Colloquium on English - Research Institute for Waldorf Education

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148 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,
not for noise or disjointed vowels, as repeated tests have proven. The spoken language, however, can be of any kind: Condon found that a two-day-old baby in the USA reacts to spoken Chinese with the same minute movements as to spoken American-English. From this we can see that heard speech is first registered by an unconscious physical response. Like a dancer this faculty in each of us places itself in the vibrant, streaming and sculpting motility of speech. We do this directly, without first consciously recognising and processing the sound - 0.04 of a second does not allow time for intellectual reflection or an emotional response! Speech Resounds through the Whole Person Here we are in the most profound, most elementary layer of speech, where it is pure movement. The very essence of speech arises out of movement. It is the nature of speech to transform the hard rigidity of a corner or edge into a flowing process of muscular movements and air-sound sculptures that continuously unfold from E to D to G and to E. This process of movement enters the muscles and limbs of the listener, so that the same process seizes them. Literally the whole person listens. Even the larynx of the listener continually joins in the speaking and singing of what the other speaks or sings. But this is just the first step in the process of listening. In the next phase of the process the movement changes from being purely muscular activity and enters the rhythmic system of heart and lung. There it causes, as every narrator can observe in his listeners, tension and easing of tension, acceleration and slowing down of the natural rhythms and these fine deviations now seize the soul as well and are experienced vividly. The physical movement changes into a soul-movement. From the realm of the unconscious, that resembles deep sleep, we enter the realm of dreamy, half-conscious feelings. Only at the third step does the movement reach the nerve-sense pole, the head, where it changes once again, this time into activity in the spiritual realm that enters the wakeful consciousness as an idea or imagination. In this conceptual sphere the concept edge becomes something firm and motionless, whereas in the physical event of sound shaping it has still been a pure movement, and on the soul level an animated emotion. As such, speech resounds through the whole person from below upwards and not vice versa: Nerves/Senses Spirtual Activity Understanding Fully Conscious Heart/Brain Emotional Activity Sensation Half Conscious Muscles Physical Movement Action Unconscious 149
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Research Project #9 Colloqu
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4 Title: Proceedings of the <strong
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6 Additional Articles: Recommended
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8 WHSRP Mission Statement Formed in
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10 MONDAY 13 OCTOBER 8:00 A.M. - -
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12 From the Left: Patricia Ryan and
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14 We left feeling that we had much
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16 Secondly, it discloses the world
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18 Student Response: In our lives t
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20 Benchmarks: Transition from Midd
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22 Thus the center of the red spira
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24 attention to the composition of
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26 “What have they been doing in
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28 more accurate than our senses, t
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30 and bring their free thinking to
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32 POETRY EXERCISE Mary uses this f
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34 novels Shane, The Adventures of
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36 Poetry is the path because it pr
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38 In the10 th grade, we begin to m
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40 Why do we teach literature? Some
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42 We always have to work with the
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44 The analytical process becomes a
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46 Keeping The Curriculum Timely by
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48 Steiner on the High School Liter
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50 Dr. Steiner: … it would depend
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52 Historically, Wolfram is an inte
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54 plane, need to strew pictures an
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56 of German literary history in re
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58 Children’s Receptivity to the
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60 however clumsy the children’s
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62 Discussion: Teaching Reading Our
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64 specifics from the text in discu
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66 Steiner On Reading The Effects o
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68 the school subjects demanded by
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70 Consequently, we will have to re
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72 emerge only later on. In this wa
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74 stand its truth and beauty, to b
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76 The writing experience begins wi
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78 Now the students individually ha
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80 paper is an abstract concept. Th
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82 I Am I am: yet what I am none ca
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84 I-Search Projects The purpose of
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86 Annotated Bibliography Breindel,
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88 Steiner on Writing and Spelling
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90 Understanding Spelling Difficult
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92 Is there a Phenomenological Appr
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94 7. careless: the first “as”
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96 in this Colloquium</stro
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Page 102 and 103: 102 the students’ perception of a
Page 104 and 105: 104 Through eurythmy people can lea
Page 106 and 107: 106 Introduction to Grammar Grammar
Page 108 and 109: 108 authority, and thus to form tho
Page 110 and 111: 110 That should be an unconscious p
Page 112 and 113: 112 you do not let them do what is
Page 114 and 115: 114 period. If you have caused them
Page 116 and 117: 116 “substantiating” verbs. In
Page 118 and 119: 118 Grammar in the Ninth Grade In G
Page 120 and 121: 120 quy and a sonnet, and to recite
Page 122 and 123: 122 Enlivening English Teaching thr
Page 124 and 125: 124 Recommended Books For Waldorf E
Page 126 and 127: 126 Also Recommended: Bly, Robert.
Page 128 and 129: 128 reward for the first person to
Page 130 and 131: 130 1) Tenth graders may wish to re
Page 132 and 133: 132 Solzhenitsyn’s A Day in the L
Page 134 and 135: 134 How in the act of writing itsel
Page 136 and 137: 136 The Wholeness Of Imagination by
Page 138 and 139: 138 Coleridge was an exact thinker
Page 140 and 141: 140 ception of the universe into wh
Page 142 and 143: 142 The theories must indeed come.
Page 144 and 145: 144 Disturbances in Speech Developm
Page 146 and 147: 146 ment then the development of th
Page 150 and 151: 150 Acquisition of Speech and the D
Page 152 and 153: 152 on the musical and rhythmic qua
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Colloquium on English - Research Institute for Waldorf Education

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