scholarly journals Vocalizations in dance classes teach body knowledge

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (s4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Leelo Keevallik

Abstract Language is believed to be a central device for communicating meaning and knowledge between humans. It is superb in its capacity to code abstract ideas and displaced information, which can be conveyed from person to person, sometimes across centuries. When it comes to instructing a bodily skill in co-present situations, language is used along with other multimodal resources. This paper focuses on the role of vocalizations in dance teaching, syllables that express simultaneous body movement rather than abstract lexical content. While being essentially a vocal resource, the meaning of vocalizations arises in the simultaneously moving bodies. By carrying indexical and only partially conventionalized meaning, vocalizations constitute a puzzle for linguistic theory that preferably targets the arbitrary, symbolic and conventionalized aspects of human vocal production. The meanings conveyed from one body to another through a vocalization are experiential rather than intellectual. Vocalizations provide a solution to the problem of transferring body knowledge from one autonomous organism to another, and can even be embedded in syntax. The analysis is based on an occasion of teaching a jazz routine to a larger group of students.

Author(s):  
Geoffrey Parsons Miller

This chapter explores the thesis that the historical narratives of the Hebrew Bible address abstract ideas about politics, government, and law. Taking issue with critics who view the Bible’s spiritual and theological message as incommensurable with political philosophy, the chapter argues that the stories of politics and kingship in the Hebrew Bible’s historical books set forth set forth an impressive political theory that rivals, in some respects, the work of Plato, Aristotle, and other Greek thinkers. The key is to bring out the general ideas behind the specific narrative elements. The chapter illustrates this thesis by examining the Hebrew Bible’s treatment of a number of classic problems of political theory: anarchy, obligation and sovereignty, distributive justice, and the comparative analysis of political organizations.


Author(s):  
Jane W. Davidson

This article explores the fundamental role of bodily movement in the development of musical knowledge and performance skills; in particular, how the body can be used to understand expressive musical material and to communicate that meaning to coperformers and audience. The relevance to the educator is explored (whether working with a child or adult beginner, or a more advanced learner). The article is divided into six main sections, tracing the role of body movement skill in music production, expressive musical performance, developing learners to play their musical instruments with technical and expressive appropriateness, coperformer coordination, and projection for audience perception. The work builds on a growing interest in the embodied nature of musical experience. The article concludes with case study observations of practical insights and applications for the teacher.


Author(s):  
Paulo César Teles ◽  
Aidan Boyle

In the fields of new media, art, and technology, we live and evolve together with multimedia interactivedigital technology. This symbiosis has made it possible to develop novel works that dialogue with theexploratory nature of the human being when confronted with unfamiliar technological equipment. The electronic music scenario brought us some elements that inspired and provoked us in this quest. The Psytrance style in particular made us realize that once a minimal simple harmony was supported by a solid rhythm, the audience could interact and control many of the sound clusters available, solely with their body movement. In this chapter we report experimental results and analysis, which point towards an approach for composing electronic music through the distinct and innovative behaviour of the participants, turning them into real performers, as well as transforming the role of the DJ/VJ by engaging them in a two-way dialogue with their audience.


2008 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 197-210
Author(s):  
Anna María Escobar

Abstract In the latter decades of the 20th century, historical, typological, dialectological, and sociolinguistic research all contributed to demonstrating the limitations of focusing exclusively on language-internal synchronic data, and these and other disciplines that share a bottom-up perspective acquired respectability as participants in theorybuilding. In the 21st century, there is a renewed appreciation of the potential for such research to address questions that are central to linguistic theory. Dialectology is today a field in which the social changes occurring in human societies are naturally taken into consideration, and includes not only the study of dialects in the traditional sense but also the study of social dialects and second-language varieties. Dialectology has thus evolved into a rich and complex field which is ideally positioned to make important contributions to the process of building theories of language that are firmly based on empirical data.


Author(s):  
Stephanie Vander Wel

This chapter offers new insights about the musical and cultural significance of singing styles in country music by contextualizing the details of predominant female vocal approaches within the rich and complex history of southern vernacular singing and by considering, the role of the performing body in relation to the singing voice. Specifically, it takes into account the vocal techniques of Loretta Lynn in relation to the musical conventions of honky tonk singing, the physiological and bodily components of vocal production, and the role of microphone and recording technology. With a chest-dominant vocal technique—amplified by the microphone—Lynn has projected a vocal identity of strength and conviction interpreted as the first working-class feminist voice in country music. This chapter demonstrates that singers such as Kitty Wells, Jean Shepard, and Rose Maddox helped to forge a distinct singing style that had a lasting influence on Lynn’s vocal performances.


2019 ◽  
Vol 94 (Suppl. 1-4) ◽  
pp. 51-60
Author(s):  
Julie E. Elie ◽  
Susanne Hoffmann ◽  
Jeffery L. Dunning ◽  
Melissa J. Coleman ◽  
Eric S. Fortune ◽  
...  

Acoustic communication signals are typically generated to influence the behavior of conspecific receivers. In songbirds, for instance, such cues are routinely used by males to influence the behavior of females and rival males. There is remarkable diversity in vocalizations across songbird species, and the mechanisms of vocal production have been studied extensively, yet there has been comparatively little emphasis on how the receiver perceives those signals and uses that information to direct subsequent actions. Here, we emphasize the receiver as an active participant in the communication process. The roles of sender and receiver can alternate between individuals, resulting in an emergent feedback loop that governs the behavior of both. We describe three lines of research that are beginning to reveal the neural mechanisms that underlie the reciprocal exchange of information in communication. These lines of research focus on the perception of the repertoire of songbird vocalizations, evaluation of vocalizations in mate choice, and the coordination of duet singing.


2011 ◽  
Vol 106 (4) ◽  
pp. 1747-1765 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lena Veit ◽  
Dmitriy Aronov ◽  
Michale S. Fee

How do animals with learned vocalizations coordinate vocal production with respiration? Songbirds such as the zebra finch learn their songs, beginning with highly variable babbling vocalizations known as subsong. After several weeks of practice, zebra finches are able to produce a precisely timed pattern of syllables and silences, precisely coordinated with expiratory and inspiratory pulses (Franz M, Goller F. J Neurobiol 51: 129–141, 2002). While respiration in adult song is well described, relatively little is known about respiratory patterns in subsong or about the processes by which respiratory and vocal patterns become coordinated. To address these questions, we recorded thoracic air sac pressure in juvenile zebra finches prior to the appearance of any consistent temporal or acoustic structure in their songs. We found that subsong contains brief inspiratory pulses (50 ms) alternating with longer pulses of sustained expiratory pressure (50–500 ms). In striking contrast to adult song, expiratory pulses often contained multiple (0–8) variably timed syllables separated by expiratory gaps and were only partially vocalized. During development, expiratory pulses became shorter and more stereotyped in duration with shorter and fewer nonvocalized parts. These developmental changes eventually resulted in the production of a single syllable per expiratory pulse and a single inspiratory pulse filling each gap, forming a coordinated sequence similar to that of adult song. To examine the role of forebrain song-control nuclei in the development of respiratory patterns, we performed pressure recordings before and after lesions of nucleus HVC (proper name) and found that this manipulation reverses the developmental trends in measures of the respiratory pattern.


2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (26) ◽  
pp. 91-100
Author(s):  
Inessa G. Rodionova ◽  

The purpose of the article is to identify and describe structural, semantic and functional features of irreal-conditional complex sentences with the conjunction «если» (if) in the autobiographical Tale of Life by K. G. Paustovsky. In the introduction, the author notes the important role of syntactic units in expressing the author's intention in autobiographical text, and points out the constant scientific interest in studying the functioning of complex subordinate sentences with conditional meaning in texts of different styles in both synchronic and diachronic aspects. The main part of the article defines the irreal condition and notes that a formal indicator of its semantics in a complex sentence is the presence of the form with the particle «бы» (would) in the main and subordinate clauses. Attention is drawn to the complication of the irreal condition meaning with various connotations: desirability, supposition, possibility, concession, comparison, as well as a phatic aspect. Each structural-semantic type of sentences is analyzed in terms of specific semantics, structure, ways of expressing the main sentence parts, and lexical content. The author names the means of strengthening the semantics of the irreal condition, including particles, interjections, exclamatory intonation, etc. The conclusion is made that the use of sentences of this type in an autobiographical text, on the one hand, allows the author to convey the message of the work as accurately as possible, to express his perception of events and the characters' thoughts and intentions. On the other hand, the use of sentences with the conjunction «если» (if) with the meaning of irreal condition, with different semantic connotations, shows the capacity of the modern Russian grammar system, which allows the speaker or writer to convey the finest shades of meaning in portraying objective reality.


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