Music, Language, and What Falls in Between

Author(s): Lawrence M. Zbikowski

Source: Ethnomusicology, Vol. 56, No. 1 (Winter 2012), pp. 125-131
Published by: University of Illinois Press on behalf of Society for Ethnomusicology
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Vol. 56, No. 1 Ethnomusicology Winter 2012

Music, Language,
and What Falls in Between
Lawrence M. Zbikowski  / University of Chicago,
Department of Music

T he story that Francesca Lawson tells about shuochang in both her essay and
her recent book (Lawson 2011) is a fascinating one, not least because the
genre presses against the boundary between speech and music. Lawson uses
this pressure as an opportunity to explore recent work on language and music
by Ani Patel (Patel 2008) and to engage with the larger issue of the relationship
between ethnomusicology and the empirical sciences brought into prominence
by Judith Becker’s recent publications (Becker 2004, 2009a, 2009b; Penman and
Becker 2009). Her essay concludes with the proposal that there is much to be
gained by combining empirical and humanistic methodologies, and that by
doing so scholars may be able to achieve a synoptic view on human knowledge
that E. O. Wilson called “consilience.”
My own research over the past couple of decades has involved applying
recent work in cognitive science (especially that done by cognitive linguists
and cognitive psychologists) to various problems confronted by music scholars,
including the problem of the relationship between music and language. I am,
in consequence, quite sympathetic to the approach to language and music
that Lawson develops in her research. In what follows, however, I would like
to argue for a fundamental change in our conception of the communicative
resources offered by language and music. This change has broad applicability to
genres such as shuochang and points the way to a methodological perspective
that has profound implications for the empirical study of musical practice.

Language and Music in Human Cultures

Over the past ten years or so I have been involved with a project whose
aim is to develop a cognitive grammar of music. The notion of such a gram-

© 2012 by the Society for Ethnomusicology

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126   Ethnomusicology, Winter 2012

mar draws on work done by cognitive linguists like Ron Langacker, George
Lakoff, Bill Croft, Adele Goldberg, and Len Talmy since the mid 1980s. Among
cognitive linguists it is commonly assumed that grammatical units combine
form and function—syntax and semantics are, in consequence, not separate
domains, but points along a continuum. This has led to the development of
what has come to be called construction grammar (Croft and Cruse 2004:
chapter 10), in which the grammar of a language is organized around construc-
tions: “stored pairings of form and function, including morphemes, words,
idioms, partially lexically filled and fully general linguistic patterns” (Goldberg
2003:219).
My primary formation is as a music theorist, and in general music theorists
think they have a fairly good idea of the formal structures which are used to
organize musical utterances, at least to the extent that they can characterize
these structures for a particular repertoire and teach students how to form
musical utterances that conform with the traditions of that repertoire. What
is less clear—and what is not really a part of the tradition of music theory—is
the function that would be paired with these forms. The project of developing
a cognitive grammar of music, organized around grammatical constructions
which pair form and function, must thus confront at its outset a fundamental
question: What function can we ascribe to musical utterances? Another way to
put this question is to link it with a similarly fundamental question: Why has
every human culture of which we have knowledge developed both language
and music?1
In thinking about the latter question I have been influenced by the work
of the developmental psychologist Michael Tomasello, who situates the emer-
gence of language in our species within the broader development of human
culture. In Tomasello’s view, the primary function of language is to direct the
attention of another person to objects or events within a shared referential
frame (1999: chapter 5). Music, for its part, is not particularly good at direct-
ing the attention of another person to objects or concepts within a shared
referential frame. What music is good at, however, is at doing the kind of
thing illustrated by the end of the clapper introduction to Wu Song Kills a
Tiger (Lawson’s Figure 2). Having set up a vigorous aural environment around
the interplay of the two clappers (for which the regular quarter-note pulse of
the jiezibar serves as an anchor) the performer returns (in measure 15) to the
opening motifs and then slows down just prior to the entrance of the voice.
The musical materials of the introduction thus set out a brief process which
begins, grows in intensity, is interrupted (by means of the sparse attacks at the
end of measure 14), starts anew, and then moves into another (and slower)
phase. Together, these provide an analog for the process of having one’s at-
tention commanded (as the listener’s attention is grabbed by the density of

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 Zbikowski: Music, Language, and What Falls Between   127

attacks beginning at the end of measure 5 and the rhythmic complexity of the
measures that follow), brought into clearer focus (as the opening material,
which might have been heard with only half an ear by an inattentive listener,
returns in measure 15), and then directed toward a new process (the unfolding
of the performer’s tale). Although this introduction is, in certain respects, a
rather minimal example (using only percussion instruments and being quite
brief), it illustrates what I believe is the primary function of music within hu-
man culture: to represent through patterned sound various dynamic processes
that are common in human experience. Chief among these dynamic processes
are those associated with various psychological states (such as the focusing of
attention which might be correlated with the introduction to Wu Song Kills
a Tiger, or with the waxing and waning of emotions) and the movements of
bodies—including our own—through space.
Before going further, I should emphasize that these ideas about the func-
tion of language and music in human cultures are focused on the primary
function of each. Clearly, language and music have other functions within
human culture, oftentimes associated with the expression of utterances of
great complexity. That said, I would like to propose that these more complex
utterances are in all cases grounded in the primary functions I have set out.
The potential for sequences of musical sounds to serve as analogs for dy-
namic processes which might be almost wholly soundless (such as a focusing of
the attention, the flight of a distant bird through the air, or a leaf fluttering to the
ground) points to a form of reference markedly different from that of language,
one associated with the type of signs C. S. Peirce called icons. Although Peirce’s
characterization of the icon was more than a little complicated, in the main
the icon needed to capture the essential features of the object to which it made
reference. In some formulations Peirce characterized this function in terms of
a similarity between the icon and the object (Peirce 1960, Volume 2:157), but
it is more productive to conceive of the relationship as analogical.2 In the case
of similarity, both attributes and relations are shared: for instance, a pencil and
a pen are similar to each other in appearance and in function, although the
kind of marks each makes on a writing surface (permanent or impermanent;
of relatively consistent coloration or subject to gradation) are different. In the
case of analogy, only relations need be shared: a finger is analogous to a pen
in that it is an approximately cylindrical structure that can be used to trace
characters on a writing surface; unlike a pen or pencil, however, the finger
leaves no discernible marks on the writing surface and its “cylinder” is firmly
attached to the larger structure of the hand. In the case of analogical reference,
then, structural relationships must be shared between the token and what it
represents: if we understand the sequence of musical materials that make up
the introduction to Wu Song Kills a Tiger to make reference to the dynamic

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128   Ethnomusicology, Winter 2012

process of focusing the attention, it is because we can discern structural re-

lationships between the two. Language, by contrast, relies almost exclusively
on symbolic reference, in which the relationship between the token and the
thing it represents is completely arbitrary (Deacon 1997: chapter 3). The form
symbolic tokens take is thus virtually unlimited—they can be as simple or as
complex as we like—but they can be thoroughly opaque to those unfamiliar
with the system of signs of which they are a part (Deacon 2003:119).
In summary, then, I wish to argue that language and music have different
functions in human cultures, and that these functions are supported by dif-
ferent forms of reference. The symbolic tokens of language make it possible
to direct the attention of another person to objects or events within a shared
referential frame. The analogical tokens of music make it possible to represent,
through sequences of patterned sound, dynamic phenomena which range
from inner psychological processes to the trajectory of bodies through space
to the steps of a dance (Zbikowski 2008, 2011). Finally, these different forms
of reference—supporting the different functions of language and music—will
lead to grammars that are markedly different from one another in the forms
they take, the meanings to which they give rise, and the specific cognitive
capacities they engage.
I realize that the perspective on grammar that I have outlined is an unfa-
miliar one: our typical view of grammar is of a systematic and orderly if not
necessarily exciting prerequisite for communication. The approach that I am
advocating, however, sees grammar as a consequence of, rather than a precon-
dition for, communication. As the linguist Ron Langacker has observed, “Put-
ting together novel expressions is something that speakers do, not grammars.
It is a problem-solving activity that demands a constructive effort and occurs
when linguistic convention is put to use in specific circumstances” (1987:65).
I recognize that not all who make music are concerned with putting together
novel expressions—there are any number of performance traditions, bounded
by ritual practice or aesthetic conceit, in which novelty is the last thing that is
wanted—but for those who are, the musical utterances that are produced (or
written down, or imagined) will reflect how musicians make use of conven-
tions to solve the expressive problems with which they are confronted.
To the best of our knowledge, language and music are among the things
that are unique to humans. It follows, then, that the solutions to the problems
of creating linguistic or musical expressions, originating as they do with a
single species, will exhibit broad commonalities of strategy and design, and
share certain features. There is, for instance, empirical evidence that speech,
through the shaping forces of prosody, makes use of analogical reference (Shin-
tel, Nusbaum, and Okrent 2006). There is also research that suggests that music
can make use of symbolic reference (Boiles 1967). And, as Patel has shown

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 Zbikowski: Music, Language, and What Falls Between   129

(2008), language and music share resources at the level of cognitive and neural
systems. I would argue, however, that the design principles of language and
music—principles reflected in their respective grammars—address different
challenges raised by the complex social systems that mark human cultures.
Language makes possible the cooperative behavior that distinguishes human
interactions from those of other primates (Carpenter, Call, et al. 2005; Toma-
sello 2008: chapter 6, 2009). Although there is evidence that musical practices
can enhance cooperative behavior (Kirschner and Tomasello 2009, 2010), they
are less well adapted to setting out the framework of shared intentionality
basic to cooperation. Music, through providing sonic analogs for emotional
and psychological processes, provides an ideal means of sharing attitudes and
feelings among the members of a group; language can certainly do this as well
(Tomasello 2008: chapter 3), but without the immediacy and potential for
corporeal engagement of music.
Given the differences between language and music that I have described,
what are we to make of a genre such as shuochang, which seems to fall in
between? I would like to suggest that we regard such a genre as an example
of what Nicholas Cook calls an “instance of multimedia” (IMM; Cook 1998),
with music representing one medium and language the other. In some cases,
music, organized around sonic analogs for dynamic processes, will dominate
the IMM; in other cases, language—and the dense system of reference made
possible by its symbolic systems—will take over. And there will also be cases
of IMMs involving language and music in which the symbolic reference of
language is no longer functional (as in the case of songs in Twi sung by speak-
ers of Siwu or Ewe; see Agawu 1988:84–85, 1995:10) or absent (as when words
are replaced by nonsense syllables); in cases such as these the sense that two
media are operational will be attenuated, and the utterances may come to be
regarded as purely musical.

The Challenges of Empirical Research

As might be gathered from the wide range of sources on which I have
drawn for my characterization of the communicative resources offered by
music and language, I regard the issues raised by genres such as shuochang to
be profound and endlessly stimulating. I also believe that they are not issues
into which our present empirical methodologies can give us much insight. Put
another way, I do not think that we are quite at the point where anything close
to consilience is possible. That said, I believe that there is enormous promise
in cooperative ventures between scholars of the humanities and researchers in
the sciences. What is wanted, however, are clearer formulations of the problems
we wish to study, openness to the traditions of inquiry of our respective disci-

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130   Ethnomusicology, Winter 2012

plines, and humility about what sort of results we might achieve. As suggested
by the example of shuochang, what is most interesting is not simply music or
language, or research programs guided by the humanities or the sciences, but
what falls in between.

Notes
1. I am quite aware of the problems associated with defining music, something with which
I dealt in some detail in Zbikowski (2002: chapter 5). For the present purposes, I shall adopt the
view that music is a mode of human communication that has as one of its distinguishing features
the use of patterned non-linguistic sound.
2. For a research review that contrasts similarity and analogy, see Gentner and Markman
(1997). As they acknowledge, similiarity and analogy are perhaps best viewed as points along a
continuum, although they also make a strong argument for ways to distinguish between judgments
guided by these two cognitive strategies.

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