Structures of Animal Utterances Seen as Aesthetics – and as Communication. Semiotic perspectives on functions of so-called animal beauty

 

Due to a dramatic increase of research in ethology and zoo-communication over the last decades biosemiotics has now access to an extensive amount of empirical studies of how and why animals structure their utterances. Research on this key communicational element may focus on its physicality (as science) and/or a particular structure’s quality (as aesthetics). For zoo-communicational research on utterances both are necessary. Some of these empirical studies contain detailed and rich information which should enable meta-studies of formed structures of animal utterances.

One such study is Prum (2017) suggesting that birds’ plumage should, in line with Darwin’s mostly rejected view, be seen as a result of an evolutionary battle between displaying, functioning as addressive temptation and as evaluative spectating of the display. He claims that a race between performing and judging has, over time, changed the game from “the survival of the fittest” to “the survival of the prettiest”.

Prum’s research is preferred as empirical (meta-)data for my study, not because of his “Darwinian” claim that beauty drives evolution, but for his meticulous diachronic study of feathers and plumage and for his principle discussion of the possible functions of structured form of animal utterances. Epistemologically, especially two relevant perspectives intersects in his work, an aesthetical, focusing the function of form as “beauty” and a more holistic one, where form is seen as part of (semiotic) communication in a wider sense.

I am not alone paying interest in this issue. Kull (2022) aims to make sense of animal aesthetics by an adjusted Peircean semiotics, specifically through his coined notion “perfect semiotic fitting”. That beauty drives evolution Kull basically consider as false. He turns his attention to the sign-level in order to problematise the notion of beauty in nature (and culture) and suggests that semiotics is a relevant tool for problematising even animal aesthetics.

Ongstad (2019) presents a socio-semiotic framework for studies of animal utterances and life-genres (‘habits’). It stresses meso-level concepts such as utterance and life-genre to enable a bridging between micro (the sign) and macro (the Umwelt). Further, it combines four semiotic levels sign, utterance, life-genre, and life-world, and further five intertwined communicational aspects, form, content, act, time, and space as well as a set of processes, such as semiosis and positioning. Such a framework should enable a discussion of the role of structured form as part of a taxon’s communicational system.

I will first discuss claimed roles and functions of formed structures of birds’ utterances in Prum (2017) based on the framework by contrasting an aesthetic and a communicational perspective and further search, comparatively, for compatibilities between the semiotic perspectives of Kull (2022) and of Ongstad (2019).

 

References

Kull, K. (2022). The biosemiotic fundamentals of aesthetics: beauty is the perfect semiotic fitting. Biosemiotics, 15(1), 1-22.

Ongstad, S. (2019). A conceptual framework for studying evolutionary origins of life-genres. Biosemiotics, 12(2), 245-266.

Prum, R. O. (2018). The evolution of beauty: How Darwin’s forgotten theory of mate choice shapes the animal world-and us. Anchor.