"Alzò gli occhi al cielo" - Semantics of an item in the lexicon of gaze

In the domain of multimodal communication, recent studies have shown the possibility of writing a lexicon and a “phonology” (optology) of gaze in everyday communication and of gaze jargons like one of orchestra conductors (Poggi, 2006; Poggi & Ansani, 2018). Within the endeavor of building a lexicon of gaze, this work presents an empirical study aimed at providing a semantic analysis of “occhi al cielo” (“looking up to the sky”; OAC from now on): a gaze signal used both alone and combined with other body signals like sighs or arms openings. In accordance with Teigen’s (2008) study on sighs, 10 participants were asked to describe situations in which they might or actually did use the signal OAC, providing a verbal translation of its meaning. This evidenced the mental and affective states that typically trigger this body signal. Then, 40 passages of novels, 25 in Italian and 15 in an Italian translation of foreign classics, in which OAC was mentioned, were submitted to 10 participants, asking them to provide a verbal paraphrase of this body signal. Answers were analyzed through both manual encoding and T-Lab Plus 2018 (Lancia, 2004), a tool for automatic semantic analysis. Analyzing the occurrences and frequencies of participants’ words, 4 clusters of meanings emerged: PLEA (including words such as prayer, God, Lord, entity), RESIGNATION (resignation, surrender, give up), BOTHER (exasperation, trouble, desperation, impatience, annoyance) and REFLECTION (thought, contemplation, memory, recalling). The OAC signal, combined with different facial expressions and body signals, can convey each of these four classes of meanings. But these clusters can be further traced back to a common semantic core of all these meanings: a sense of powerlessness that may generate a complex loop of affective states and behavioral responses: by triggering negative emotions (BOTHER), it gives rise to mental states of REFLECTION (it may also work the other way around), finally resulting in either a passive reaction of RESIGNATION or an active REQUEST FOR HELP (PLEA) from an omnipotent entity. What is not yet clear is whether participants refer to the same configuration of gaze with the meanings they attribute to OAC: e.g., an OAC of prayer is generally concomitant to a raising of the head, whereas one of exasperation might imply rolling irises up but no head raise. To better investigate such issues, subsequent studies will simulate OAC with different eyelids and iris positions in Embodied Agents to test if their meanings correspond to one or the other of our clusters.