ABSTRACT
The aim of this chapter is to propose a prototypical model of a Functional Grammar of Dance that has been compiled following the metafunctional framework of Halliday’s functional grammar of verbal language (Halliday and Matthiessen 2013) and Kress and van Leeuwen’s grammar of visual design (Kress and van Leeuwen 2006). The Functional Grammar of Dance model has so far been used for manual analysis of short stretches of dance discourse in the preparatory phases of an interdisciplinary project promoting kinesemiotics1 as a new research area involving linguistics, engineering, and computer science. It is to be considered as a prototype as it is based on a basic system network of choices, and it is expected that once data are collected from automated tracking procedures, the model may be refined.
