Ian Cross | Sociability, affiliation and the phatic: music as communication

Event details

Speaker: Ian Cross (University of Cambridge)

Date: 22 January 2020

Time: 3.15 - 5.00pm.  

Venue: Alison House, Atrium (G10)

Abstract

Recent research indicates strongly that shared processes can underpin interaction in music and in speech. These processes seem best interpreted not as proper to speech or to music, but as characteristic of particular types or registers of interaction: affiliative, empathic, phatic, and reciprocal, whether manifested in conversation or in musical interaction.  The frameworks within which these types of interaction are most evident can be described as relational, being concerned with setting up and maintaining communicative fluency in interaction and with enhancing a sense of connectedness between those who are interacting.  I shall describe the results of recent experiments that support this new way of understanding significant aspects of human communication, and suggest that speech and music can be fruitfully reconceptualised and investigated as overlapping subsets of a repertoire of human communicative behaviours that may be configured differently in different cultures.

Biography

Ian Cross's profile page at the University of Cambridge (external page)

Further reading

Further reading for Ian Cross's seminar (EASE login required) (secured)