Paper short abstract:

Spatial orientation is a core feature of grammar and interfaces to cognitive processes and to the formation of social subjects. In this paper I show the social consequence of spatial orientation and its corresponding forms of semiotic interpretation for southern Quechuas, colonial and contemporary.

Paper long abstract:

Spatial orientation is a core feature of grammar, one that interfaces on the one hand to cognitive processes and on the other to the formation of social subjects. A key distinction that underlies the construction of space in grammar is between egocentric orientation, in which deictic expressions (person, time, and space) are anchored in the 'speaker' (actually in a social role collapsed into the speaker) and allocentric orientation, which is oriented in an aspect of the social situation other than the speaking participants (for example, a house or a visible and named place). There are distinct forms of semiotic interpretation associated with each orientation type, interappelating distinct kinds of social subjects and social relations.

For Southern Quechuas and for their Inka ancestors spatial orientation is preferentially (and grammatically) allocentric; for colonial Spaniards, for Spanish-speakers in the Andean republics today, and for anthropologists spatial orientation is preferentially egocentric. I illustrate these differences and the social consequences thereof, with examples from southern Andean visual and verbal culture, colonial and contemporary.