Michael Silverstein (Language and Culture)- Culture’s Pantomime: The Code of Life-as-Lived February 16, 2012

Through bodily movement, a pantomime artist creates a sense of co-presence of objects, persons, etc. in a surrounding envelope of goal-directed social activity. Just so, in any communicative use of language the interacting individuals create a framing sense of “who” they are – sociologically, what social identities they bring to and create in the situation

– as well as the “what”—“where”—“when”—“why” of the occasion of their interaction, all through the magic of the “how” of their use of language and its surrounding signals. In every interaction, this at first invisible socio-cultural frame that comes into being is the experienced “reality” of life-as-lived at that moment; its coded regularities, pervading all language, are denoted by the term ‘culture’.

Official Website: http://www.lib.umich.edu/events/pantomime