Tag discussion: personification

So we have a tag called personification, but the way it's used, it actually means almost exclusively antropomorphisation. Shouldn't we rename the tag to reflect that then, and possibly free up personification for non-human persons (or the other way around, humanoid non-persons, such as /mild Madoka spoilers/ charlotte_(madoka_magica) personification)?

I know the traditional usage has them synonymous, but that's only there's an implicit assumption that only humans can have personhood, which (even aside from the fact it's a load of arrogant, self-centered bullshit) is very much not true given the kind of content we deal with.

I'm not sure I follow what you're arguing. Anyway, dictionaries would give more the impression that anthropomorphism is simply giving human characteristics or behaviors to non-human things, while personification includes that but also includes giving them human form.

Oxford Dictionary:
Anthropomorphism-
the attribution of human characteristics or behavior to a god, animal, or object.

Personification-
the attribution of a personal nature or human characteristics to something nonhuman, or the representation of an abstract quality in human form.

Humanize/Humanization-
2) give (something) a human character.

Merriam-Webster Dictionary:
Anthropomorphism-
an interpretation of what is not human or personal in terms of human or personal characteristics: humanization.

Personification-
1) attribution of personal qualities; especially : representation of a thing or abstraction as a person or by the human form.
2) a divinity or imaginary being representing a thing or abstraction.

Humanize/Humanization-
1a : to represent as human : attribute human qualities to.

I'm saying that currently personification is used to mean "putting originally non-human-shaped things in the humanoid form". For example my_little_pony personification. But that's wrong, because:
1) Ponies (in this example, but it holds for other intelligent animals, sentient machines, aliens, etc.) are persons before as well as after
2) The name "personification" means "giving the qualities of a person", whereas the device of changing something's form into that of a human is called - appropriately enough -antropomorphisation
3) We have taggable things that are, originally, human-shaped but are not persons, such as the example I gave above.

The dictionary thing you mention mostly reflects the popular confusion of the two terms, but it does roughly distinguish between "personhood" and "human shape". The fact they're used interchangably comes only from the implicit and unfounded assumption that only humans are capable of being persons; something that's feeble in general, and patently untrue for the kind of material we deal with.

What I'm proposing is to revise the definitons we use, and make an explicit distinction, so that the following holds:

• antropomorphisation applies when something is given a human shape, regardless whether it also gains person-like qualities
• personification refers to giving something personhood (ie. sentience, personality, ability to communicate intelligently, etc.), regardless whether it comes together with a humanoid form

A few examples of what that would mean in practice:

• Whole of my_little_pony personification would be retagged my_little_pony antropomorphisation
• post #1118991 would be personification, but not antropomorphisation, since Charlotte's original form is already humanoid
• os would mostly be tagged with both, with the exception of the original boxy form of 98 and 98se (such as in post #721), which, if featured on their own, would get personification but not antropmorphisation

葉月 said:

• antropomorphisation applies when something is given a human shape, regardless whether it also gains person-like qualities
• personification refers to giving something personhood (ie. sentience, personality, ability to communicate intelligently, etc.), regardless whether it comes together with a humanoid form

Definitely in favor of this, they're distinct things and I've had trouble finding the latter before because of the synonymous nature of the personification tag. So yeah +1 I guess!

IMO,
Personification sounds literary.
Antropomorphisation (truth be told, I like Anthropomorphism more) applies physical human characteristics onto non-humans.

If given options, I'd ditch personification and replace it with antropomorphisation.
This is something you actually SEE.

葉月 said:

• antropomorphisation applies when something is given a human shape, regardless whether it also gains person-like qualities
• personification refers to giving something personhood (ie. sentience, personality, ability to communicate intelligently, etc.), regardless whether it comes together with a humanoid form

• post #1118991 would be personification, but not antropomorphisation, since Charlotte's original form is already humanoid

Your definitions are still much too vague.

post #1118991
With that definition, Charlotte cannot be tagged personification since she is already sentient.
Her normal form is also not quite as humanoid as you make it out to be. (post #951394)

On the other hand, every page of Morino Hon's Omoito series would have to be tagged personification.

I guess I can understand the difference, but I think I'd rather go with using humanization to cover the concept of specifically giving something a human body (or human-like body, such as an elf-like body). Notably it would do better in matching the already existing mechanization and animalization tags.

I think your idea of personification works better as being anthropomorisation or anthropomorphised, because the images of non-humans being given "personhood" is represented by giving them human characteristics (generally a human face), such as with thomas_the_tank_engine or the sun and moon in soul_eater. I do not think you can visually give something what you call "personhood" without having to give them visually human characteristics (whether it is clothing or a human face).

Lastly, your example of using the os girls. Isn't that kind of personification more in line with the concept of an avatar? In short they're the embodiment of an idea or concept.

dean_exia said:
If given options, I'd ditch personification and replace it with antropomorphisation.
This is something you actually SEE.

You can also see personification in post #1118991, or in thomas_the_tank_engine. But there's a big difference between an engine with puffy cheeks and a face, and a full-blown humanoid.

S1eth said:
post #1118991
With that definition, Charlotte cannot be tagged personification since she is already sentient.
Her normal form is also not quite as humanoid as you make it out to be. (post #951394)

No, she's almost certainly not sentient, not her doll form anyway. We've had a thread about it the first time this came up, see forum #56510. And she's plenty humanoid, or are you trying to say dolls aren't humanoid? Remember that the whole catch with Charlotte is that she's got multiple disjoint bodies, and that her true form is the unassuming figure that barely looks like anything, but all the pictures in question are personifying the doll.

Ninja edit: almost all, cf. post #1078759, post #985294, which *are* antropomorphisation. And the difficulty of filtering only these images and excluding the ones where the doll is being personified is another argument in favour of keeping the concepts distinct.

On the other hand, every page of Morino Hon's Omoito series would have to be tagged personification.

Could you please give an example of what you mean?

NWF_Renim said:
I guess I can understand the difference, but I think I'd rather go with using humanization to cover the concept of specifically giving something a human body (or human-like body, such as an elf-like body). Notably it would do better in matching the already existing mechanization and animalization tags.

So would antropomorphisation, but humanisation is admittedly a tad easier and shorter to type. I'm totally fine with it as the tag.

I think your idea of personification works better as being anthropomorisation or anthropomorphised,

*ARGHSJHGSADGSAJS*, the whole thread is about decoupling these two concepts, how did you manage to miss that?

because the images of non-humans being given "personhood" is represented by giving them human characteristics (generally a human face), such as with thomas_the_tank_engine or the sun and moon in soul_eater. I do not think you can visually give something what you call "personhood" without having to give them visually human characteristics (whether it is clothing or a human face).

That's obviously a shorthand, but you can have visibly non-human persons. GlaDOS is one. It's not inconceivable to have a picture which represents canonically non-sentient machines as having personhood (such as, dunno, Data getting it on with the Enterprise onboard computer).

Lastly, your example of using the os girls. Isn't that kind of personification more in line with the concept of an avatar? In short they're the embodiment of an idea or concept.

Avatars are a subset of personification, yes. But a subset, not a disjoint concept.

葉月 said:
No, she's almost certainly not sentient, not her doll form anyway. We've had a thread about it the first time this came up, see forum #56510. And she's plenty humanoid, or are you trying to say dolls aren't humanoid? Remember that the whole catch with Charlotte is that she's got multiple disjoint bodies, and that her true form is the unassuming figure that barely looks like anything, but all the pictures in question are personifying the doll.

The topic of sentience was never discussed in the thread you linked. The image was tagged with personification because it's a "non-human (character) turned human", which also applies to pokemon/animals/airplanes/mecha. That kind of personification would now be tagged humanization/antropomorphisation.

We know that the doll Charlotte and the snake/caterpillar/whatever Charlotte are two forms of the same character, so if one is sentient, the other is as well.

葉月 said:
Could you please give an example of what you mean?

You could've just clicked the link I provided.
Omoito is a touhou doujinshi series about Shanghai doll and Hourai doll gaining sentience (without changing their physical appearance, at least not until post #1104549)

S1eth said:

The topic of sentience was never discussed in the thread you linked. The image was tagged with personification because it's a "non-human (character) turned human", which also applies to pokemon/animals/airplanes/mecha. That kind of personification would now be tagged humanization/antropomorphisation.

Yes, it was. To wit:

葉月 said:
Canonically, the doll form doesn't show any personality, and doesn't speak or otherwise react to her surroundings. It's also unclear whether she should be considered a person.

That is in stark contrast to all the pictures we have depicting her as a normal(-ish) human girl. It's all about the mental capabilities and not at all about the form, as Charlotte is a doll, and dolls are by definition humanoid.

We know that the doll Charlotte and the snake/caterpillar/whatever Charlotte are two forms of the same character, so if one is sentient, the other is as well.

Not necessarily. There are pretty strong hints that neither is "the" Charlotte, and that both are to the true form what Alice's dolls are canonically to her, ie. a manifestation of her will, and not independent sentient beings.

You could've just clicked the link I provided.
Omoito is a touhou doujinshi series about Shanghai doll and Hourai doll gaining sentience (without changing their physical appearance, at least not until post #1104549)

You didn't provide any link. You linked to Morino Hon, but that's not very helpful. Anyway, yes, that is exactly the kind of material that'd get the new personification tag. I don't see the problem you have with it, or which part of it makes the definitions "vague".

Unless someone actually responded to that part of your post, it isn't a discussion, but we're discussing it now.

Even if you could prove everything you've said about Charlotte, it wouldn't change the fact that a "thing" that doesn't look like a human is drawn as one and would therefore ALWAYS be tagged with the old personification or the new humanization/anthropomorphism regardless of whether it is sentient or not.
You whole argumentation is based on "strong hints" and we cannot base objective tags on speculation about meta knowledge.

葉月 said:
I don't see the problem you have with it, or which part of it makes the definitions "vague".

So then, would you agree that post #1104549 should then be tagged humanization/anthropomorphism since Hourai grew to the size of a normal human? Or would you disagree because the small doll already looked like a human? And if yes, would you additionally tag it personification or make them mutually exclusive?

Just to make myself clearer, my definitions for the tags would be something like this.

Humanization: Representing a non-human as a human.

Anthropomorphism: Giving non-humanoids beings or items human characteristics, but not a human body. This would be things like the moon and sun in Soul Eater that have faces (post #334898), Thomas the tank engine (post #547211), animals in human clothing (post #500509), etc. This would be an independent tag from Humanization.

That's as far as I'm going. As for your idea of personification, it seems like S1eth put it, vague. It lacks a real defining visual concept that easily defines it. What you're trying to place under the tag becomes a rather subjective concept. You're making a lot of guesses saying something has sentience over another. Your example of Data getting it on with the computer of the Enterprise is a great example of this. Even if Data were to get on with the computer and the computer responded, what's to say it is actual sentience and not a programmed response? The computer is clearly advanced enough to give responses, and given what they depict on their holodeck they're at the level to mimic realistic responses without necessarily giving it true sentience. In short this tag is highly subjective and requires either additional background information, such as that provided in a comic like Morino Hon's doujin S1eth used, or you have to make guesses on whether what is depicted has actual sentience. This is not a good foundation for a tag.

I just do not think your idea for personification is going to work out as a taggable concept, at least in the form that you're trying to give.

In NWF's definition of Humanization, would Blue's human form in Wolf's rain count as a form of humanization or not?

NWF_Renim said:

Anthropomorphism: Giving non-humanoids beings or items human characteristics, but not a human body. This would be things like the moon and sun in Soul Eater that have faces (post #334898), Thomas the tank engine (post #547211), animals in human clothing (post #500509), etc. .

Care to explain why many of these are humanoid?

This concept's term is not fixed.
Even the term 'humanization' is not widely used in describing such concept.

Nials said:
In NWF's definition of Humanization, would Blue's human form in Wolf's rain count as a form of humanization or not?

Same question goes to Okami's Amaterasu.
By definition, I'm afraid they count based on Blue & Amaterasu's default appearances.

dean_exia said:
Care to explain why many of these are humanoid?

This concept's term is not fixed.
Even the term 'humanization' is not widely used in describing such concept.

Anthropomorphic images can cover giving human/humanoid form to something as well as simply giving human characteristics to a non-human (ie a face on a train or the moon, human clothing on a human acting llama, etc). Giving human form to something is a visually different concept than giving human traits to something. The visual difference is to the extent, that two different tags are necessary to house them.

Our own definitions of terms do not necessarily have to match outside usage of the term. Mechanization certainly does not match "wide outside usage." In this case we're taking the term more because of the way it sounds as opposed to the way it is normally used, especially since the way it is commonly used would never be a taggable concept to begin with (I don't think we'll have images of making something more humane, and if we did why would we want a tag dedicated to it?).

Nials said:
In NWF's definition of Humanization, would Blue's human form in Wolf's rain count as a form of humanization or not?

dean_exia said:
Same question goes to Okami's Amaterasu.
By definition, I'm afraid they count based on Blue & Amaterasu's default appearances.

That would depend on how we decide on what the tags would cover. I think ideally the tag should be used for non-canon fan depictions, and that another tag should be used to distinguish between characters who have canonical animal and human forms (or at least a broader tag to cover canonical alternative forms for characters that are more than just a costume change and give the character a completely different form).

It should be noted though that we use the genderswap tag to cover both canon and fan genderswaps of characters. Although, I think it comes up somewhat excessive in usage on some characters, especially when the primary depiction of a character might be the "alternative form," such as Saotome Ranma.