Spectators’ aesthetic experiences of sound and movement in dance performance

In this paper we present a study of spectators’ aesthetic experiences of sound and movement in live dance performance. A multidisciplinary team comprising a choreographer, neuroscientists and qualitative researchers investigated the effects of different sound scores on dance spectators. What would be the impact of auditory stimulation on kinesthetic experience and/or aesthetic appreciation of the dance? What would be the effect of removing music altogether, so that spectators watched dance while hearing only the performers’ breathing and footfalls? We investigated audience experience through qualitative research, using post-performance focus groups, while a separately conducted functional brain imaging (fMRI) study measured the synchrony in brain activity across spectators when they watched dance with sound or breathing only. When audiences watched dance accompanied by music the fMRI data revealed evidence of greater intersubject synchronisation in a brain region consistent with complex auditory processing. The audience research found that some spectators derived pleasure from finding convergences between two complex stimuli (dance and music). The removal of music and the resulting audibility of the performers’ breathing had a significant impact on spectators’ aesthetic experience. The fMRI analysis showed increased synchronisation among observers, suggesting greater influence of the body when interpreting the dance stimuli. The audience research found evidence of similar corporeally focused experience. The paper discusses possible connections between the findings of our different approaches, and considers the implications of this study for interdisciplinary research collaborations between arts and sciences

The language of patriotism in France, 1750-1770

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Foreword to The Itinerary of The Prophet-King

Among modern analyses of the origin and development of John’s Christology, the socio-religious analysis of Wayne A. Meeks advances one of the most compelling and suggestive theses in recent years, addressing the riddles pertaining to the puzzling presentation of Jesus as a prophet-king like Moses in John 6:14-15. Whereas the Logos motif of the Johannine Prologue and the Father-Son relationship in the Johannine narrative convey high-christological thrusts, his receptions as a rabbi, teacher, and prophet elsewhere in John’s story of Jesus are far more mundane and earth bound. While he is rejected in Judea for failing to live up to Davidic royal expectations (7:40-52), Jesus is declared to be “the King of Israel” by Nathanael of Cana (1:49) and the crowd in Jerusalem (12:13), and he is labeled “King of the Jews” by Pilate at his trial and crucifixion (18:39; 19:19-22). In his appearance before Pilate, however, Jesus also affirms his being a king, but rather than asserting political prowess, his kingship is one of truth (18:36-37). Rather than a king, though, he is acclaimed as a prophet by the Samaritan woman, the Jerusalem crowd, and the blind man (4:19; 7:40; 9:17), and when the Galilean crowd seeks to rush him off for a coronation as a prophet-king like Moses in John 6:14-15, Jesus responds by fleeing into the hills. The question is why? Was the origin and development of John’s presentation of Jesus here political, historical, theological, sociological, or some combination of the like? These are the issues Wayne Meeks addresses in his first of several important monographs, and his work continues to impact New Testament studies to this day

Matter-Theatre: Conspicuous Construction in Cymbeline

Cymbeline repeatedly refers to “matter,” a term that holds both physical and abstract meanings simultaneously. The word draws attention to the nature of rhetorical construction, in which “matter” is a crucial term, and also to the material spectacles that characterize the play. Matter is a major element in Cymbeline’s self-conscious artifice and it places emphasis on the rhetorical construction of Shakespeare’s playworld, its narrative fragility, and its generic and tonal complexities. Shakespeare’s repetitions of “matter” in Cymbeline consequently serve as metatheatrical reminders about its fictional status and the material conditions of its performance. This article therefore concentrates on the various “materials” of theatre—rhetoric, technology, narrative—and situates discussion of “self-conscious theatre” away from twentieth and twenty-first-century vocabularies to concentrate instead on how such materials and media were articulated and understood by early seventeenth-century playwrights, actors, and spectators. The article gestures not only to moments of or metaphors indicating metatheatricality, but to a more fundamental concern with dramatic construction that pervades a play: in Cymbeline, theatrical recognition and self-awareness work both theoretically—through early modern understandings of “matter”—and at the level of narrative, verse, and dramaturgy. Shakespeare’s verbal inventiveness in Cymbeline is particularly conspicuous. The circuitous syntax of Shakespeare’s so-called “late style” shows the play’s speech to be especially contrived. The noticeable rhetorical “matter” encourages spectators and readers to appreciate that Cymbeline’s rhetorical constructions are not hidden or elided but are conspicuously present. Verbal invention is also complemented by material invention through the play’s elaborate stagecraft. Characters’ puzzlement at the narrative and visual surprises of the play—“what’s the matter?”—reflect the term’s verbal and material importance. The play’s verbal and visual “materiality” contributes to its fragile and reflexive self-awareness, a characteristic that is structurally present in Shakespeare’s continual delight in delaying and frustrating the answer to the question, “what’s the matter?”

Making a Mockery of Family Life? Lesbian Mothers in the British Media

In Britain, the legal treatment of lesbian mothers and co-parents has improved considerably over the past 15 years (Harne et al, 1997). Despite this, they are still vilified in occasional outbursts in the popular press. This article identifies arguments against lesbian parenting employed in a recent front-page ‘fury’ article in a British daily tabloid newspaper, The Sun. Encouragingly, of the five arguments about the ‘dangers’ of lesbian parenting that can be identified in earlier legal battles (such as the ‘risk’ that children grow up gay, or become ‘gender confused’), the only one which this article manages to present very convincingly is that of social stigma. Concern that the children of lesbians may experience name-calling or exclusion is, of course, a problem of discrimination and not a problem that is intrinsic to lesbian parenting (in contrast, say, to an argument about ‘the psychology of lesbianism’). The rhetorical force of the piece comes from easily deconstructed journalistic techniques rather than coherent arguments. The sharpest condemnation of these women is actually for having a child whilst on welfare benefits. It is, therefore, economic concerns about ‘state dependency’, rather than sexuality per se, which fuel the attack. The imagined financial self-sufficiency of heterosexual families which underpins this argument is outdated in its presumption of a bread-winning, male head of household. The fact that two days before the UK’s 1997 General Election, the birth of a baby to a lesbian couple was granted front-page coverage is a sobering reminder of the hostility that lesbians still face through the scrutiny of their ‘fitness to parent’ and the intrusive condemnation of non heterosexual domestic arrangements and relationships

Climate change and ‘climategate’ in online reader comments: a mixed methods study

Climate change has rarely been out of the public spotlight in the first decade of this century. The high-profile international meetings and controversies such as ‘climategate’ have highlighted the fact that it is as much a political issue as it is a scientific one, while also drawing our attention to the role of social media in reflecting, promoting or resisting such politicisation. In this article, we propose a framework for analysing one type of social media venue that so far has received little attention from social scientists – online reader comments. Like media reporting on climate change, reader comments on this reporting contribute to the diverse, complex and contested discourses on climate change, and can reveal the meanings and discursive resources brought to the ongoing debate by laypeople rather than political elites. The proposed framework draws on research in computer- mediated communication, corpus linguistics and discourse analysis and takes into account both the content of such ‘lay talk’ and its linguistic characteristics within the specific parameters of the web-based context. Using word frequencies, qualitative study of co-text and user ratings, we analyse a large volume of comments published on the UK tabloid newspaper website at two different points in time – before and after the East Anglia controversy. The results reveal how stereotypes of science and politics are appropriated in this type of discourse, how readers’ constructions of climate science have changed after ‘climategate’, and how climate-sceptic arguments are adopted and contested in computer-mediated peer-to-peer interaction

Boosting nationalism through COVID-19 images : Multimodal construction of the failure of the 'dear enemy' with COVID-19 in the national press

Using a multimodal discursive approach, this study explores how the COVID-19 pandemic is constructed and used in press reportage to mobilize intergroup relations and national identities. We examine how press reporting about the development of COVID-19 in Sweden is cast as a matter of nationalism and national stereotyping in the Finnish press. The data consist of 183 images with accompanying headlines and captions published in two Finnish national newspapers between January 1 and August 31, 2020. We found three multimodal rhetorical strategies of stereotyping: moralizing, demonizing, and nationalizing. These strategies construct discourses of arrogant, immoral, and dangerous Swedes sourcing from national stereotypes. The study contributes to current knowledge about the work on national stereotypes by illustrating how they are used in media discourse to achieve certain rhetorical ends, such as to persuade, mitigate, or justify intergroup relations. Furthermore, the study offers insight into the multimodal constructions and functions of stereotypes.Peer reviewe

Climate change and 'climategate' in online reader comments: a mixed methods study

Climate change has rarely been out of the public spotlight in the first decade of this century. The high‐profile international meetings and controversies such as 'climategate' have highlighted the fact that it is as much a political issue as it is a scientific one, while also drawing our attention to the role of social media in reflecting, promoting or resisting such politicisation. In this article, we propose a framework for analysing one type of social media venue that so far has received little attention from social scientists – online reader comments. Like media reporting on climate change, reader comments on this reporting contribute to the diverse, complex and contested discourses on climate change, and can reveal the meanings and discursive resources brought to the ongoing debate by laypeople rather than political elites. The proposed framework draws on research in computer‐mediated communication, corpus linguistics and discourse analysis and takes into account both the content of such 'lay talk' and its linguistic characteristics within the specific parameters of the web‐based context. Using word frequencies, qualitative study of co‐text and user ratings, we analyse a large volume of comments published on the UK tabloid newspaper website at two different points in time – before and after the East Anglia controversy. The results reveal how stereotypes of science and politics are appropriated in this type of discourse, how readers' constructions of climate science have changed after 'climategate', and how climate‐sceptic arguments are adopted and contested in computer‐mediated peer‐to‐peer interaction