Appearance and Action: The Sequential Organization of Instructions in Japanese Calligraphy Lessons

Abstract

Drawing on an analysis of Japanese calligraphy (shodô) lessons where a master reviews his students’ works, I explore the organization of sequences in which the master proposes the correction or improvement of how they draw Japanese or Chinese characters. In such cases, the master faces two organizational issues: (a) how to organize his seeing of a drawn character in an adequately convincing manner, under the aspect of the drawing action that caused its appearance; and (b) how to organize the instruction sequences in a pedagogically adequate manner, by beginning with an explicit indication of the problem regarding the appearance of the character. I argue that the eventually accomplished sequences are the result of the simultaneous solution of these two issues. In conclusion, I reflect on some implications for further investigations of multimodal perception in distinct activities. Data are in Japanese with English translations.

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