On verbalization of haptic sensations (on the example of the slime culture)

The author explores the boundaries and potential of verbalizing haptic sensations. Slime-mania, the mass home production of slime (a plastic-like nonNewtonian mass intended to be stretched, compressed and otherwise manipulated) was chosen as the subject of this study. A wide spreading of this hobby has become possible thanks to video exchanges of clips, in which methods of producing slimes (tutorials) and actually “playing with slime” (manipulating the finished product) were demonstrated. The research material consisted of 94 videos from the Russian-language segment of the Internet, released during the 2016-2018 period, which, at the time of the research, were viewed more than one million times. The media-aesthetic approach to the material presupposes an equal attention to the technical conditions of communication with respect to the message forms and to the actual content of these messages. Thus, the verbal content of communication is considered as part of the semiotic codes used in the situation of video exchanges, and not as the only bearer of meaning. In order to identify the role of the verbal semiotic resource in the material, methods of extracting and decoding the speech components of videos were used, as well as ethnographic methods of interviews with a representative of the slime maniacs’ subculture. The article presents the “slimer lexicon” (terminology of different types of slimes and a list of designations of actions that a slimer can perform with a ready-made slime). The author has found that verbalization in the Russianspeaking subculture is generally based on the mixed principles of finding English-language nomenclature and its translation, while the verbalization of the slime manipulations themselves relies solely on native vocabulary. The analysis of video materials allows highlighting many characteristics of slimes that are not given a verbal designation and that are demonstrated by slimers only during manipulations (for example, viscosity, elasticity, and others). The ethnographic method also provides information about the limitations of the lexicon and the insignificance of the verbal description of the slime and its properties for the slimer. The linguistic ability to describe the phenomena of the real world is replaced by display, demonstration, and gives way to a visual meaningful code. The marginalization of the verbal component is also combined with the marginalization of the haptic center of the slime-mania phenomenon itself: in the naming of slimes and in the slimers’ speech, the color characteristics of the product dominate; this clearly indicates the centrality of the visual rather than the haptic code. Thus, the phenomenon of slime-mania, which arises in the logic of a “bottom-up” culture and fixes a certain deficit of haptic perception in leisure practices, simultaneously shows the paradoxical insignificance of “hapticity” in this domain of culture, its substitution with visualization (and watching) of manipulations. Mass interest in homemade slime production can be seen as an indicator of users’ increased attention to previously marginalized areas of culture (moving the haptic into the center of attention of the broad public) and at the same time as evidence of the triumph of the visual semiotic resource, which is fixed in the slimer’s lexicon. The author declares no conflicts of interests.

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