Semiotyka gestów rytualnych – kilka uwag o metodzie badawczej

The present paper proposes a semiotic description, analysis and interpretation of the (extra-liturgical) ritual gestures, attested in the traditional Polish family and year-cycle rituals. Basing on the principles outlined by the Tartu-Moscow school of semiotics, the author builds a framework for the description of a ritual gesture. The structure of such gestures is defined on three levels of semiotic description: syntactic, semantic and pragmatic. The research method applied in the study allows for building a comprehensive explication of individual gestures by extracting meaningful aspects of their structure, indicating relationships between them and putting them against the symbolic, cultural context.