한국전통춤 연구를 위한 언어학적 접근은 어떻게 가능한가

Abstract

Based on an assumption that the form and the content are integrated as one instead of being separated, this study suggests a linguistic approach as the methodology to study a form with its own property. First of all, gestural syntax, to be more specific, refers to William C. Stokoe’s ‘semantic phonology,’ which this paper focuses on because it denies the ‘duality of patterns.’ The duality of patterns distinguishes phonology, the study of sound as the basic precondition of linguistics, from morphology, syntax and semantics that study linguistics in the context of meanings of words and phrases. In terms of gestural analysis at the word-level, Stokoe explains the syntactic relationship of each movement, centering on the ‘meaning’ of the use of each gesture. Based on this syntactic relationship, Stokoe then analyzes gestures that fall within the category of the word’s lower phoneme. Certainly linguistics systematizes the relationship between part and whole. However, the fundamental difficulty of taking a linguistic approach to dance is that there is no clear object for reference; in other words, there is an absence of lexicon. Stokoe’s denial of the duality of patterns allows for the possibility of a linguistic approach to dance by solving this problem – the absence of lexicon. At the same time, this also shows the limitation of the linguistic approach. In conclusion, the linguistic approach applied in this study has been downsized and modified to categorize the sub-levels on the basis of the original dance structure (Cross-stitched Seam Structure and the Tying and Untying Structure) in a systemic way. The result of this study needs to be further supplemented in the context of the facts regarding dance and the structural principles of Korean traditional music.