Contrast pairs in music instruction: on depiction and stance-taking

This dissertation investigates contrast pairs in music instruction as an instance of complex stance-taking. The multimodal character of stance-taking has received increased interest in different subdomains of linguistics in the course of the last decades. One aspect understudied so far relates to the sequential unfolding and multimodal composition of complex stance meanings. 

The research gap is addressed based on 33 hours of video data from two musical instructional settings: orchestra rehearsals and string quartet master classes. In these multi-party contexts, instructors’ stance expressions structure the interaction and serve as feedback on the musicians’ performance. Feedback is often given in the form of a direct contrast between an undesired and a desired performance—so-called contrast pairs. These pairs frequently comprise multimodal depictions, with instructors using vocalizations, gestures, and facial expressions to model desired or undesired playing, thereby conveying their stance.

Situated at the crossroads of Cognitive Linguistics and interaction analysis, the study has two aims: to work towards an integrated account of contrast pairs as an instructional device and to unravel the emergence of complex stances. These research aims are addressed in four analytical chapters. 

The first chapter examines 1028 cases of contrast pairs in orchestra rehearsals. Dividing the build-up of contrast pairs into three analytical levels, different sequential and multimodal patterns are discussed, along with the emergence of complex stances in their temporal unfolding. Second, temporally dense instructions, coined as compressed contrast pairs, are scrutinized. In these cases, conductors express both undesired and desired aspects of performance simultaneously in speech and gesture. What might appear as a semantic mismatch between speech and gesture actually involves two stance acts from a single viewpoint being performed simultaneously. This striking phenomenon showcases a functional relation between semiotic resources scarcely treated so far. The third chapter reflects on findings from the previous chapters using data from string quartet master classes. Despite differences in participant constellations, ensemble level, and technical affordances, core aspects of contrastive instruction remain consistent. This chapter also explores collaborative stance construal in instruction. The fourth case study zooms in on mocking depictions in both corpora. Exaggeration and playful mockery are often used to highlight undesired aspects of performance in a caricature-like way. The analysis unravels how instructors construe complex stances through playful mockery. Beyond previously observed parodies of musicians’ performances, instructors creatively assume various viewpoints with different functions for their stance-taking process.

In sum, this dissertation provides an integrated empirical look at contrast pairs in music instruction in two different settings. Combining multimodal cognitive and interactional methods for analyzing face-to-face interaction allows for the examination of complex composite stances from various perspectives and to shed light on the multimodal construal of composite and complex stance meanings in their temporal and interactional emergence.