Revealing culture through movement: an introduction to the Functional Grammar of Tai Chi

This article will introduce the first version of the Functional Grammar of Tai Chi based on research already carried out in the area of Kinesemiotics. Tai Chi is a martial art that embodies a complex cultural system where the human body perceives and interprets through movement not only a martial narrative but also a pathway to health. In the West, Tai Chi is usually practiced as physical exercise, thus losing its strong and complex connection with a rich and very old philosophical tradition that sees every single practitioner managing vital energies. Drawing on the Functional Grammar of Dance, the Functional Grammar of Tai Chi will provide a first model for analysing Tai Chi movement which will allows scholars to approach this discipline in terms of multimodal meaning making practices. This article is inspired by Hartmut Stöckl's socio-semiotic approach to multimodal texts.