2 The semiotic conceptualization of human body in the Russian language and culture and the DBS
2.1 Definition of the notion of the semiotic conceptualization of body
The project for constructing a corporeal DBS was launched in 2003 at the annual seminar of nonverbal semiotics organized by Prof. Grigory E. Kreydlin at the Institute of Linguistics, Russian State University for the Humanities, Moscow. The final objective of the project is the representation of the culturally specific semiotic conceptualization of human body and its parts. Currently, the notion of semiotic conceptualization of body is employed across a range of disciplines from linguistics and semiotics to cultural studies, psychology and anthropology. This is a formal analogue of the so-called “naïve semiotic picture of body”, which reflects how the body is represented in two semiotic codes.[4] And the DBS I am talking about is the computer-based table, or the scheme, that holds the results of the conceptualization.
2.2 Data and sources
The orientation towards both the natural language (NL) and the body language (BL) presupposes that the material investigated should be of two types. On the one hand, these are the BL units, i.e. gestures and typical motions of body and its parts. Here the term gesture stands for several semiotic types of BL units, i.e. (a) sign motions of hands, arms, head, shoulders, corpus and legs, (b) postures (they are opposed to poses, which are not signs), (c) meaningful glances, (d) meaningful facial expressions, and (e) manners, which are the complex forms of bodily behaviour, such as manners of walking, manners of receiving guests, table manners, etc. The material of this kind is taken from films and documentaries as well as from video recordings and personal observations of people’s nonverbal behaviour. On the other hand, there are the NL units, i.e. the names of body and its parts, names of gestures and those of typical motions of body and its parts. Among them are words, word collocations and phrases describing the body and its participation in different speech and behavioural acts. The sources of our language data are texts of several types – the fiction literature, the books and articles on nonverbal communication and bodily behaviour, the dictionaries of NL and BL units, and, finally, the corpora of texts[5].
2.3 Methodology
To create a corporeal DBS one should have in mind not only its final goals but also the methodology of its construction, i.e various substantial parts of work and their functions within the whole system itself.
One of the parts of work presupposes collection, comprehension and classification of the material investigated. For example, the word body in every natural language I am familiar with has several meanings that I can illustrate with the help of synonyms. Body can be associated with the word corpus, on the one hand, or with the word figure, on the other hand, and these two words have lots of differences both in meaning and in usage.[6] While describing the corporeality and the body one should understand what parts of body are, how, for example, the eye regarded as a part of body can be differentiated from the eye as an organ for seeing. Then one should divide somatic objects into different semantic or thematic fields. Discussing human body we take into consideration parts of body, organs, but also different liquids, bones, muscles, nerves, vessels, skin, hair, etc. Each group of somatic objects as well as the objects themselves should be given morphological, semantic, pragmatic and syntactic description.