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By the term 'symbolic process', Carey meant a representation for community ideals in the material forms. The material forms or symbols can be artistic expressions like song, dance, plays, painting or journalism or scientific subjects such as anthropology or biology. The common belief among majority of people is reality is primary and symbolic representation is secondary. This means that there is an all encompassing reality which does not change, what changes is the peole's perception of reality which they represent through an artistic expression or scientific subject. For example, a painter who is pessimistic and sees everything which is wrong in the society is likely to produce 'darker' paintings because it is his perception of reality. The cultural apporach however counters this belief by contesting that the symbols are primary. The symbolic process creates reality or as Kenneth Burke says 'reality is the signs of words'. Carey argues that there is no single reality which is all encompassing, rather reality is brought into existence by multiple symbolic processes going on in the universe at any point of time. For example, a news item (symbolic process) may lead people to act in a certain way which will create new reality. This reality is different for different people and thus reality is not 'a given'.

Dance is a non-verbal communication process which is social and culturally significant. Most people have an intuitive understanding of dance which helps them in evaluating dance from various cultures. There are several genres of dance from classical ballet to popular dance forms, from ritual dance to forms of sport such as figure skating. Different forms of dance are prevalent in different parts of the world such as classical ballet in Europe and ritual dance in Asia. Each culture has its own unique element in dancing, for example, association of musical instruments such as drums with dancing in most of Africa. A common understanding of the important elements of dance across cultures is thus important to understand the communication process.

There are several attempts made by researchers to define dance in their cultural context. The Webster's Third International Dictionary defines dance as 'rythmic movemement having as its aim the creation of visual designs by a series of poses through space in time and executed by body parts with a certain temperament and purpose' (Kurath, 1960, pp. 234-235). According to Hanna, the concept of series of poses stands good in traditional dance categories such as classical ballet and ritual dance, however fail in modern dance forms such as Tharp in which the dancers' bodies just keep spiralling and there is no distinct series of poses (1987). which stand good in their own cultures but fail in their understanding of cross-cultural elements.

Keali'inohomoku (1972, p. 387) defines dance as an 'affective mode of expression which requires both time and space, employs motor behaviour in redundant patterns which are closely linked to the definitve features of musicality'. According to Hanna, this definition is too limited as dance can occur without ex本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。