Reading is Imagining: Dance Instructions for Sir Roger de Coverley and Perception of Space, Self, and Movement

According to cognitive linguistics, the vocabulary and grammar that we use to describe various phenomena shape the way in which we perceive them. How then, a specific choice of words and grammatical structures employed by the authors of dance instructions could have influenced dancers' perception of space, self, and movement on the dance floor? In this paper, I analyse the textual instructions for Sir Roger de Coverley written between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries and compare the vocabulary and grammar used by various authors. Drawing from the realm of cognitive linguistics, I explore how calling the dancer "the top lady", instead of "the first lady" could have altered her perception of space and self on the dance floor. I claim that the phrases "retreat to places" and "return to places" could have created different mental images in the dancers' minds, influencing the way in which they moved. I hope to discover, how the textual analysis and cognitive linguistics can become tools for researching space, self, and movement in the dance history.