iv: Anthroposophical Views
Lip service Dora Wagner You may lie with your tongue, but you tell the truth with the mouth you draw. Nietzsche (1886)
Eating, drinking, suckling, chewing, sucking, licking, smacking, slurping, nibbling, swallowing, spitting, talking, screaming, laughing, singing, whistling, pouting, kissing. As a communication centre, database, research laboratory, amusement park, energy supplier, and health hub, the mouth performs a multitude of vital specialised tasks. The lips, teeth, and tongue of the oral cavity constitute a uniquely diverse facility; one that is not only an extremely attractive, pleasurable, and passionate part of the body, but also one of its most versatile organs. From a sensory perspective, our mouth is an information giant. Like no other organ, it is peppered with sensory cells that constantly transmit an incredible amount of highresolution motion, temperature, touch, and taste data to our nervous system. The precision of detail of these stimuli is unsurpassed— greater even than the sensation of our fingertips. In fact, the receptors on our lips and tongue are so sensitive and plentiful that two stimuli generated only half a millimetre apart are nonetheless separable and distinct (Schwegler, 2016). The abundance and subtlety of perceptions that tongue and lips transmit to the brain correspond to the variety of tasks these organs undertake.
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The movements of the mouth and lips during speech must be extremely finely controlled and constantly readjusted. Without the complex interplay of tongue and lip muscles, precise positional perception, and lightningfast tracking, we would at best slur our words, and never manage to sing. Speech articulation is formed in the interaction of jaw, lips, tongue, and soft palate. By opening and closing, rounding, and spreading our lips, we can make different sounds from the passage of breath. Rounding the lips, for example, is particularly important in the articulation of spoken vowels. The curving of the lips gives more resonance to the voice, acting like a sound funnel, in a similar way to a megaphone. The soft palate regulates the participation of our noses in making sounds. By lowering it, our nasal cavities also become spaces of resonance, gifting some spoken languages particular speech sounds, but also changing the timbre, and character of the noises we make. Our tongue is considered the most active organ of articulation. It is extremely mobile and can change its shape remarkably. All vowels are formed through the interaction of lips and tongue, and the tongue is also decisive in the shaping of most consonants.
