, 1983, pp. 129-130, Kress, 2005, p. 3).
The characteristic of modalities to be related to the five senses is something that the investigation acknowledges in the concept of spatio-material transformations since it considers them as sensible acts. As modalities are defined here, they may be considered as subcategorizations of the definition of the spatio-material transformations. In light of the modalities, a distinction may be made regarding speech and spatial acts. For perceiving speech acts the agent uses the auditory channel and for perceiving spatial acts the visual, tactile, olfactory, and gustatory channels. For performing speech acts the agents use language and paralanguage (Searle, 1965, p. 44) and for spatial acts they use all other modalities. While the investigation may hold this as an accurate distinction, it also takes into consideration that the distinctions are not always so clear. Language for example is not so independent from the other modalities since it is not always necessarily perceived by sound. In support of this claim the example of lip reading may be considered, where the absence of sound -because of impediments or distance for example- does not inhibit the perception of speech or the conception of its meaning. This implies that agents can literally see speech and not only hear it.
This reveals is that in accounting for the various modalities that agents may use in interactions all modalities must be taken into account so communication could be coherently analysed. The interrelating between the modalities that communication analysts consider, shows that the various spatio-material transformations that an agent employs in an interaction are not so independent and segregated between them, suggesting that a multimodal approach must be taken if the investigation aims to analyse the communication between agents.
Communication analysts see that within these modalities agents have developed codes with which they may communicate. These were developed in the cultures that agents participate
(Birdwhistell, 1968, pp. 11), and thus they are known to them. In relation to studying codes Birdwhistell suggests that they should be considered as something that is discernible from the cultures that agents participate “rather than as immanent in the physical or chemical properties which the code utilizes as carriers. The relationship between carrier and code is discontinuous” (pp. 11). In other words, Birdwhistell sees that the material substratum does not play a role in the communication since it functions as a neutral carrier and the relationship between carrier and code is discontinuous as he says.
Birdwhistell takes this approach and cuts off the material substratum from his investigation because his focus is to examine the various codes that arise in each culture. While his approach to the matter seems to differentiate from what is being discusses in this investigation regarding the role of the material substratum to territorialize and encode the act. Birdwhistell is taking this approach because he is focusing only on the encoding of the phonetic and phatic acts of the locutionary act to find the vocabularies and grammar of non-verbal communication. The difference of the approach of this investigation is that is not to looking how codes arise and which are used in interactions but how meaning emerges in interactions.
As it is shown in section 2.3 the spatio-material transformations that an agent takes is something sensible to the other agent and thus the spatio-material transformations may be divided in modalities. It can be considered that the approach that this investigation is taking is a multimodal account of communication since all the modalities that agents may employ in interactions may be included in the spatio-material transformations that agents perform. In regard to the codes and the material substratum the investigation considers that they are related since codes may be discerned from the material substratum where they are territorialized and the material substratum is formed in such a way as to encode the communicative acts. Moreover, similarly with communication analysts the investigation considers that the codes are something that agents train into while participating in a culture. The way that this investigation sees codes however is broader than the vocabulary and grammar which Birdwhistell (1968) sees. As De Landa (2010) reads Deleuze and Guattari (1988) similarly the investigation considers that the codes is whatever it can be said about the performed act by the participants of the interaction.
The interaction of Cain and Abel in example (2) is used to exemplify how modalities can be distinguished in an example:
(2) Cain calls his neighbour Abel to come over to his house and says: Cain: Your dog took a shit on my doorstep again.
Abel: Well... what can you do, dogs are dogs.
Cain: I think dog owners can do something, and they should.
[and he moves his coat to reveal a gun strapped to his waist]
In the first utterance of Cain “Your dog took a shit on my doorstep again” it can be considered that Cain is employing the modalities of language and paralanguage. Cain uses the modality of language since he is performing the utterance in the English language, and he uses the modality of
paralanguage since pitch, intonation etc., may be considered as naturally occurring in any verbal utterance. In the second utterance of the interaction when Abel says “Well... what can you do, dogs are dogs”, it can be considered that Abel also employs language and paralanguage. In the last contribution to the interaction Cain employs language and paralanguage for the first part of his contribution and for the second part he employs kinesics, in moving his coat to reveal, he employs artifacts when he shows the gun, and he employs proxemics, with the gun being strapped to his waist.
Example (2) shows that Cain and Abel employ various modalities in their interactions thus to account for the meaning that emerges, the investigation would need to take into consideration all these modalities so to find out what meaning is conveyed through them. Since modalities are the means through which an agent performs a spatio-material transformation and the means through which the other perceives it. Then the an analysis of modalities must be able to take into consideration the various modalities from the perspective of the agent performing them and from the perspective of the agent who perceives them. To investigate the procedures that unfold during interaction in the next section I propose a model of communication that portrays the functions that the two agents engage with while interacting -the functions of the agent performing the spatio-material transformation and the functions of the agent who perceiving it.
3.2 Communication model accounting for spatial acts
In accounting for the communication of agents while they are performing and perceiving acts, the model in figure (5) is proposed. Figure (5) shows agent A performing a spatio-material transformation which is encoded in meaning, and at the same time he is anticipating that meaning which is territorialized in the spatio-material transformation. Agent B perceives the spatio-material
Perform ing Anticipating Perceiving Conceiv ing Spat-mat. trans. Meaning situational plane situational plane T er rit /z ed E n co d ed Agent B Agent A
transformation which is encoded in meaning, and at the same time he is conceiving the meaning which is territorialized in the spatio-material transformation. Both agents in figure (5) exist in their own situational planes and understand the situation they are in, in their own ways. This implies that an agent may not be conveying his intended message to the other agent, because the other agent may interpret the performed act in his own way. While this may be true, agents have been trained in specific conventions in their culture, and they have similar ways of interpretation. In the grey, shaded area of the model in figure (5), is where successful communication may be defined. It is where agents put forward spatio-material transformations for which they have common knowledge, as conventions of the culture they participate. What figure (5) makes central in this way, are the spatio-material transformations that agents set forward in an interaction and the meaning that it is conveyed by one agent to another.
The interaction of Cain and Abel in example (2) is used to show how the communication model of figure (5) works with an example:
(2) Cain calls his neighbour Abel to come over to his house and says: Cain: Your dog took a shit on my doorstep again.
Abel: Well... what can you do, dogs are dogs.
Cain: I think dog owners can do something, and they should.
[and he moves his coat to reveal a gun strapped to his waist]
When Cain utters “Your dog took a shit on my doorstep again” he performs a spatio-material transformation -a spatial and material alteration with his vocal tract and with the sounds he produced- that conforms to an encoding that reveals meaning to Abel and he is able understand it. When Cain performs the spatio-material transformation he was anticipating that such a meaning may be territorialized in the way he performs it, i.e. in those vocal tract formations and those sounds produced. Abel perceives the spatio-material transformation that Cain performed -the sounds being made or with the view of the lips moving- as encoding a meaning using a code that he is familiar with. When Abel is perceiving the utterance, he is conceiving the meaning as being territorialized in the spatio-material transformation that Cain performed.
As it becomes clear the communication model depicts the functions that occur when a participant of the interaction makes a move. Considering that the interaction is compiled by a series of moves and that the communication model describes one of the moves that agents take. Then in accounting for the series of moves occurring in the interaction the framework would have to apply the communication model on each of the moves, one by one. This approach allows to account for each of the moves individually focusing on the particular meaning they bring in the interaction.
As the communication model portrays, in making a move in an interaction the agent performs a spatio-material transformation and at the same time he is anticipating that it would have a specific meaning for the other agent in the situation. To explain how the agent is in position to perform an act anticipating its meaning, the investigation resorts to insights of embodied
cognition that may further elucidate the matter .
3.3 How agents perform spatial acts, anticipating their meaning
According to the theory of embodied cognition an agent is able to perform an act because of the affordances he has. Gibson (1979) describes affordances as being things of the environment that are offered to an agent and on which the agent may act upon. He sees affordances as being “equally a fact of the environment and a fact of behaviour”, that they are “both physical and psychical, yet neither”, and that “an affordance points both ways, to the environment and to the observer” (p. 3). The approach of Chemero (2003) defines affordances as “the relations between the abilities of the animals and features of the environment” (p. 181). Based on this definition, Chemero forms the logical structure of affordances: affords- φ (environment, organism), where φ is a behaviour. Thus, an exhibited behaviour such as jumping, can be analysed in the feature of the environment where an extension of space exists, and the ability of the organism to manipulate its myoskeletal system.
The abilities that an agent needs to have to exhibit behaviours are generally considered by scholars to have phylogenetic, ontogenetic and current, “here and now”, layers of analysis (Bruineberg & Rietveld, 2014; Rietveld & Kiverstein, 2014). That means that an exhibited behaviour, an act, may be accomplished in relevance with the phylogenetic, ontogenetic and current, “here and now” situation of the agent. In this way, jumping could be analysed as a feature of the environment and an ability of the agent at the phylogenetic layer, a myoskeletal system; at the ontogenetic layer, the abilities acquired by experiencing and training in jumping; and at the current, “here and now” layer, the ability to attend to specifications for the act of jumping in the current situation.
These three layers for the analysis of behaviours are relating and informing one another. They do this in a way that each time an agent is about to act all three layers concur so that the act could be performed. The re-performing of acts in the “here and now” gradually consolidates at the ontogenetic layer informing the cultures and subcultures that agents participate. And in the long run the acts consolidate at the phylogenetic layer informing the adaptations of the morphogenesis in the biological evolution of the agent. In this way, the phylogenetic and ontogenetic layers are informing the way the act is performed in the “here and now” situation. Taking for example a specific handshaking, it is clear that for an agent to be able to act in the “here and now” he must be informed phylogenetically by the existence of a hand and informed ontogenetically by the training in the specific handshakes during his development. The example of the instinctive reaction of person to protect himself from an incoming object may be considered also as a consolidated act from “here and now” situations to the phylogenetic layer during evolution.
This dependency on the body that embodied cognition bestows on the agent acts, justifies why acts cannot be performed in the “here and now” if there is an impediment on the phylogenetic or ontogenetic layers. The point of view that embodied cognition takes on the performance of acts
and the body allows the accounting for the gradual, through time, consolidation of the acts in the “here and now” situation to the ontogenetic and phylogenetic layers. This, is related to the view of Deleuze and Guattari (1988) when they define stratification. Combining the notion of stratification with the insights of embodied cognition reveals that the ability of the agent to act is a coherent stratification on his body, covering from strata of his material body -phylogenetic- to strata of higher order cognition -ontogenetic.
Seeing the body of the agent as a stratification of abilities the framework considers that the human agent is materially stratified in a body which has human sensory organs that allow him to perceive the situation around him. However, the situation is offering many affordances to different agents, forming in this way a landscape of affordances (Bruineberg & Rietveld, 2014, p. 2). From this landscape of affordances only some are inviting action and stand out as relevant for an agent in a particular situation, thus forming the field of affordances of that agent (p. 2). The affordances which become relevant for the agent and invite action depend on the skills that pertain to the ontogenetic and phylogenetic aspects of the agent. These skills are acquired from experience and define specifically each agent and in this way they permit the “reading” of the features of the situation by each agent individually (p. 2).
This approach of embodied cognition also considers that it is a constellation of affordances which are activated when an agent exhibits a behaviour (Bruineberg & Rietveld, 2014, p. 2). For example, for an agent to take a ball that is thrown at him, his eyes are looking at the coming object and its speed, he is moving his body in a better position to receive it and moving his hands in the trajectory to catch it. This example shows that the agent respond to solicitations by acting only on the affordances that stands out as relevant in that particular situation. The agent acts by responding to an array of solicitations at the same time, perceiving and acting on the world in a molar way. This view suggests a unified system of “brain-body-landscape of affordances” (p. 4), the situational plane as it is termed on the communication model of figure (5). With these insights of embodied cognition the framework is able to account for how an agent may act in a specific way depended on his own skills and on the features of the environment at that specific situation.
According to Bruineberg and Rietveld the agent is acting without having “an explicit goal in mind” but he always needs to resort to his skills to be able to act (p. 3). His goal is one solicited by the environment in such a way as to improve his grip on the situation. The approach of Bruineberg and Rietveld considers that when an agent is acting he is exhibiting skilled intentionality that is defined “as the tendency toward an optimal grip on a situation by being selectively responsive to available affordances” (p. 3). The tendency towards an optimal grip, “signifies the way a skilled individual acts in a familiar environment in order to improve its grip on the situation” (p. 3). According to this approach, “the individual experiences the situation in terms of a deviation of an optimum” (p. 3).
Having an optimum however implies that the agent is able to have two separate perceptual schemes, the one anticipated, the optimal; and the actual one, the one perceived in the here and now. Clark (2013) accounts this issue and points that the brain is predictive. He considers that
brains “are bundles of cells that support perception and action by constantly attempting to match incoming sensory inputs with top-down expectations or predictions” (p. 181). In other words, in order to act the agent must have expectations to come in contrast with the sensory input he is perceiving while acting. These expectations are the experiences he already has, the skills which allows him to anticipate what meaning the act would have in the situation.
If example (2) with Cain and Abel is considered, in light of how an agent performs speech acts and anticipates their meaning, it becomes clear that the act of Cain to utter “Your dog took a shit on my doorstep again” was made in relation to a deviation from an optimum that Cain is skilled to see, i.e. the dog of Abel not taking a shit on his doorstep. Cain performs the act based on this exigence, employing his phylogenetic and ontogenetic skills to encode an utterance which in the situation of example (2) is a complain to Abel about his dog shitting on his doorstep. The meaning of the act that Cain takes in this situation is a speech act, an explicit complaint holding Abel responsible for the deviation (Félix-Brasdefer, 2007). At the same time, with the way the utterance is encoded it may be considered that Cain is realizing the speech act using two strategies; implying that he is demanding some amendment, in this case, for Abel to make his dog stop shitting on his doorstep; and as a criticism to the face of Abel, suggesting that Abel is not responsible enough (Félix-Brasdefer, 2007).
In accounting for how Cain performs the spatial act and anticipates its meaning in example (2), it can be considered that the act of Cain to move his coat and reveal the gun strapped to his waist is made in relation to a deviation from an optimum that Cain is skilled to see, namely that Abel is not persuaded to do something about his dog. Cain performs the act based on this exigence employing his phylogenetic and ontogenetic skills to encode the act which in the situation of example (2) is an argument to persuade Abel to take some action about his dog. The explicit meaning that Cain puts forward in this situation with the spatial act is to show that he has a gun with which he may kill Abel or his dog, if Abel does not do something about the dog shitting on his doorstep.
As it is shown, in performing a speech or spatial act with which he contributes to the interaction, agent A presents to agent B, a spatio-material transformation which encodes its meaning. If the communication is successful, then agent B may perceive the act and conceive its meaning. In elucidating how agent B is in a position to perceive the spatio-material transformation and conceive its meaning, in the next section the matter is elaborated further.
3.4 How agents perceive spatial acts, conceiving their meaning
In accounting how an agent may perceive a communicative act, the investigation resort to the formed materiality of the body of the agent, which allows him to have an array of sensory organs on which his perception is build. The sensory organs allow the agent to perceive continually when conscious, being in an all-present action readiness state (Bruineberg & Rietveld, 2014, p. 2). In other words, when the agent is conscious he is in a state where he is continually ready to act upon
