Multimodality

9Performances and the performing arts

As a major category for the description and exploration of a wide range of social and cultural activities, the term performance has been used in diverse disciplines, including psychology, sociology, philosophy, linguistics, literary theory, history, anthropology and many others—competing with the heterogeneous field of performance studies with its own on-going analyses of a multiplicity of situations all seen as performative. Schechner (1988), for example, sees actions, behaviours and artistic practices as the main objects of interest in performance studies, including all kinds of intended and often, but not always, scripted works deploying resources such as language, image, gesture, sound, music, etc.