A manual of psychology / by G.F. Stout.

  • George Frederick Stout
Date:
1921
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: A manual of psychology / by G.F. Stout. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    637/800 page 613
    depend, not merely on its own intrinsic value as a self- interpreting sign, but also on its having been employed and understood before. On a first occasion, the sign may occur in circumstances or in a context which leave no doubt as to the meaning; on a subsequent occasion these circum- stances or this special context may be absent, so that if the sign were then made for the first time, it would not be understood; nevertheless it may be understood on the second occasion just because it had been understood on the first occasion. “ The deaf and dumb teacher in the Berlin institute was named among the children by the action of cutting off the left arm with the edge of the right hand; the reason of this sign was not that there was anything peculiar about his arms, but that he came from Spandau, and it so happened that one of the children had been at Spandau and had seen there a man with one arm.” ^ It is evident that this sign might come to be understood and used by members of the institution who knew nothing of its derivation. One highly important way in which natural signs tend to become relatively conventional is through abbreviation. There is a strong disposition to abbreviate familiar gestures. The mere hint of a movement comes to be substituted for the movement itself. Colonel Mallery observed a Cheyenne Indian attempting to convey the idea of old-man. “ Ho held his right hand forward bent at elbow, fingers and thumbs closed sidewise. This not conveying any sense, he found a long stick, bent his back, and supported his frame in a tottering step by the stick held as was before only imagined.’* By processes of this kind, those who employ gesture- * Tylor, Early History of Mankind. * Annual Report of Bureau of Ethnology, vol. i., loc. cit.
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