Messages, meaning and the moving body

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Abstract
In this paper, the author discloses some of the hidden dualisms and behavioristic ideas that persist in contemporary thinking specifically about dancing, but generally about all systems of expressive human movement. The issues involved are: (a) lack of an adequate concept of, and appreciation for, ‘language” with regard to the medium of human movement; (b) the fact that the medical concept of the human body isn't an appropriate model for the study of communicative movements; (c) the problem created by separating body and mind, body and verbalization, or body and “person” for those who attempt rationally to understand the art of dancing and other systems of expressive human movement, say, in systems of sign language. These issues include widely‐held unquestioned assumptions that prevent significant progress in the study of all structured systems of human movement. The author writes from a semasiological standpoint which is neither dualistic nor behavioristic. As the discussion proceeds, major points regarding semasiology as an alternative approach to the dance and human movement studies emerge, for readers who are unfamiliar with this theoretical point of view.1

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