The Mimetic Hypothesis and Embodied Musical Meaning

Abstract

Research into the bodily basis of musical meaning has focused on conceptual metaphor and image schemata, but the processes whereby embodied experience becomes relevant to music conceptualization remains largely unexplained. This paper offers an account of music conceptualization that helps explain how embodied experience motivates and constrains the formation of basic musical meaning. The core of the “mimetic hypothesis” holds that 1) we understand sounds in comparison to sounds we have made ourselves, and that 2) this process of comparison involves tacit imitation, or mimetic participation, which in turn draws on the prior embodied experience of sound production. Evidence for the hypothesis comes from developmental and neuropsychological studies, and from speech imagery, motor imagery, and musical imagery studies. The embodied experience activated during mimetic participation motivates and constrains the cross-domain mappings on which so many musical concepts depend. For example, the metaphoric concept of musical verticality cannot be accounted for without acknowledging the role of mimetic participation. If this participation is as fundamental to musical experience as the hypothesis suggests, not only will it allow us to account for music's most fundamental concepts, but it will also help account for the affective features of musical experience and meaning. Furthermore, the proposed view of mimetic participation helps establish a physical grounding for theories of musical gesture, semiotics, music and gender, music and drama, aural skills pedagogy, music and society, music and dance, and music therapy.