The Biosemiotics of Facial Kinetics

We call ‘languaging’ ( Fell and Russell, 1994) the complex-ecological, dynamic core-interaction of multiple semiotic resources to embody (Streeck, Goodwin and LeBaron, 2011) meaning in communication. We discuss the physiological emergence of intentionality and consciousness through bio-semiotic markers of meaning in the form of facial kinetics (Birdwhistell, 1970), with a specific focus on eyebrow movements. We adopt a discursive-interactional approach to a set of ‘semi-interactional’ data, in order to investigate semantic, syntactic and pragmatic aspects of self-organization, bio-communication and anthropogenetics. A series of thirty-six short, -quasi-monologic- interviews (1.30 minutes each on average) was run on a mixed group of multilingual speakers at University of Luxembourg. Four sets can here be distinguished: twenty participants with different L1s spoke either English or French as L2 (ten and ten respectively). Eight English L1 speakers and eight French L1 speakers spoke English as L1 and French as L1 respectively.
Data analysis reveals that, regardless of whether speakers use their L1 or an L2, there is consistency and systematics across languages, as for the placement of eyebrow movements on self-repair (Schegloff, 1977), material following hesitation and discourse markers (Schiffrin, 1986).
In line with biogenetic structuralism (Laughlin and d'Aquili 1974), these results suggest that, although each living organism develops own ‘cognized’ Umwelt (von Uexkull, 1973), there are universal operational structures characterizing human language (Wierzbicka, 1992), and cognition. Aspects in the sequential organization of talk (Sacks, Schegloff, Jefferson) and linguistic-kinesic interdependence (Birdwhistell, 1970) may result from complex socio-genetic evolution of interactants’ nervous systems.