In this presentation, I present the dance of the Flyers and I analyze it from a cognitive perspective. This dance is one of the most important and known dances of Mexico. This dance is danced with a pole on which dancers climb up and then with a spiral turn, go down from it to the ground. It has a lot of symbolic meanings and it is difficult to understand them in a whole. First, I decided concentrating my study on only one region, the Totonacapan, so on Totonac culture and specifically on the culture and the language of the Coast Gulf of Mexico and papantec Mountain Range (Sierra papanteca). Then I adopted a cognitive method to explain the polysemy of this dance.

It is for this reason that the title of my post-doctoral Project is: The dance of Flyers (Kgosnin) as a cognitive way to the symbolism of the hurricane in some localities of the Municipalities of Coxquihui and Zozocolco, Veracruz”.

This Project is based on a linguistic and cognitive description and interpretation of the ritual dance of Flyers of the countries of Coxquihui and Zozocolco, Veracruz. My aim is to demonstrate how we can understand better the polysemy of this ritual thanks to a cognitive method, specifically thanks to cognitive linguistics method. The mental meanings which dancers keep in mind and that they embody in the ritual, is the scope of this work. Therefore, I propose a reflection on what they say in the ritual dance and also what they do in it, with their movements, gestures, music sounds and so on, in order to understand the polysemy of this ritual and to construct one more detailed interpretation of it.