Music, Language, and What Falls in Between

Bibliographic Data

ID2650463
AuthorsLawrence M Zbikowski (corresponding author)
Year2012
Volume56
Issue1
Pages125-131
Publication date2012-02-01
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueEthnomusicology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0014-1836 • E-ISSN: 2156-7417
PublisherUniversity of Illinois Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.5406/ethnomusicology.56.1.0125
OpenAlexW2324481594
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited15

The story that Francesca Lawson tells about Shuōchang in both her essay and her recent book (Lawson 2011) is a fascinating one, not least because the genre presses against the boundary between speech and music. Lawson uses this pressure as an opportunity to explore recent work on language and music by Ani Patel (Patel 2008) and to engage with the larger issue of the relationship between ethnomusicology and the empirical sciences brought into prominence by Judith Becker’s recent publications (Becker 2004; Becker 2009; Becker 2009; Penman and Becker 2009). Her essay concludes with the proposal that there is much to be gained by combining empirical and humanistic methodologies, and that by doing so scholars may be able to achieve a synoptic view on human knowledge that E. O. Wilson called “consilience.” My own research over the past couple of decades has involved applying recent work in cognitive science (especially that done by cognitive linguists and cognitive psychologists) to various problems confronted by music scholars, including the problem of the relationship between music and language. I am, in consequence, quite sympathetic to the approach to language and music that Lawson develops in her research. In what follows, however, I would like to argue for a fundamental change in our conception of the communicative resources offered by language and music. This change has broad applicability to genres such as Shuōchang and points the way to a methodological perspective that has profound implications for the empirical study of musical practice

Art · Consilience · Epistemology · Ethnomusicology · Literature · Music and emotion · Music education · Music history · Music psychology · Musical · Musicology · Pedagogy · Sociology · Language and cultural evolution · Language, Metaphor, and Cognition · Neuroscience and Music Perception · Philosophy · Psychology