Dr. Francesca Lawson presented her research on musicality in the interdisciplinary humanities as this year’s PA Christensen Lecturer.
PROVO, Utah (Mar. 5, 2020)—Dr. Francesca Lawson, professor of interdisciplinary humanities, was recently awarded the P.A. Christensen Lectureship and presented on her studies on musicality and language. This lecture series was started in 1977 to honor long-time English professor Dr. Parley A. Christensen and is meant to honor faculty in the field of literary and intercultural studies.
Lawson’s presentation explored how music and language are interconnected and sought to apply that connection to a Chinese comedy performance tradition called Xiangsheng.
First, she explained how this research stemmed from the questions, “As cognitive domains, how are music and language related? And how might that knowledge aid research in the humanities?” To answer these questions, Lawson primarily focused on exploring the concept of musicality, which she defined as “a biological process that undergirds our ability to speak and sing.”
She argues that “musicality is one of the most misunderstood aspects of communication” and that it is constantly operating in our lives as we communicate with each other. This is especially evident in Xiangsheng, which is a comedic dialogue between two performers.
During the second bout analyzed in the Xiangsheng performance, Lawson found statistically significant results that showed how all three performing agents—the two performers and the audience—approximated each other’s pitches as they responded to one another during the course of the performance. From this study, Lawson concluded that “pitch approximation appeared to be determined by a high level of emotional engagement or attitudinal alignment”
Musicality has been at the heart of Lawson’s research in interdisciplinary humanities and has prompted her to ask questions about “the visual, auditory, narrative, and kinesthetic aspects of mother infant communication,” “emotional engagement in different art forms,” “reader responses to literature and visual art,” and even “AI research.”
Lawson concluded, “I hope these questions inspire us to contemplate the richness of our musicality as the basis of human communication and its considerable potential for creating meaningful and enduring connections.”
—Heather Bergeson (English, ’21)