Colloquium on English - Research Institute for Waldorf Education

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which the forms are continually being shaped and reshaped. To articulate
speech it is by no means enough to send the flow of breath through the
larynx and to release it as a sound out of the mouth. In fact, on its way
through the windpipe, throat and mouth to the outside, breath has to run
through a hollow passage formed like a relief - a kind of riverbed, the form
of which is changed by the muscles of the palate, the uvula, the tongue, the
jaw and lips, almost instantaneously, depending on the sound that will be
created. As the flow of air passes the lips, it not only carries the sound but
also a particular tendency to form according to the shape of the ‘riverbed’
just passed, and it impresses this into the air in front of the mouth. From
the inner relief of muscles outward sculptural forms of air are generated.
Rudolf Steiner, in 1924, was the first to point out these invisible
forms in the air that are created in front of the mouth of the speaker. The
Dresdener teacher, Johanna Zinke, followed up with decades of research
demonstrating that in fact every sound creates a characteristic and recurring
form in the air outside the mouth. To make these visible and to record
them photographically she initially used the natural condensation in cold
air. Later she worked with cigarette smoke that was inhaled before speaking.
Photos were also taken using a ‘Toepler-device’ and an interferometer.
A complete picture unfolded when the ‘air-sound forms’ were filmed with
a high-speed camera. Here it was observed how, within fractions of a second,
every form develops from the smallest beginnings, reaches a climax
and dissolves again, each with its own tempo and unmistakable gesture.
Every sound revealed itself as a flowing sculpture. Speech is in the first
place a form-generating, movement process. Dynamic shapes are built, some
of which float in the air for seconds after the corresponding sound-wave
has died away. At the same time the entire body of the speaker performs
movements corresponding to each sound, which are not perceivable to the
naked eye. This has been discovered by the young science of kinesics when
speaking persons were filmed with a high-speed camera and the individual
pictures were carefully analysed. It was seen that these fine movements occur
exactly synchronously with the act of speaking and involve all the muscles
of the body, from the head to the feet.
The Listener “Dances” to the Sounds
With great surprise kinesics found that the listener answers the perceived
speech with just the same fine movements as the speaker unconsciously
performs, also incorporating the whole body and with a delay of
only 40 to 50 milliseconds, precluding the possibility of conscious reaction.
Condon, the one responsible for this discovery, describes this astonishing
synchronicity of movements in the speaker and the listener as follows:
“Figuratively speaking it is as if the whole body of the listener was
dancing in precise and flowing accompaniment to the perceived speech.”
Even if you cannot establish a physical connection between both
processes, it is as if both speaker and listener are moving in a common
medium of rhythmic movement. And this applies only for speech sounds,