Music + Language

Much of my work is informed by linguistic anthropology, specifically work in multi-modality, phaticity, and persuasion. What is the border between speech and song, and how is this border managed? What does such a border entail for communicative action?

I am also engaged in the broad project of semiotics as applied to a variety of communicative media—poetry, song, and dance. How do these convey and shape meaning in tandem? What does singing a text accomplish that reading it does not?