Abstract
Facial expressions are used by humans to convey various types of meaning in various contexts. The range of meanings spans basic possibly innate socio-emotional concepts such as “surprise” to complex and culture specific concepts such as “carelessly.” The range of contexts in which humans use facial expressions spans responses to events in the environment to particular linguistic constructions within sign languages. In this mini review we summarize findings on the use and acquisition of facial expressions by signers and present a unified account of the range of facial expressions used by referring to three dimensions on which facial expressions vary: semantic, compositional, and iconic.
Highlights
Humans perceive facial expressions as conveying meaning, but where do they come from and what exactly do they mean? Based on observations of facial expressions typically associated with emotions Darwin (1904) hypothesized that they must have had some instrumental purpose in evolutionary history
How does one account for the range of meanings and uses of facial expressions? Following Wierzbicka (1999), we argue that facial expressions are semiotic units that can be analyzed with the same semantic methodology used to analyze words
In terms of the three proposed dimensions, as children acquire facial expressions they move from innate universal concepts mapped onto iconic forms produced in holistic structures to culture specific concepts, conventional form-meaning mappings, and increasingly complex composite structures
Summary
Humans perceive facial expressions as conveying meaning, but where do they come from and what exactly do they mean? Based on observations of facial expressions typically associated with emotions Darwin (1904) hypothesized that they must have had some instrumental purpose in evolutionary history. Lifting the eyebrows might have helped our ancestors respond to unexpected environmental events by widening the visual field and enabling them to see more Even though their instrumental function may have been lost, the facial expression remains in humans as part of our biological endowment and we still lift our eyebrows when something surprising happens in the environment whether seeing more is of any value or not. Following this tradition Ekman (1979, 1992) claimed that there is a set of facial expressions that are innate, and they mean that the person making that face is experiencing an emotion; i.e., brow raising means “I feel surprised.”. We will briefly discuss the meaning of brow raise, as we use this facial expression as an example throughout this paper. Ekman (1992) proposes that it means “I am surprised,” but we adopt Wierzbicka’s (1999, p. 205) suggestion that it means “I want to know more (about this).” We adopt Wierzbicka’s interpretation for the following reasons: Wierzbicka points out that the term “surprise” is not universal, it is part of www.frontiersin.org
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