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Exploring Dance as Concept: Contributions from Cognitive Science

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 July 2014

Sandra T. Francis
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Extract

As a doctoral candidate in anthropology preparing for field research among the Navajo, I surveyed the literature of cognitive anthropology (a subdiscipline of cultural anthropology) searching for analytical tools and methods that might suit my research needs. This inquiry led to the development of an experimental project, which is the subject of this article. I will begin with a brief account of my research problems and follow with a description of the experimental project, including a discussion of problems encountered and lessons learned.

The subject of my field research is: “The Role of ‘dance’ (alzhish) in Navajo Curing Ceremonials.” Portions of Navajo ceremonials were labeled “dance” by early researchers, presumably because they fit the Western concept—movement accompanied by music (drumming and singing) and performed before an audience. The Navajo call this component alzhish. The meaning of this term has not been investigated. We do not know how the other parts of a ceremony are labeled, and we do not know why this group of actions receives this label and not a different one. I devised three questions for exploring this domain: 1) What is alzhish? 2) What is the ceremonial function of alzhish? 3) How is that function achieved?

Type
Articles
Information
Dance Research Journal , Volume 28 , Issue 1 , Spring 1996 , pp. 51 - 66
Copyright
Copyright © Congress on Research in Dance 1966

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References

NOTES

1. Kaeppler, Adrienne, “Cultural Analysis, Linguistic Analogies, and the Study of Dance in Anthropological Perspective,” Explorations in Ethnomusicology: Essays in Honor of David. P. McAllester, Frisbie, Charlotte J., ed., Monographs, Detroit in Musicology, No. 9 (1986): 31 Google Scholar. 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.

2. I am certainly not the first to use an ethnoscientific approach to explore dance as concept; see Kaeppler, Adrienne L., “The Structure of Tongan Dance” (Ph.D. diss., Anthropology Department, University of Hawaii, 1967)Google Scholar. 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 Google Scholar.

3. For a listing of studies in the research traditions of cognitive anthropology, see Dougherty, Janet W. D., ed. Directions in Cognitive Anthropology (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1985), 6 Google Scholar.

4. Dougherty, Janet W. D. and Keller, Charles M., “Taskonomy: A Practical Approach to Knowledge Structures” in Dougherty, 161.Google Scholar

5. Gatewood, John B., “Actions Speak Louder than Words,” in Dougherty, 199–200 Google Scholar. Gatewood refers to the lack of attention paid to the articulation of knowledge and action in early research in cognitive anthropology.

6. Zadeh, Lotfi A., “A Fuzzy Algorithmic Approach to the Definition of Complex or Imprecise Concepts,” International Journal of Man-Machine Studies 8 (1976): 249–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7. Stanlaw, James and Yoddumnern, Bencha, “Thai Spirits: A Problem in the Study of Folk Classification,” in Dougherty, 145 Google Scholar.

8. Dougherty, 15-17.

9. Williams, Drid, Ten Lectures on Theories of the Dance (Metuchen: Scarecrow Press, 1991), 253 Google Scholar.

10. On the Navajo reservation today, one finds varying degrees of acculturation—from college-educated urbanites who dress, speak, and live in a manner similar to the participants in this study, to individuals living in rural isolation who are living much as their ancestors did four hundred years ago. Since my research interest is in traditional worldview, my field research would be carried out among the latter group.

11. Of course, many cultural/historical factors have contributed to the prototypic status of ballet in the Western dance hierarchy. This is an interesting topic in itself, calling for further study.

12. Following arguments presented in Williams 1991, 20, 1 have chosen the label “patterned human action” in place of my original choice—“patterned human movement”—to mark the element of intentionality associated with the term “action.” Patterned movement need not be “intentional,” as in the case of epileptic and palsied conditions.

13. Presumably, the marching band was placed in the category of sport because it was viewed in the context of a sporting event: a football game. Had the marching been associated with a military bootcamp, for example, it would likely have been placed in a different category, possibly “work.”

14. See Hanna, Judith Lynne, To Dance is Human: A Theory of Nonverbal Communication, 2d ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 19 Google Scholar, for a working definition of dance quite similar to the one constructed in this study. Kaeppler has pointed out that this suggests a Western orientation in Hanna's definition (Adrienne Kaeppler, personal communication). See also Hanna, Judith Lynne, “Movements toward Understanding Humans through the Anthropolgical Study of Dance,” Current Anthropology 20, No. 2 (June 1979): 315–17CrossRefGoogle Scholar, for a discussion of anthropological definitions of dance.

15. Kronenfeld, et al., “Exploring the Internal Structure of Linguistic Categories: An Extensionist Semantic View,” in Dougherty, 103 Google Scholar.

16. “Ice dancing” has now become a category for Olympic competition.

17. In the case of the Navajo study, I will have the services of an excellent Navajo-English translator and an extensive body of literature on language and philosophy (spanning one hundred years of anthropological research) to draw upon.

18. Best, David, “Symbolism and the Meaning of Movement,” CORD Research Annual X: Dance Research Collage: A Variety of Subjects Embracing the Abstract and the Practical, Rowe, Patricia A. and Stodelle, Ernestine, eds., (1979): 85 Google Scholar.

19. Kempton, Willett, “Category Grading and Taxo-nomic Relations: A Mug Is a Sort of a Cup,” revised and reprinted in Language, Culture, and Cognition: Anthropological Perspectives, Casson, Ronald W., ed. (New York: Macmillan, 1981), 203–230 Google Scholar. The article originally appeared in American Ethnologist, 5 (1978): 44–65 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

20. Lakoff, George, “Hedges: A Study in Meaning Criteria and the Logic of Fuzzy Concepts,” Journal of Philosophical Logic 2 (1973): 458–508 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21. Hedged phrases would be useful for the portion of the study that poses the question: Is this dance? However, it could not be used for eliciting the significant attributes of dance.

22. See Boster's, ‘“Requiem for the Omniscient Informant’: There's Life in the Old Girl Yet,” in Dougherty, 177–197 Google Scholar, 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).

23. See also Kempton's, Willett treatment of subcultura! variation, The Folk Classification of Ceramics: A Study of Cognitive Prototypes (New York: Academic Press, 1981), 104–164 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

24. Dougherty, 243.

25. Dougherty, 8.

26. Dougherty and Keller, in Dougherty, 162.

27. Lehman, F. K., “Cognition and Computation: On Being Sufficiently Abstract,” in Dougherty, 26 Google Scholar.

28. Three lessons were learned from this project that will be particularly useful in the Navajo study: 1) Film is an excellent vehicle for eliciting information about an action system. Respondents tend to get caught up in what they are seeing and can give spontaneous responses with minimal direction from the researcher. 2) It is important to control for context and for distracting elements. We must make sure respondents are reacting to what we think they are reacting to and not something else. 3) It is important to look not only at shared responses but also at patterns in response variation in order to evaluate the cultural factors influencing cognition.