From embodied practice to linguistic system: Aikido’s role in intercultural business communication training

De Baets, Greet
(2025) 2025 ABC Annual International Conference - Gateway to Transformation: Enacting Change and Encouraging Innovation — Location: Long Beach, CA, USA (15.October.2025)

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This paper proposes analyzing the martial art of aikido as a system analogous to language, offering a novel perspective to explore its interactions and engage critically with linguistic theories. By considering aikido as embodied, multimodal, multisensory, and contextual meaning-making, it can be examined as a social system with communicative potential. Drawing on Duranti’s (1997) view that language encompasses social interaction and Schlenker’s (2018) superlinguistics, which examines cognitive activities akin to language, this paper establishes preliminary connections between aikido and linguistics. At the basis of considering aikido as a language lies a study that examines aikido as an embodied pedagogy in intercultural business communication training. A mixed-methods experiment with 73 participants primarily assessed learning gains and satisfaction. It also revealed two linguistic features: indexicality and code-switching. Aikido movements act as indexical signs. For example, the gesture of the outstretched hand at the beginning of an aikido interaction not only signifies entering into physical engagement but also metaphorically represents entering a dialogue with openness, curiosity, and tranquility. This gesture becomes an indexical sign in communication training, symbolizing a constructive connection rather than confrontation. Also, participants switch frequently between aikido’s embodied language and named languages to reinforce both conceptual and embodied expressions of aikido. For example, explaining a pivoting movement as “turning a challenging question into an opportunity.” These interactions surpass traditional linguistic expressions by incorporating gestures, postures, sensory engagement, and environmental contexts. The application of linguistic concepts from diverse research traditions to aikido would open up insights into its structure and communicative potential and at the same time expand the field of linguistic research itself. Scholarship has only just begun to scratch the surface of exploring non-linguistic phenomena through a linguistic lens. However, such analyses must avoid reducing a fluid, dynamic nature such as aikido’s into rigid scripts. Studies should maintain an emphasis on adaptability and the importance of context in shaping interaction.
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De Baets, G. (2025). From embodied practice to linguistic system: Aikido’s role in intercultural business communication training. Proceedings of the 90th Annual International Conference, 26, 57-68. (Original work published 2025)