Music and Speech in Social Bonding
Mon 05 Sept
|Zoom - click RSVP for link in event details
Language and music tend to be thought of as distinct domains of human life. One is necessary and purposeful, the other is on the whole a superfluous means of entertainment. Ian Cross, Emeritus Professor of Music and Science, will tell us why that view is misleading.


Time & Location
05 Sept 2022, 19:30
Zoom - click RSVP for link in event details
About the event
Join the event here: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84856152429?pwd%3DSXBGc1I1cEdRZjV0RVdXSFFodkJuUT09
Language and music tend to be thought of as distinct domains of human life. The one is necessary and purposeful, in that it allows us to refer and to organise joint action in pursuit of common goals; the other can at best elicit powerful emotional experiences, but is, on the whole, a rather superfluous means of entertainment. However, this view is misleading. Sometimes, language is not used to refer, while music may do much more than simply reflect emotion. Considered as interactive media, music, and language in at least one of its functional manifestations, are almost indissociable. When music takes the form of participatory interaction, it has the capacity to enhance a sense of mutual affiliation or bonding between participants. Similarly, language, or more properly, speech, in the phatic register —when the actual words used in dialogic interaction are less important than is th…