Exploring Dance as Concept: Contributions from Cognitive Science

Dance Research Journal

Volumn 28, Issue 1, 1996, Pages 51-66

  Francis, Sandra T ^a  

^a NONE

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[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 84991254529     PISSN: 01497677     EISSN: 1940509X     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/1478105     Document Type: Article

References (25)

1. Adrienne Kaeppler, “Cultural Analysis, Linguistic Analogies, and the Study of Dance in Anthropological Perspective,” Explorations in Ethnomusicology: Essays in Honor of David. P. McAllester, Charlotte J. Frisbie, ed, Detroit Monographs in Musicology, No. 9 (1986): 31.
2. Kaeppler-with reference to Steven Feld's “Music, Cognition and Metaphor: Aspects of Kaluli Musical Theory” (paper presented at the IFMC colloquium at Kolobrzeg, Poland, 25–30 May 1981)-draws attention to this ethnoscientific goal (articulating the “what” with the “why”) and notes that movement analysis has yet to reach this level.
3. I am certainly not the first to use an ethnoscientific approach to explore dance as concept; see Adrienne L. Kaeppler, “The Structure of Tongan Dance” (Ph.D. diss., Anthropology Department, University of Hawaii, 1967).
4. See also Kaeppler's synopses of other dance studies, conducted mainly in Europe, that also employ linguistic analyses in “Dance in Anthropological Perspective,” Annual Review of Anthropology 7 (1978): 43–45.
5. For a listing of studies in the research traditions of cognitive anthropology, see Janet W. D. Dougherty, ed. Directions in Cognitive Anthropology (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1985), 6.
6. Janet W. D. Dougherty and Charles M. Keller, “Taskonomy: A Practical Approach to Knowledge Structures” in Dougherty, 161.
7. John B. Gatewood, “Actions Speak Louder than Words,” in Dougherty, 199–200. Gatewood refers to the lack of attention paid to the articulation of knowledge and action in early research in cognitive anthropology.
8. Lotfi A. Zadeh, “A Fuzzy Algorithmic Approach to the Definition of Complex or Imprecise Concepts,” International Journal of Man-Machine Studies 8 (1976): 249–91.
9. James Stanlaw and Bencha Yoddumnern, “Thai Spirits: A Problem in the Study of Folk Classification,” in Dougherty, 145.
10. “Thai Spirits: A Problem in the Study of Folk Classification,”, 15–17.
11. Drid Williams, Ten Lectures on Theories of the Dance (Metuchen: Scarecrow Press, 1991), 253.
12. See Judith Lynne Hanna, To Dance is Human: A Theory of Nonverbal Communication, 2d ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 19, for a working definition of dance quite similar to the one constructed in this study.
13. Kaeppler has pointed out that this suggests a Western orientation in Hanna's definition (Adrienne Kaeppler, personal communication). See also Judith Lynne Hanna, “Movements toward Understanding Humans through the Anthropolgical Study of Dance,” Current Anthropology 20, No. 2 (June 1979): 315–17, for a discussion of anthropological definitions of dance.
14. Kronenfeld et al, “Exploring the Internal Structure of Linguistic Categories: An Extensionist Semantic View,” in Dougherty, 103.
15. David Best, “Symbolism and the Meaning of Movement,” CORD Research Annual X: Dance Research Collage: A Variety of Subjects Embracing the Abstract and the Practical, Patricia A. Rowe and Ernestine Stodelle, eds, (1979): 85.
16. Willett Kempton, “Category Grading and Taxo-nomic Relations: A Mug Is a Sort of a Cup,” revised.
17. reprinted in Language, Culture, and Cognition: Anthropological Perspectives, Ronald W. Casson, ed. (New York: Macmillan, 1981), 203–230.
18. The article originally appeared in American Ethnologist, 5 (1978): 44–65.
19. George Lakoff, “Hedges: A Study in Meaning Criteria and the Logic of Fuzzy Concepts,” Journal of Philosophical Logic 2 (1973): 458–508.
20. See Boster's ‘“Requiem for the Omniscient Informant’: There's Life in the Old Girl Yet,” in Dougherty, 177–197, for a discussion of what to do when confronted with informant disagreement. His basic position is that “cognitive diversity is [or may be] organized in a way that reflects the dynamics of the cultural system…” (p. 178).
21. See also Willett Kempton's treatment of sub-cultural variation, The Folk Classification of Ceramics: A Study of Cognitive Prototypes (New York: Academic Press, 1981), 104–164.
22. Dougherty, 243.
23. Dougherty, 8.
24. Dougherty and Keller, in Dougherty, 162.
25. F. K. Lehman, “Cognition and Computation: On Being Sufficiently Abstract,” in Dougherty, 26.