Spatial Orientation and the Notion of Constant Oppositions

Whether we like it or not, those of us who deal with so called, 'non"verbal' materials are faced at the outset with major problems of translation, transcription, and transliteration; that of a space/time system, whether is it a dance, a rite, a ceremony, a system of greetings or what you wiil, into spoken and more accurately, into written language. We aTe all well aware that space! time systems occupy geographical spaces which are at once 1. physical, 2. social, 3. semantic, 4. conceptual. We must use written language to communicate to others about the system as we use spoken language to express the system, but we also know that spoken or written language introduces other things into the system. As Ardener has pointed out, conventional language intrudes itself into the system (1975), and it is simply a nonsense to imagine that it does not. Drid Williams (1976)