Defining Pantomime for Language Evolution Research

Although pantomimic scenarios recur in the most important historical as well as current accounts of language origins, a serious problem is the lack of a commonly accepted definition of pantomime. We scrutinise several areas of study, from theatre studies to semiotics to primatology, pointing to the differences in use that may give rise to misunderstandings, and working towards a set of definitional criteria of pantomime specifically useful for language evolution research. We arrive at a definition of pantomime as a communication mode that is mimetic; non-conventional and motivated; multimodal (primarily visual); improvised; using the whole body rather than exclusively manual; holistic; communicatively complex and self-sufficient; semantically complex; displaced, open-ended and universal. So conceived, pantomime is a near synonym of bodily-mimetic communication as envisaged by Donald and Zlatev. On a wider plane, our work may help organise some of the terminology and discussion in language evolution, e.g. by drawing a clear distinction between gestural and pantomimic scenarios or by specifying the relation between pantomimic and multimodal scenarios.