Dialectical Variation in Contra Dance
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2008
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Swarthmore College. Dept. of Linguistics
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Thesis (B.A.)
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Abstract
Spoken language usually exhibits dialectical variation. Most of the variation is
phonological, with specific sounds being pronounced differently in different regions.
This is not, however, specific to speech; we find the same thing in contra dance. Contra
is composed of short figures comparable to phonemes, and the patterns of variation in
these figures suggest regional and social dialects. As with spoken dialects, the variation
is not large enough to keep people from different regions from being able to dance with
one another; regional differences tend to be largely alternate conventions about hand
placement as opposed to full body movement. Contra dance has other parallels with
natural language and this paper argues that linguistic methods are generally applicable.
Thirty two weekly or monthly dances and four dance festivals, mostly restricted to the
Eastern United States, were examined for this paper, providing data for isogloss maps
of the variant forms. From these maps one dialect, a north eastern one, is apparent
but the data suggests a dialect continuum for interpreting the variation over the rest
of the studied area.