Drawing on a micro-phenomenological paradigm, we discuss Contact Improvisation (CI), where dancers explore potentials of intercorporeal weight sharing, kinesthesia, touch, and momentum. Our aim is to typologically discuss creativity related skills and the rich spectrum of creative resources CI dancers use. This spectrum begins with relatively idea-driven creation and ends with interactivity-centered, fully emergent creation: (1) Ideation internal to the mind, the focus of traditional creativity research, is either restricted to semi-independent dancing or remains schematic and thus open to dynamic specification under the partner’s influence. (2) Most frequently, CI creativity occurs in tightly coupled behavior and is radically emergent. This means that interpersonal synergies emerge without anybody’s prior design or planned coordination. The creative feat is interpersonally “distributed” over cascades of cross-scaffolding. Our micro-genetic data validate notions from dynamic systems theory such as interpersonal self-organization, although we criticize the theory for failing to explain where precisely this leaves skilled intentionality on the individuals’ part. Our answer is that dancers produce a stream of momentary micro-intentions that say “yes, and”, or “no, but” to short-lived micro-affordances, which allows both individuals to skillfully continue, elaborate, tweak, or redirect the collective movement dynamics. Both dancers can invite emergence as part of their playful exploration, while simultaneously bringing to bear global constraints, such as dance scores, and guide the collective dynamics with a set of specialized skills we shall term emergence management.

This article presents a software-based methodology for studying metaphor in discourse, mainly within the framework of Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT). Despite a welcome recent swing towards methodological reflexivity, a detailed explication of the pros and cons of different procedures is still in order as far as qualitative research (i.e. a context-sensitive manual coding of a text corpus) is concerned. Qualitatively oriented scholars have to make difficult decisions revolving around the general research design, the transfer of linguistic theory into method, good workflow management, and the aimed at scope of analysis. My first task is to pinpoint typical tasks and demonstrate how they are optimally dealt with by using qualitative annotation software like ATLAS.ti. Software not only streamlines metaphor tagging itself, it systematizes the interpretive work from grouping text items into systematic/conceptual metaphor sets, via data surveys and checks, to quantitative comparisons and a cohesion-based analysis. My second task is to illustrate how a good research design can provide a step-wise procedure, offer systematic validation checks, keep the code system slim and many analytic options open. When we aim at complex data searches and want to handle high metaphor diversity I recommend compositional coding, i.e. tagging source and target domains separately (instead of adopting a “one mapping-one code” strategy). Furthermore, by tagging metaphors for image-schematic and rich semantic source domains in parallel, i.e. two-tier coding, we get multiple options for grouping metaphors into systematic sets.

(2004). Metaphor Variation in Cultural Context: Perspectives from Anthropology. European Journal of English Studies: Vol. 8, No. 3, pp. 275-294.

Our title can be read as trivially true, namely, that perceived affordances shape real-time interaction dynamics. A less trivial reading suggests that affordances themselves interact in a shared dyadic field, such that the number and quality of As and Bs affordances are dynamically coupled with bidirectional causality. In dance, martial arts, or team sports agents strategically comodulate each other's affordances while pursuing their aims. In Aikido, where agents try to break their opponents' balance, this trade-off globally approximates a zero-sum game—the better A's affordances are, the lousier B's affordances get. The agents are subject to ceaseless cross-causation in this shared field. They seek to obstruct their opponents' options while strategically enabling, augmenting, and sculpting their own by employing subtle perceptual manipulation skills, redirecting force, brinkmanship, and switching techniques opportunistically. To overcome static views, we conceptualize affordances as cascading and having fluid onsets; we also identify nested affordances in goal hierarchies and describe a spectrum of affordance functions. Ultimately, we suggest rethinking the ontology of affordances as being sensitive to dynamic engagements, hence defined relative to interpersonal emergence.