Res Ipsa: Ostension in Semiotics and Folkloristics

This article attempts to reconcile the semiotic model of ostension withthe markedly different folkloristic use of the term. In semiotics, as well aslinguistics and philosophy, ostension may be glossed as showing, rather thantelling. Yet in the field of folkloristics, most invocations of ostension haveregarded it as a kind of interaction with traditional narratives. Despite thesignificant differences between these types of ostension, we suggest that bothhave at their heart a concern with res ipsa, the thing itself. We first discuss thehistorical breadth of the concept of ostension, before presenting a simple set ofostensive types, and one “ostensive context,” building on existing scholarshipon ostension. The categorical reorientation we propose here is important forseveral reasons. The concept of ostension in all its inflected forms pushesscholars to consider communication beyond the limits of language and into anontological consideration of how communication and meaning can operate inthe network of “things” and “objects” (rather than signs). For this reason, it alsostretches the limits of semiotics, which generally deals with signs and semiosis(the action of signs). Reimagining the relationship of semiotic and folkloricostension along these lines refocuses our attention on the communicativeprocess that is at the heart of the earliest formulations of ostension itself. Morebroadly, ostension impacts cultural norms surrounding appropriate modes ofcommunication (e.g., speaking aloud versus silently gesturing); verbalstorytelling and its relationship to embodied experience; and perhaps mostsignificantly in the 21st century, belief formation and the notion of evidentiary weight.