Abstract
This article deploys Peircean approach to bodily skills, foregrounding motricity as a semiotically mediated and a “suprasubjective” process. By examining two contrasting skills – javelin and martial arts – I draw out the relevance of dynamic movement to the semiotics of sport and embodiment. These contrasting movements expose different epistemological assumptions since they emerge in distinct cultural traditions. To attend to the cultural dimension of movement practices – including the mediation of signs making certain movement forms seem reasonable or desirable in the first place – I highlight ecological dimensions of each somatic tradition. This ecological focus aligns with Peirce’s project of tracking how semiotic signs are positioned and mediated. To make ecological factors of motricity more recognizable, I contrast somatic engagements that take place on synthetic, predictable substrates and somatic engagements that take place on variable, unpredictable ground. In a similar way to the classic gestalt figure-ground relations, where perception of a figure depends on the particulars of the ground, I suggest that the ground upon which somatic action occurs shapes the way we make sense of it epistemologically. These different grounds – both literally and figuratively – operate representationally via thirdness: they lead us to conceptualize movement in culturally and historically particular ways.
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Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Introduction: semiotricity
- Part I: Foundations of Semiotricity
- Semiotricité et corps en jeu
- Analyse sémiotrice d’un praxème : le dribble et ses interprétations
- Exploration des systèmes de signes dans quatre jeux sportifs : analyse comparative du football, du handball, de la balle assise et du jeu des trois camps
- Signe, science et jeux sportif : esquisse de sémiotricité triadique
- Part II: Physical Education and Semiotricity
- Education physique, conduites motrices et sémiose : pour une éducation sémiotrice
- Exploring socioaffective semiotricity: emotions and relational signs in traditional sporting games
- Signs, paradox, and sporting games in school physical education
- Part III: The Semiotricity of Ludic Space
- Off the pitch: semiotics of liminality between space and play
- Young parkour traceurs in Mexico City: a new way to meaning and identity in urban spaces
- Like a shark in the ocean: the semiotics of extreme precarity in Joshua Tree rock climbing
- Part IV: Semiotic Analyses of Sports, Dance, and Ballet
- Knowledge in action: what the feet can learn to know
- Semiotic and asemiotic practices in boxing
- The new basketball body: an analysis of corporeity in modern NBA basketball
- Fencing blindfolded: extending meaning through sound, floor, and blade
- Dancing all the way to the stage by way of the stadium: on the iconicity and plasticity of actions
- Watching and feeling ballet: neuroscience and semiotics of bodily movement
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Introduction: semiotricity
- Part I: Foundations of Semiotricity
- Semiotricité et corps en jeu
- Analyse sémiotrice d’un praxème : le dribble et ses interprétations
- Exploration des systèmes de signes dans quatre jeux sportifs : analyse comparative du football, du handball, de la balle assise et du jeu des trois camps
- Signe, science et jeux sportif : esquisse de sémiotricité triadique
- Part II: Physical Education and Semiotricity
- Education physique, conduites motrices et sémiose : pour une éducation sémiotrice
- Exploring socioaffective semiotricity: emotions and relational signs in traditional sporting games
- Signs, paradox, and sporting games in school physical education
- Part III: The Semiotricity of Ludic Space
- Off the pitch: semiotics of liminality between space and play
- Young parkour traceurs in Mexico City: a new way to meaning and identity in urban spaces
- Like a shark in the ocean: the semiotics of extreme precarity in Joshua Tree rock climbing
- Part IV: Semiotic Analyses of Sports, Dance, and Ballet
- Knowledge in action: what the feet can learn to know
- Semiotic and asemiotic practices in boxing
- The new basketball body: an analysis of corporeity in modern NBA basketball
- Fencing blindfolded: extending meaning through sound, floor, and blade
- Dancing all the way to the stage by way of the stadium: on the iconicity and plasticity of actions
- Watching and feeling ballet: neuroscience and semiotics of bodily movement