The Dance-Language Conflict | Structure and Function of Language

True language finds its use as a widely and objectively understood form of communication that exists within a group of people, developed and defined out of a need to understand and be understood. So, could one not argue that dance is a language communicated and understood by the dance community? Due to its lack of objective understanding, this cannot be true. The way we put words together in language, compared to how we put movement together in dance, is much more strictly shaped by rules. Grammar, syntax, and punctuation, for example, are necessary functions of language that allow it to make sense. Dance composition lacks this clear of a structure, and it is almost as if surprise - breakaway from predictability achieved by doing what isn't expected - is rewarded. If in dance, separate movements had agreed-upon meanings, and you could arrange them in the same way that words make sentences, dance could be incredibly objective, and there would be no question of its meaning except in reference to metaphor or larger analogies like those that exist in poetry or other ambiguous uses of language. But even poetry is not language - it uses language, just like dance uses movement.

Denotation is also a major component of true language. This concept refers to the relationship between what we see and what we decide to call it, as nothing has a name by nature. Denotation does not exist in contemporary dance, as not every movement has a name, and certainly does not have an assigned primary meaning. True language also relies heavily on connotation, that is, the personal feeling evoked by a given word. In dance, this is comparable to the audience's visceral reaction when watching a performance. However, dance cannot be called a "language" because of its ability to communicate through connotation alone.

Lastly, I turn to linguistics, the scientific study of language, to point out two more key characteristics of language. The first is reflexivity, which is a language's ability to describe itself. We describe, critique, and analyze the English language by using the English language. We do not do the same with dance. A language must also be able to discuss beyond the here and now - this is called displacement. Though dance may certainly try to reference the past or the future, its lack of tense indicators inevitably places it in the present. Dance's inability to clearly express displacement in time is not a shortcoming of the art form, though it would be for any other communicative system labeling itself as language. The beauty of dance exists in its ephemerality, in its lived moments that cannot be adequately described after they have passed.

Put simply, dance and language are different because they serve different communicative purposes. Language has the advantage of specificity, while dance has the advantage of kinesthetic understanding of emotion. This is why we must not try to condense the complexity of dance into something that it is not: a language, which requires codes, symbols, and objective understanding.