Emotional Stance Research Articles

“Ye Bu Shi (Shuo) Bu + Partial Repetition of the Prior Turn” at the Second Assessment Position

This research adopts conversation analysis as its research methodology and selects daily telephone conversations as the research objects. Finding that “ye bu shi (shuo) bu + partial repetition of the prior turn” at the second assessment position is a kind of conversational practice used by communicators in Chinese daily conversation to start a turn of which the stance conflicting with that of another speaker. The conventional practice shows that the speaker responding to the initial assessment not only maintains the alignment of the initiator’s structure, but also expresses the disaffiliative stance about the referent in the assessment sequence. Compared with the direct expression of disacceptance or dissatisfaction with the evaluation object, the speaker of “ye bu shi (shuo) bu+ partial repetition of the prior turn” not only euphemistically shows his emotional stance, but also maintains the harmonious interpersonal relationship between the two parties.

Recognising interdisciplinary implications of the affective filter

Linguistic education, like practically any other form of education, is strongly determined by affect. Although the entire “story” is far more complex, we might summarise it by saying that if students and teachers find themselves in emotionally convenient circumstances, linguistic progress is easily noticeable, whereas in situations when either of them are experiencing negative feelings or emotions, linguistic efforts are likely to prove simply futile. As implied by the well-known concept of the affective filter, negative emotions – be it fear, anxiety, discomfort and such – act an invisible wall blocking cognition and disable linguistic education. Hence, the teachers’ and – predominantly – the students’ affect either aids or hinders education and it does so in a less or more concealed fashion. On the level of terminology, too, the presence and salience of affect is either explicit or implicit. The former is the case with the said notion of affective filter and others such as speech anxiety, emotional intelligence, willingness to communicate, everyday stressors, etc. The latter is even more extensive, although it tends to be overlooked or disregarded, which can be exemplified by such linguistic concepts as, for example, (a) fossilization, which is mostly defined in cognitive terms and relates to that part of language users’ competence which has become fixed and may fall subject to stagnation – but which results from our natural need of comfort and of social recognition; or even such a traditional term as (b) language performance, which is contrasted against language competence and also viewed through a predominantly cognitive prism – but which, too, is subject to our emotional stance and individual invariably-unstable and internally influential feelings.

Other-Repetition to Convey and Conceal the Stance of Institutional Participants in Chinese Criminal Trials

Based on the examination of 49 Chinese criminal trials transcribed from the audio-visual recordings on the ‘China Court Trial Online’ website (https://tingshen.court.gov.cn/), the institutional participants–prosecutors, defence lawyers, and judges–are found to frequently repeat defendants’ responses (‘other-repetition’), after a question–answer adjacency pair. Other-repetition has been described as a resource for showing participation and familiarity (Tannen 2007), initiating repair and registering receipt (Schegloff 1997), and displaying understanding and emotional stance (Svennevig 2004). However, other-repetition in trial discourse has not been thoroughly researched. Therefore, this article aims to further examine this salient institutional linguistic feature in order to explore stance construction as a third turn. It is common to associate certain prosodic features of a repetition with the stance of the speaker. However, prosody may not be a reliable cue for stance interpretation in Chinese courtrooms, as institutional participants might conceal their stance during a repetition. Though they are more explicit in displaying their stance with turn-initial repeats, the distinction between the prosody of repeats for different functions is not categorical. It is found that defendants are sensitive to the lexicogrammar and multimodal cues for stance interpretation.

A sensemaking system for grouping and suggesting stories from multiple affective viewpoints in museums

ABSTRACT This article presents an affective-based sensemaking system for grouping and suggesting stories created by the users about the cultural artefacts in a museum. By relying on the commonsense reasoning framework, the system exploits the spatial structure of the Plutchik’s “wheel of emotions” to organize the stories according to their extracted emotions. The process of emotion extraction, reasoning, and suggestion is triggered by an app, called GAMGame, and integrated with the sensemaking engine. Following the framework of Citizen Curation, the system allows classifying and suggesting stories encompassing cultural items able to evoke not only the very same emotions of already experienced or preferred museum objects but also novel items sharing different emotional stances and, therefore, able to break the filter bubble effect and open the users’ view toward more inclusive and empathy-based interpretations of cultural content. The system has been designed tested, in the context of the H2020EU SPICE project (Social cohesion, Participation, and Inclusion through Cultural Engagement), in cooperation with the community of the d/Deaf and on the collection of the Gallery of Modern Art (GAM) in Turin. We describe the user-centered design process of the web app and of its components and we report the results concerning the effectiveness of the diversity-seeking, affective-driven, recommendations of stories.

How do native and non-native speakers recognize emotions in the instructor’s voice in educational videos? Exploring the first step of the cognitive-affective model of e-learning for international learners

The emotional stance of the instructor in an educational video can influence the learning process. For this reason, we checked the first link of the cognitive-affective model of e-learning, namely, whether learners can recognize emotions that an instructor expresses only with their voice. Since English is not the native language for many learners and most instructional videos are produced in English, we tested for possible differences in emotion recognition between native and non-native speakers. We focused on positive emotions typically conveyed in such videos — enthusiasm and calmness. Native and non-native English speakers watched 12 short video clips about wood as a building material spoken by an instructor in different emotional tones — five videos expressed enthusiasm, five calmness, one boredom and one frustration. Participants rated the extent to which they thought the narrator expressed a specific emotion, the valence and activation level of the narration and solved an English vocabulary test. Both native and non-native speakers recognized the correct emotions (except for frustration), demonstrating the power of voice prosody to convey emotion in a multimedia learning scenario. Native speakers rated the enthusiastic videos more positively than non-native speakers, indicating a subtle difference in the way the two groups perceive emotions expressed through voice.

“A tour guide losing her cool”

Abstract This article seeks to explore the mechanisms of holding others accountable for a perceived deviation from moral order through public complaints on Chinese social media as well as the influences of emotional stance and social positioning when people perceive a breach of the moral order and try to restore it. Our data consists of a transcribed complaint narrative (CN) widely deemed morally transgressive, and a corpus of web-based news comments (WNC), displaying public counter-offensive actions to the CN. A contextualized discourse analysis reveals that abundant context-spanning impoliteness formulae in WNC are strategies for constructing collective identities and magnifying the condemnation of immorality. In the process of moral order appeal, using various emotive impoliteness formulae appear to be a situated norm.

Emotional Conducts: A Phenomenological Account

ABSTRACT Drawing on Merleau-Ponty, I contend that emotions should be regarded as emerging from our “vital communication” with the solicitations of our physical and social surroundings. My intention is to present emotions as unitary phenomena arising from an incessant flow of motivations that can be later articulated in terms of reasons (in cognitive theories of emotions) or in terms of causes (in affective neuroscience). I further suggest that emotions should be considered a specific kind of conducts, since the way in which a person acts out her emotions shapes their content, regulates their intensity and transforms the amorphous flow of felt motivations into a recognizable emotional stance for which she is held accountable. In conclusion, I put forward a series of arguments explaining why emotion tends toward its expression in conduct as if towards its completion.

Yrkeserfarenheter av våld och emotionella strategier

Experiences of violence and emotional strategies during everyday worklife: voices from staff at special youth homes
 During the 2000s, the National Board of Institutional Care (SiS) has reported an increase in violent incidents between staff and young people. This article focuses the staffs´ professional everyday life, especially descriptions of how they handle violence in their professional everyday life and what directions the violence takes. The staffs´ everyday work is often depicted on the basis of various dilemmas and tensions, which can affect how they maneuver in terms of how they deal with, and are affected by, violence during their professional working day. The purpose of this article is to illustrate how staff describe the violence they encounter in terms of form, direction and extent, including their own handling of the violence. The theoretical starting point regarding violence is taken from a relational perspective where context, situation, form and intention are important for how violence is understood. The staff’s work is understood with the help of both Hochschild’s and Bolton’s descriptions of emotional work, where emphasis is placed on the development that Bolton pointed out regarding the importance of colleagues regarding feeling-rules. Fifty-three semi-structured interviews were conducted with staff at three different secure units for adolescents in Sweden. The material was organized through a thematic analysis, yielding four themes placed under two headings; ‘A violent scene? A matter of definition’ and ‘Handling violence: strategies employed’. The results show how staff describe youth as the violent party and how they suppress their own emotions. Additionally, staff articulated their own use of violence toward youth and their emotional stance, describing an interpersonal shield that protected them from violence. The results underline the importance of raising questions about the nature of violence in secure units for adolescents and how staff handle such violence in their everyday work.

Social media analysis of Twitter tweets related to ASD in 2019–2020, with particular attention to COVID-19: topic modelling and sentiment analysis

BackgroundSocial media contains an overabundance of health information relating to people living with different type of diseases. Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a complex neurodevelopmental condition with lifelong impacts and reported trends have revealed a considerable increase in prevalence and incidence. Research had shown that the ASD community provides significant support to its members through Twitter, providing information about their values and perceptions through their use of words and emotional stance. Our purpose was to analyze all the messages posted on Twitter platform regarding ASD and analyze the topics covered within the tweets, to understand the attitude of the various people interested in the topic. In particular, we focused on the discussion of ASD and COVID-19.MethodsThe data collection process was based on the search for tweets through hashtags and keywords. After bots screening, the NMF (Non-Negative Matrix Factorization) method was used for topic modeling because it produces more coherent topics compared to other solutions. Sentiment scores were calculated using AFiNN for each tweet to represent its negative to positive emotion.ResultsFrom the 2.458.929 tweets produced in 2020, 691.582 users were extracted (188 bots which generated 59.104 tweets), while from the 2.393.236 total tweets from 2019, the number of identified users was 684.032 (230 bots which generated 50.057 tweets). The total number of COVID-ASD tweets is only a small part of the total dataset. Often, the negative sentiment identified in the sentiment analysis referred to anger towards COVID-19 and its management, while the positive sentiment reflected the necessity to provide constant support to people with ASD.ConclusionsSocial media contributes to a great discussion on topics related to autism, especially with regards to focus on family, community, and therapies. The COVID-19 pandemic increased the use of social media, especially during the lockdown period. It is important to help develop and distribute appropriate, evidence-based ASD-related information.

DEGARI 2.0: A diversity-seeking, explainable, and affective art recommender for social inclusion

We present DEGARI 2.0 (Dynamic Emotion Generator And ReclassIfier): an explainable, affective-based, art recommender relying on the commonsense reasoning framework TCL and exploiting an ontological model formalizing the Plutchik’s theory of emotions. The main novelty of this system relies on the development of diversity-seeking affective recommendations obtained by exploiting the spatial structure of the Plutchik’s ‘wheel of emotion’. In particular, such development allows to classify and to suggest, to museum users, cultural items able to evoke not only the very same emotions of already experienced or preferred objects (e.g. within a museum exhibition), but also novel items sharing different emotional stances. The system’s goal, therefore, is to break the filter bubble effect and open the users’ view towards more inclusive and empathy-based interpretations of cultural content. The system has been tested, in the context of the EU H2020 SPICE project, on the community of deaf people and on the collection of the GAM Museum of Turin. We report the results and the lessons learnt concerning both the acceptability and the perceived explainability of the received diversity-seeking recommendations.

“As Tunisian I feel ashamed by this disgusting presenter”: Collective face threat and identity positioning on Facebook

In this paper, I draw on identity theories as developed within social psychology in general, and Positioning Theory in particular, to investigate the discursive strategies that Tunisian Facebookers use to counter collective face threat, and how they position themselves vis-à-vis in-group and out-group members. To categorize the strategies, a post-data collection taxonomy was developed, which allowed for the quantitative and qualitative analysis of the comments. Wherever appropriate, the analysis also considered the range of multimodal semiotic means the commentators used to communicate their emotional stances. Results show that Tunisian Facebook users positioned themselves in multiple ways following face threat, and that their perceptions of their and others’ rights and duties resulted in various discursive positioning moves. Results also show that Tunisian Facebookers used linguistic as well as multimodal resources to convey their emotions. Previous intracultural findings about lexemic and interactional aspects of Tunisian face seem to be relevant for intercultural digital communication involving Tunisians as findings of this study illustrate the influence of cultural values on online face concerns and show the importance of considering the wider offline context when accounting for digital discursive practices.

ВЕРБАЛЬНИЙ, СОЦІО- ТА БІОГЕНЕТИЧНИЙ КОДИ ЕКСТЕРІОРИЗАЦІЇ ЕМОЦІЙ: АФЕКТИВНО-ДИСКУРСИВНИЙ ПІДХІД

The article elucidates modern trends in humanities and social studies to encompass affective corporeality in the emotional conceptual sphere of the person, the structure of her social identity, and into processes of communal sense-making. But despite the prominence of the turn to affectivity which is putatively at the core of many social processes, discourse must be equally addressed to outline the epistemic role of emotional experiences. Therefore, the goal of the paper is to highlight the need for integrating the findings of both discourse and affect studies which will significantly benefit emotiology in unveiling the processes of social construction of reality. To meet the goal the following objectives are set: 1) to outline the semiotic nature and pragmatic potential of affect somatic concomitants; 2) to analyze the unity of social and biogenetic codes of affect and emotion externalization; 3) to provide an overarching classification of verbal means for affect and emotion manifestation; 4) to highlight the role of cognized corporeality of emotions; 5) to present the prospects of an integral approach to the study of affective-discursive sense-making. The methodology of the study involves general-scientific methods of analysis, synthesis, comparing, and deduction. Results. Current emotion theories in linguistics, philosophy, and psychology exhibit a general tendency towards the integration of embodied emotional and sensual experience in epistemic and sense-making practices of social interaction. An emotional pool proves indispensable from the pool of knowledge and involves shared experience of affective and emotional responses, their conventionalized and sedimented externalization, the library of verbal and nonverbal means of their manifestation, regulation, negotiation, and channeling. Consequently, the unison of scholarly claims resides in the recognition of both biological and social aspects of affectivity, verbal expression and/or representation of which elicits recognition and an embodied response in the co-emoter. The commonality of affective interaction is claimed formative in constructing worldviews and beliefs. Therefore, the pragmatic potential of verbal and nonverbal affectivediscursive practices favours efficient social affiliation and communal construction of reality simultaneously setting social boundaries within a society. Recurring and reproducing scenarios of affective interaction are based on the system of conventional behavioural and linguistic signs which foster meaning-making practices. The library of somatic signs can be accessed via biogenetic modality, modality on trigger, and modality on learning. This code is grounded in innate physiological responses and unequivocally relates to corresponding situations through stereotypical behavioral patterns. Modality on learning bridges biogenetic and alphabetic codes as the nativism of both anchors semantic correlation, with the difference that the latter system of signs is adopted only conventionally. A discursive account of emotional interaction has resulted in an integral classification of verbal means for affect and emotion externalization that equally involve verbal and nonverbal modes. Emotion triggers, emotional situations, psycho-physiological experiences, state and action tendencies are included in the comprehensive inventory of language means for emotion manifestation. Expressive and descriptive methods can also serve as means of invoking emotional response in other social members in the form of embodied simulations. This is engendered by the process of emotion knowledge acquisition which occurs both through embodiment and narrative practices. The knowledge of social and cultural aspects of one’s emotional stance involves a multilateral account of subjective experience shared by other members of a culture. Thus, emotional alignment is achieved in social acts through manifold resources of language that proves affective-discursive practices defining in sense-making and the approach seminal in further studies of social processes.

Does the emotional stance of human and virtual instructors in instructional videos affect learning processes and outcomes?

This study investigates the positivity principle – the idea that people respond more positively and learn better from an instructor who displays positive emotion than from an instructor who displays negative emotion – and the equivalence hypothesis – the idea that learners respond similarly to the emotional tone displayed by both human and virtual instructors. In this between-subjects design experiment, participants viewed one of eight instructional videos on binomial probability, varying in the emotion portrayed by the voice and gestures of an onscreen instructor and varying in whether the instructor was human or virtual. Participants either saw a positive instructor (happy or content) or a negative instructor (bored or frustrated) and that instructor was either human or virtual. In support of the positivity principle, participants recognized the positive or negative emotional tone of the instructor, felt a similar emotion to the instructor, and had more favorable social connection ratings for positive instructors. However, the positivity of the instructor did not impact how well participants performed on a delayed posttest. In support of the equivalence hypotheses, all of these effects were found for both human and virtual instructors. Overall, this study provided support for three of the four links in the positivity principle, and showed that the principle applied to both human and virtual instructors as per the equivalence hypothesis.

Am I trolling?: A CA-informed approach to Gangjing in a Chinese online forum

Because digital affordances of the Internet have provided spaces for linguistic creativity, a large number of popular terms derive from the Internet. Analyses of these forms serve as a lens through which essential aspects of social realities can be analyzed. This study focuses on the use of a trolling label Gangjing popularized in Chinese digital interaction. Collecting data from interactional threads in Baidu Post Bar, the CA-informed study investigates what communicative actions netizens perform in using the term and what responsive behaviors it triggers. Pragmatic notions such as identity construction and relational acts are adopted to interpret its use. Results show that Gangjing is used to show disagreements, delegitimize others as irrational participants, express negative emotional stances, and invite people for entertainment. Different responsive behaviors, including resisting, criticizing, mocking, attacking, and playing, are triggered. Overall, the creative trolling label can function as an interactional resource accomplishing interpersonal functions. By nuanced analyses of the dynamics of a popular reference term rooted in Chinese language and culture, the study adds to the current interactional approach to creative language use in online communication while providing new insight on interpretations of online trolling discourse.

Multimodal Practice for Mobilizing Response: The Case of Turn-Final Tu Vois 'You See' in French Talk-in-Interaction.

One of the most frequent verbal expressions that people use when interacting with each other in French is tu vois ‘you see’ (Cappeau, 2004). Drawing on interactional linguistics and multimodal analysis, we examine the interactional functioning of this verbal expression when occurring in turn-final position. Previous studies on tu vois ‘you see’ in this position document only its use for marking the end of an utterance or for turn-yielding. The following aspects have thus far remained unexplored: The interactional environment in which the construction occurs, how it is connected to the speaker’s embodied conduct, the way in which it contributes to mobilizing a response from the recipient, as well as the nature of this response. Our paper addresses these issues and shows that turn-final tu vois ‘you see’ is systematically produced with a final rising intonation and coupled with the speaker’s gaze directed to the recipient. This multimodal practice is recurrently deployed in turns conveying the speaker’s emotional stance, in turns performing a dispreferred action, like disagreeing, and in turns claiming insufficient knowledge. The response that is invited using this multimodal practice is distinctly tailored to each of these actions: an affiliative response, an aligning response, and a response addressing the prior speaker’s claim of insufficient knowledge from the recipient’s own point of view. By presenting an in-depth study of the action sequences in which tu vois ‘you see’ is employed, as well as of its multimodal packaging, this contribution highlights the prospective, i.e., response-mobilizing potential of this interactional resource and shows that its use entails sequential implications even when it accompanies actions that project only weakly a response from the recipient.

Instrumental and Hedonic Motives for Emotion Regulation in Musical Practice.

Emotion regulation literature often emphasizes that individuals regulate their emotions for hedonic reasons. However, there is increasing support for an instrumental approach to emotion regulation. This approach suggests that emotions are regulated if they are believed to be beneficial to the pursuit of personally relevant goals. When pursuing a long-term goal, an individual may forego immediate, hedonic emotional reward in order to maximize the instrumental benefits of emotions. The current study investigates emotion regulation behaviour in the context of musical practice. We examine whether musicians adopt specific, regulated emotional stances which support their goal orientation, and which are in line with their beliefs regarding the functional impact of emotions. Via an online questionnaire, 421 musicians reported their goal-orientation, meta-emotion beliefs, and affect-regulation strategies. Participants then completed a scale assessing specific emotions they would regulate in order to support their musical practice. Data were analysed using PCA, MANOVA, subgroup analysis and categorical regression. Musicians reported using affect-improvement strategies more often than affect-worsening strategies in order to influence how they felt during musical practice. Greater reported use of affect-worsening strategies was associated with stronger meta-emotion beliefs supporting the possible instrumental benefits of unpleasant emotions (F = 30.33; p < 0.01; = 0.06). Musicians who strongly endorsed this belief more strongly pursued mastery goals in contrast to enjoyment goals. In terms of specific targeted emotions, musicians generally sought to reduce unpleasant emotions, and increase pleasant, energizing emotions in order to support their musical practice. However, a subgroup of mastery- rather than enjoyment-oriented musicians may seek a mixed emotional state, increasing anger and nervousness in conjunction with a number of pleasant emotions (Wilks λ1,420 = 14.42; p < 0.01; = 0.50). Musicians who pursue expert musical skills may be motivated to experience emotions that combine the instrumental and hedonic benefits of emotions. Musicians who practice for enjoyment may prioritize emotions that maximize only the hedonic benefits. Future research should aim to identify the regulated emotional states that best support specific musical practice outcomes in an individual. It will also be important to understand on all levels, including music performance quality as well as health and well-being, the outcomes that may be associated with the use of affect-worsening strategies and unpleasant emotions. Research in this field may equip musicians with novel skills for better pursuit of their goals, and may help to maximize health and well-being in musical practice.

Successful Psychological Strategies of Experienced Chronic Fatigue Patients: A Qualitative Study.

Trying to care for patients with medically unexplained symptoms (MUS) can lead to frustration and disappointment for both patients and health care professionals alike. Learning positive ways to assist patients avoids professionals collapsing into therapeutic nihilism. We sought to understand how people with such symptoms can live well despite (or even because of) their condition. Chronic fatigue was chosen as the exemplar symptom. Participants were invited to join the research if they, themselves, considered they were living well with this symptom. One-on-one interviews using an appreciative enquiry approach were performed and thematic analysis undertaken. Twelve participants were interviewed before data saturation occurred. The emotional stance or relationship a participant had with, and towards, their illness was the primary determinant underlying their interpretation of “living well.” Five major themes of this meta-theme were identified: (1) engaging with elusiveness, (2) befriending uncertainty, (3) reflecting on self, (4) living creatively, and (5) moving in stillness. Encouraging patients who are struggling with MUS to consider how they emotionally engage with their illness via these 5 positive dynamics may lead to better health outcomes for patients and happier, more fulfilled health care professionals.

How Movements of a Non-Humanoid Robot Affect Emotional Perceptions and Trust

The way that we move often carries emotional meaning that the people with whom we interact are adept at detecting. Humans treat the movements of robots similarly, attributing the same emotions when the robots move in ways that are analogous to emotionally-charged human movements. However, this HRI work has primarily been done on humanoid or animal-shaped robots. In this paper, we examined whether this effect would hold when people observed the movements of a non-humanoid robot, Cozmo. Moreover, the attribution of emotional stance to another agent is key in the process of predicting the behavior of the other (Eivers AR et al. in Br J Dev Psychol 28:499–504, 2010). This process is laid bare in transactional scenarios where the predicted level of trust guides the humans behavior. The ultimatum game is a transactional framework that we have adapted to allow us to test in stages how humans predict and react to the behavior of the robot. We performed a study in which people played two rounds of the ultimatum game with a non-humanoid robot that moved in either a positive or negative manner. We found that in both rounds people in the Positive Movement condition rated Cozmo’s emotional valence as higher than those in the Negative Movement condition. In the second round, after Cozmo had responded to the first offers that the participants made, Cozmo’s bid response was a significant factor in the Positive Movement condition, in which participants whose first bids were rejected by Cozmo rated its emotional valence as lower than those whose bids were accepted by Cozmo. There was not an effect of movement on trust. We also ran a series of exploratory analyses to explore how various factors affected participants’ reasonings about Cozmo’s behavior, and found that unexpected, non-social behaviors (such as moving in a negative manner or rejecting a participant’s offer) lead to an increase in anthropomorphic behavior explanations.

Recognizing the emotional state of human and virtual instructors

Students' learning from an instructional video could be affected by the instructor's emotional stance during a lesson. A first step in investigating this emotional design hypothesis is to determine whether students perceive the emotions displayed by an instructor during an instructional video. Building on Russell’s (1980, 2003) model of core affect and the media equation theory (Reeves & Nass, 1996) this study investigated how well participants were able to perceive different emotions portrayed by a human and virtual instructor (i.e., animated pedagogical agent) in a video lecture on statistics. Participants were shown short video clips of either a human instructor or virtual instructor displaying four different emotions: happy, content, bored, and frustrated. The participants were asked to rate how well each video clip displayed each of those four emotions. Participants were able to recognize each of the emotions displayed by the instructor but were much better at distinguishing between positive (happy and content) and negative (bored and frustrated) emotions than between active (happy and frustrated) and passive (content and bored) emotions. Furthermore, participants were able to recognize the emotions of the instructor for both the human instructor and the animated agent. However, emotions that involved higher activity (happy and frustrated) were more easily recognized in a human instructor than an animated agent. This research shows that learners are aware of the emotions being portrayed by an instructor, both human and animated agent, and establishes the first link in the chain between how the emotional tone displayed by an instructor affects learning outcomes.

The Philosophy and Practice of Indian Classical Dance-Changes and Challenges with Digital Humanities

Traditionally, Indian dance forms were taught through the Guru-Shishya system, where the student stays at the abode of the Guru to develop a strong foundation in the field. This enabled the Guru to nurture the disciple and prepare them to become experts in the vocation alongside all the important values that go with any system of knowledge in ancient Indian tradition. The unique features of Gurukul were deep love, respect and mutual communion. There are significant changes in the current world, where digitization is an unavoidable trend. An objective of this paper is to identify the aspects that are ‘modified’ and sometimes, lost in the process of digitizing Indian Classical dance. It would not be of any help to fight natural evolution and dismiss growth but care has to be taken, not to cut asunder the very purpose of the creation of an art which is to restore righteousness in the world through an aesthetic medium. The spiritual role that it plays in the world, needless to add, is indeed as an agent to kindle peace and friendship between people, beyond all barriers. It would be helpful if the potential attributes that are in threat of getting submerged through digitization, are identified by researchers and artists. For example, during dance training, the pure dance technique and structure can become translated to a satisfying extent as the basic emotional stance is that of vigour. On the other hand, the intense involvement in the expressional mode, the devotional ascent and the one to one transmission during actual presence of teacher and taught in close proximity, seems amiss