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Page 103
Apparently this drunk stands for the equivalent expression, There is a drunken man, but things are not that simple. The physical presence of the human body along with its characteristics could stand either for the phrase There is a drunken man in this precise place and in this precise moment or for the phrase Once upon a time there was a drunken man; it could also mean There are many drunken men in the world. As a matter of fact, in the example I am giving, and according to Peirce's suggestion, the third alternative is the case. To interpret this physical presence in one or in another sense is a matter of convention, and a more sophisticated theatrical performance would establish this convention by means of other semiotic mediafor instance, words. But at the point we are, our tipsy sign is open to any interpretation: he stands for all the existing drunken men in our real world and in every possible world. He is an open expression meaning an open range of possible contents.
Nevertheless, there is a way in which this presence is different from the presence of a word or of a picture. It has not been actively produced (as one produces a word or draws an image)it has been picked up among the existing physical bodies and it has been shown or ostended. It is the result of a particular mode of sign production (Eco 1976:3.6). Ostension is one of the various ways of signifying, consisting in de-realizing a given object in order to make it stand for an entire class. But ostension is, at the same time, the most basic instance of performance.
You ask me, How should I be dressed for the party this evening? If I answer by showing my tie framed by my jacket and say, Like this, more or less, I am signifying by ostension. My tie does not mean my actual tie but your possible tie (which can be of a different stuff and color) and I am "performing" by representing to you the you of this evening. I am prescribing to you how you should look this evening. With this simple gesture I am doing something that is theater at its best, since I not only tell you something, but I also am offering you a model, giving you an order or a suggestion, outlining a utopia or a feasible project. I am not only picturing a given behavior, I am also in fact eliciting a behavior, emphasizing a duty, mirroring your future. In Jakobsonian terms, my message is at the same time a referential, a phatic, an imperative, an emotiveand (provided I move gracefully) it is aesthetic. By picturing your future way of dressing (through my present one) I have, however, added the verbal expression more or less. My performance, which was eminently visual and behavioral, has been accompanied by a verbal metalinguistic message establishing some criteria of pertinence. More or less signified making an abstraction from the particular stuff, color, and size of MY tie. It was a rather important device; it helped you to de-realize the object that was standing for something else. It was reducing

 
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