Abstract
This paper initiates a theory of musical semantics based on the notions of cross-domain mapping from cognitive linguistics and ground from the philosophy of language. The central claim is that listeners construct musical meaning on the basis of neither free associations nor fixed clues inherent to the musical structure. Rather, the process is grounded in a hierarchical system of six contextual constraints. On level one, the first glimpse of meaning emerges from direct physiological reactions, as when a segment of music is described as “tense.” On level two, image-schematic structure begins to be constructed, e. g., a “hopping” staccato. Level three is connotational, ascribing emotional qualities to the music, while on level four, the meaning becomes conceptual, relating the music to rich imagery, e. g., “a medieval battle.” On level five, conceptual meaning interacts with an elaborated cultural context, motivating rich descriptions at the intersection of two or more conceptual domains, e. g., when the “battle” is replaced by “gods coming down from Olympus.” Level six hosts associations grounded in personal experience. To support the proposal, a representative set of verbal descriptions from a recent experimental study on musical meaning is analyzed, showing both the emergence of new conceptual content and the hierarchical nature of grounding. In doing so, the contribution attempts to formally capture the old paradox of musical semantics: that music is full of meaning, yet that this meaning is highly underspecified, manifested in a potential rather than definite form.
Funding statement: The present work was supported by the Serbian Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development (grant 179013).
About the author
Mihailo Antović, Ph.D., associate professor, teaches cognitive linguistics in the Department of English, Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Niš, Serbia. He has presented papers on music, language, meaning and cognition at more than 20 conferences in Austria, Greece, Germany, Italy, Hungary, Poland, Slovenia, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States. He was a Fulbright visiting scholar at Case Western Reserve University and research scholar at the University of Freiburg. His articles have appeared in a number of journals, including Metaphor and Symbol, Language and History, Musicae Scientiae, Language and Communication, and Music Perception. In addition to several contributions to international edited volumes, he has also co-edited a volume on oral poetics and cognitive science for De Gruyter. He currently heads the Center for Cognitive Sciences, University of Niš.
References
Agawu, K. 2008. Music as discourse: Semiotic adventures in romantic music. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195370249.001.0001Search in Google Scholar
Antović, M. 2009. Musical metaphors in Serbian and Romani children: An empirical study. Metaphor and Symbol 24(3). 184–202.10.1080/10926480903028136Search in Google Scholar
Antović, M., A. Bennett & M. Turner. 2013. Running in circles or moving along lines: Conceptualization of musical elements in sighted and blind children. Musicae Scientiae 17(2). 229–245.10.1177/1029864913481470Search in Google Scholar
Antović, M. Forthcoming. Persuasion in musical multimedia: A conceptual blending theory approach. In J. Pelclova & W. Lu (eds.), Persuasion in public discourse: Cognitive and functional approach. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Search in Google Scholar
Antović, M., D. Stamenković & V. Figar. Forthcoming. Association of meaning in program music: On denotation, inherence, and onomatopoeia. Music Perception 34(2).10.1525/mp.2016.34.2.243Search in Google Scholar
Barsalou, L. W. 2008. Grounded cognition. Annual Review of Psychology 59. 617–645.10.1146/annurev.psych.59.103006.093639Search in Google Scholar
Bernstein, L. 1976. The unanswered question: Six talks at Harvard. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Bharucha, J. J., M. Curtis & K. Paroo. 2006. Varieties of musical experience. Cognition 100(1). 131–172.10.1016/j.cognition.2005.11.008Search in Google Scholar
Bhatara, A., P. Laukka & D. J. Levitin (eds.). 2014. Expression of emotion in music and vocal communication. Lausanne: Frontiers in Psychology E-Books.10.3389/978-2-88919-263-2Search in Google Scholar
Brandt, P. A. 2008. Music and the abstract mind. Journal of Music and Meaning 7. 1–15.Search in Google Scholar
Brandt, L. & P. A. Brandt. 2005. Making sense of a blend: A cognitive-semiotic approach to metaphor. Annual Review of Cognitive Linguistics 3(1). 216–249.10.1075/arcl.3.12braSearch in Google Scholar
Bresin, R. & S. Dahl. 2003. Experiments on gestures: Walking, running, and hitting. In D. Rocchesso & F. Fontana (eds.), The sounding object, 111–136. New York: Mondo Estremo.Search in Google Scholar
Brower, C. 2000. A cognitive theory of musical meaning. Journal of Music Theory 44(2). 323–379.10.2307/3090681Search in Google Scholar
Carlton, L. & R. A. R. Macdonald. 2004. An investigation of the effects of music on thematic apperception test (TAT) interpretations. Musicae Scientiae 7(1 Suppl). 9–30.10.1177/10298649040070S101Search in Google Scholar
Castelões, L. E. 2009. A catalogue of music onomatopoeia. International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music 40. 299–347.Search in Google Scholar
Clark, H. H. & S. E. Brennan. 1991. Grounding in communication. In L. Resnik, J. Levine, & S. Teasley (eds.), Perspectives on socially shared cognition, 127–149. Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association.10.1037/10096-006Search in Google Scholar
Clarke, E. F. 2005. Ways of listening: An ecological approach to the perception of musical meaning. New York: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195151947.001.0001Search in Google Scholar
Cohen, D. & E. Inbar. 2001. Musical imagery as related to schemata of emotional expression in music and the prosodic level of speech. In R. I. Godøy & H. Jørgensen (eds.), Musical imagery, 137–160. New York: Taylor and Francis.Search in Google Scholar
Coker, W. 1972. Music and meaning: A theoretical introduction to musical aesthetics. New York: Free Press.Search in Google Scholar
Cook, N. 1998a. Analyzing musical multimedia. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Cook, N. 1998b. Music: A very short introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/actrade/9780192853820.001.0001Search in Google Scholar
Cook, N. 2001. Theorizing musical meaning. Music Theory Spectrum 23(2). 170–195.10.4324/9781315090757-10Search in Google Scholar
Cooke, D. 1959. The language of music. London: Oxford University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Coulson, S. & T. Oakley. 2005. Blending and coded meaning: Literal and figurative meaning in cognitive semantics. Journal of Pragmatics 37. 1510–1536.10.1016/j.pragma.2004.09.010Search in Google Scholar
Cox, A. 1999. The metaphoric logic of musical motion and space. University of Oregon Unpublished dissertation.Search in Google Scholar
Cram, D. 2009. Language and music: The pragmatic turn. Language and History 52(1). 41–58.10.1179/175975309X451969Search in Google Scholar
Cross, I. 2011. The meanings of musical meanings: Comment on “Towards a neural basis of processing musical semantics” by Stefan Koelsch. Physics of Life Reviews 8(2). 116–119.10.1016/j.plrev.2011.05.009Search in Google Scholar
Davies, J. B. 1978. The psychology of music. London: Hutchinson.Search in Google Scholar
Davies, S. 1994. Musical meaning and expression. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.10.7591/9781501733987Search in Google Scholar
Fauconnier, G. & M. Turner. 2002. The way we think. New York: Basic Books.Search in Google Scholar
Fillmore, C. 1982. Frame semantics. In The Linguistic Society of Korea (ed.), Linguistics in the morning calm, Selected Papers from SICOL 1981, 111–137. Seoul: Hanshin Publishing Company.Search in Google Scholar
Fitch, W. T. & B. Gingras. 2011. Multiple varieties of musical meaning: Comment on “Towards a neural basis of processing musical semantics” by Stefan Koelsch. Physics of Life Reviews 8(2). 108–109.10.1016/j.plrev.2011.05.004Search in Google Scholar
Forceville, C. & E. Urios-Aparisi. 2009. Introduction. In C. Forceville & E. Urios-Aparisi (eds.), Multimodal metaphor, 1–17. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.10.1515/9783110215366Search in Google Scholar
Gibson, J. 1966. The senses considered as perceptual systems. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.Search in Google Scholar
Giordano, B. L., H. Egermann & R. Bresin. 2014. The production and perception of emotionally expressive walking sounds: Similarities between musical performance and everyday motor activity. PloS ONE 9(12). e115587.10.1371/journal.pone.0115587Search in Google Scholar
HaCohen, R. & N. Wagner. 1997. The communicative force of Wagner’s leitmotifs: Complementary relations between their connotations and denotations. Music Perception 14(4). 445–475.10.2307/40285733Search in Google Scholar
Hatten, R. S. 2004. Interpreting musical gestures, topics, and tropes: Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Hsu, H. & L. I. Su. 2014. Love in disguise: Incongruity between text and music in song. Journal of Pragmatics 62. 136–150.10.1016/j.pragma.2013.10.002Search in Google Scholar
Jackendoff, R. 1990. Semantic structures. Cambridge: MIT Press.Search in Google Scholar
Jackendoff, R. & F. Lerdahl. 2006. The capacity for music: What is it, and what’s special about it? Cognition 100(1). 33–72.10.1016/j.cognition.2005.11.005Search in Google Scholar
Johnson, M. 1987. The body in the mind: The bodily basis of meaning, imagination, and reason. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.10.7208/chicago/9780226177847.001.0001Search in Google Scholar
Juslin, P. N. & J. A. Sloboda. 2011. Handbook of music and emotion: Theory, research, applications. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Karbusicky, V. 1986. Grundriß der musikalischen semantik. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft.Search in Google Scholar
Kivy, P. 2002. Introduction to a philosophy of music. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Koelsch, S. 2013. Brain and music. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.Search in Google Scholar
Koelsch, S., E. Kasper, D. Sammler, K. Schulze, T. Gunter & A. D. Friederici. 2004. Music, language and meaning: Brain signatures of semantic processing. Nature Neuroscience 7(3). 302–307.10.1038/nn1197Search in Google Scholar
Kramer, L. 2011. Interpreting music. Berkeley: University of California Press.Search in Google Scholar
Kühl, O. 2008. Musical semantics. Berlin: Peter Lang.10.3726/978-3-0351-0271-0Search in Google Scholar
Lakoff, G. & M. Johnson. 1980. Metaphors we live by. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Search in Google Scholar
Landau, B., B. Dessalegn & A. Goldberg. 2010. Language and space: Momentary interactions. In V. Evans, P. Chilton (eds.), Language, cognition and space: The state of the art and new directions, 51–77. London: Equinox.Search in Google Scholar
Langacker, R. W. 1999. Grammar and conceptualization. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.10.1515/9783110800524Search in Google Scholar
Langacker, R. W. 2002. Concept, image, and symbol. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.10.1515/9783110857733Search in Google Scholar
Langer, S. K. 2011 [1948]. Philosophy in a new key: A study in the symbolism of reason, rite, and art. New York: Mentor Books.Search in Google Scholar
Larson, S. 2012. Musical forces: Motion, metaphor, and meaning in music. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Leman, M. 2007. Embodied music cognition and mediation technology. Cambridge: MIT Press.10.7551/mitpress/7476.001.0001Search in Google Scholar
Lerdahl, F. & R. Jackendoff. 1983. A generative theory of tonal music. Cambridge: MIT Press.Search in Google Scholar
Maes, P. 2016. Sensorymotor grounding of musical embodiment and the role of prediction: A review. Frontiers in Psychology 7. 264. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00308.Search in Google Scholar
Mandler, J. 1992. How to build a baby II: Conceptual primitives. Psychological Review 99(4). 587–604.10.1037/0033-295X.99.4.587Search in Google Scholar
Marshall, S. K. & A. J. Cohen. 1988. Effects of musical soundtracks on attitudes toward animated geometric figures. Music Perception 6(1). 95–112.10.2307/40285417Search in Google Scholar
Meyer, L. B. 2008 [1953]. Emotion and meaning in music. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.10.7208/chicago/9780226521374.001.0001Search in Google Scholar
Mičić, A. 2013. The influence of music on meaning construction: Approach by the conceptual blending theory. University of Niš Unpublished master’s thesis.Search in Google Scholar
Patel, A. D. 2007. Music, language, and the brain. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195123753.001.0001Search in Google Scholar
Peirce, C. S. 1958 [1931]. The collected papers of Charles Sanders Peirce. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Pérez-Sobrino, P. 2014. Meaning construction in verbomusical environments: Conceptual disintegration and metonymy. Journal of Pragmatics 70. 130–151.10.1016/j.pragma.2014.06.008Search in Google Scholar
Pérez-Sobrino, P. & N. Julich. 2014. Let’s talk music: A corpus-based account of musical motion. Metaphor and Symbol 29(4). 298–315.10.1080/10926488.2014.948800Search in Google Scholar
Raffman, D. 1993. Language, music, and mind. Cambridge: The MIT Press.10.7551/mitpress/4120.001.0001Search in Google Scholar
Ruiz de Mendoza Ibáñez, F. J. 2011. Metonymy and cognitive operations. In R. Benczes, A. Barcelona & F. J. Ruiz de Mendoza Ibáñez (eds.), Defining metonymy in cognitive linguistics: Towards a consensus view, 103–124. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.10.1075/hcp.28.06ruiSearch in Google Scholar
Rumelhart, D. 1980. Schemata: The building blocks of cognition. In R. Spiro, B. Bruce, & W. Brewer (eds.), Theoretical issues in reading comprehension: Perspectives from cognitive psychology, linguistics, artificial intelligence, and education. Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Search in Google Scholar
Saslaw, J. 1996. Forces, containers and paths. The role of body-derived image schemas in the conceptualization of music. Journal of Music Theory 40(2). 217–243.10.2307/843889Search in Google Scholar
Scruton, R. 2009. Understanding music: Philosophy and interpretation. London: Continuum Books.Search in Google Scholar
Searle, J. R. 1978. Literal meaning. Erkenntnis 13. 207–224.10.1017/CBO9780511609213.007Search in Google Scholar
Slevc, L. R. & A. D. Patel. 2011. Meaning in music and language: Three key differences: Comment on “Towards a neural basis of processing musical semantics” by Stefan Koelsch. Physics of Life Reviews 8(2). 110–111.10.1016/j.plrev.2011.05.003Search in Google Scholar
Sloboda, J. A. 2000. Musical performance and emotion: Issues and developments. In S. W. Yi (ed.), Music, mind and science. Seoul: Seoul National University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Sloboda, J. A. & P. N. Juslin. 2001. Psychological perspectives on music and emotion. In J. A. Sloboda & P. N. Juslin (eds.), Music and emotion: Theory and research, 71–104. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Steinbeis, N., S. Koelsch & J. A. Sloboda. 2006. The role of harmonic expectancy violations in musical emotions: Evidence from subjective, physiological, and neural responses. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 18(8). 1380–1393.10.1162/jocn.2006.18.8.1380Search in Google Scholar
Swain, J. P. 1997. Musical languages. New York: W.W. Norton and Company.Search in Google Scholar
Sweetser, E. 1991. From etymology to pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511620904Search in Google Scholar
Talmy, L. 1988. Force dynamics in language and cognition. Cognitive Science 12(1). 49–100.10.1207/s15516709cog1201_2Search in Google Scholar
Tan, S., A. J. Cohen, S. D. Lipscomb & R. A. Kendall (eds.). 2013. The psychology of music in multimedia. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199608157.001.0001Search in Google Scholar
Tarasti, E. 1979. Myth and music. The Hague: Walter de Gruyter.10.1515/9783110808759Search in Google Scholar
Turner, M. 2008. Frame blending. In R. Rossini Favretti (ed.), Frames, corpora, and knowledge representation, 13–32. Bologna: Bononia University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Watt, R. & R. Ash. 1998. A psychological investigation of meaning in music. Musicae Scientiae 2(1). 33–53.10.1177/102986499800200103Search in Google Scholar
Watt, R. & S. Quinn. 2007. Some robust higher-level percepts for music. Perception 36(12). 1834–1848.10.1068/p5663Search in Google Scholar
Zbikowski, L. 2002. Conceptualizing music. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195140231.001.0001Search in Google Scholar
©2016 by De Gruyter Mouton
