The nature of torso articulation in human expression: signing and dancing

We investigate the nature of torso articulation in human expression by analyzing its role in signing and dancing in six videos concerning the metamorphosis of a caterpillar into a butterfly. One video exemplifies conversational signing genre; three videos exemplify sign language literature genre (one each in the sign languages of America, Brazil, and Britain); and two videos exemplify contemporary dance (one with a dancer who has physical restrictions, the other with a dancer who is known for flexibility of her torso). In the sign videos, some torso articulations are necessitated by manual movement. However, when a signer engages in embodiment of a character, many torso articulations are meaning-bearing in a linguistic sense, where they express a property predicated of some other part of the signing or they express an entire proposition. Understanding this meaning relies on knowledge of sign language grammars. Dancers can embody characters, as well, but interpretation of their movements depends not on any notion of dance vocabulary, but, instead, of context – including, perhaps, title and costuming. Our small study suggests that the range of torso articulation in conversational signing is a subset of the range in sign literature, which is a subset of the range in dance, where this tendency is tempered by the information the signer/dancer wants to convey as well as by the training of each performer. The result is enormous variation in performances, reflecting the performer’s artistry.