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- Convenors:
-
Jan David Hauck
(London School of Economics)
Gui Heurich (UCL)
- Discussant:
-
Alessandro Duranti
(UCLA)
- Formats:
- Panels
- Stream:
- Language
- Location:
- Examination Schools Room 6
- Start time:
- 18 September, 2018 at
Time zone: Europe/London
- Session slots:
- 2
Short Abstract:
What is language in the human imagination? How do different intellectual traditions make sense of and compare between linguistic forms? In this panel, we are interested in empirically exploring the ontological variation of language, multiplying the possibilities of what language(s) could be.
Long Abstract:
What is language in the human imagination? In the Western intellectual tradition, language emerged as autonomous, representational system of denotational code, a foundational pillar of the modern constitution. It mediated the ontological separation of nature and society/culture (Latour 1991; Descola 2005), and became a tool for describing linguistic variation, while at the same time serving as yardstick for its evaluation (Bauman & Briggs 2003). Ethnographies from across the world have provided evidence of alternative ontologies (Viveiros de Castro 1998), as well as documented language practices that defy the privileging of symbolic, denotational, or referential aspects of language (e.g., Feld 1982; Kohn 2013). They challenge its separation from the realms of practice, the body, the nonhuman, and the material, as well as the universality of an all-encompassing "nature of language" underlying variation. If the latter is an artifact of the Western imaginary, then how do other intellectual traditions make sense of language and compare or translate between linguistic forms?
To address this conference theme's call for "new comparative approaches for the study of radical variation," we invite contributions to mobilize local imaginings of language from anywhere in the world, whether explicitly articulated or embedded in practices. Papers may discuss daily conversations, speech, play, verbal art, mythology, music, and non-verbal or material forms of communication. Instead of looking at cultural representations of a unified, pre-conceived notion of language we are interested in empirically exploring the ontological variation of language, multiplying the possibilities of what language(s) could be.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Sean O'Neill (University of Oklahoma)
Paper short abstract:
This paper critically reexamines current claims about the diversity of ontological orientations among human societies, while resisting work work on linguistic relativity— the social construction of such lived-realities by means of the symbolism of everyday language: in particular poetry and music.
Paper long abstract:
Throughout the Pacific Northwest animals and plants think, as portrayed in popular songs and folktales; their thoughts shape the world in which we live, bestowing many spiritual and medicinal gifts upon humanity. No sharp line is drawn between animals and humans, and humans owe a huge debt to their spiritual progenitors among other life-forms. Though out of step with the naturalism of recent Western thought, this ontological orientaiton is deeply in step with current evolutionary biology (Deacon 2012), while resonating with the deepest religious convictions and ecological insights of most of the communities where this author has worked: from Northern California to Oklahoma, Brazil, and North Africa. Thus, in his groundbreaking book, How Forests Think, Eduardo Kohn (2013) makes some remarkable claims about language and life, going so far as to insist that all life is inherently semiotic; by extension, he says, thought is alive. At stake here are current claims about the diversity of ontological orientations among human societies, along with classic claims about linguistic relativity, or the social construction of such lived-realities by means of the symbolism of everyday language: in particular poetry and music, as pan-human ways of "painting" mental imagery with ordinary sound. Yet, do all cultures adhere to just four ontologies, as Descola (2013) has suggested? Echoing Levi-Strauss's work on totemism (1960), this paper reveals something similar about ontology. Rather than carving humanity into types, the paper reveals that all of the ontologies are at work in all human society, with different degrees of emphasis.
Stephen Pax Leonard (University of Durham)
Paper short abstract:
An Inugguit informant of mine said 'spoken language is a prison', oqauheq parnaerussiviuho: a Wittgensteinian description meaning verbalising limits thought. This paper explores an alternative ontology of language through the lens of the phenomenology of speech and Hymesian 'ways of speaking'.
Paper long abstract:
This paper takes as its starting point a language culture where the pragmatics of silence, jokes and gestures have to be carefully interpreted to be understood. In doing so, it explores a number of issues relevant to the phenomenology of speech and Hymesian 'ways of speaking'. These issues are discussed from the perspective of fieldwork amongst the Inugguit of north-west Greenland, a remote community of Arctic pseudo hunter-gatherers who subscribe to an intersubjective, non-Cartesian approach to language. Language is not objectified by the Inugguit; gesture and silence which are central to Merleau-Pontian phenomenology are important features of their language culture and there is still a degree of animist enmeshment between language and nature in the Inugguit psyche. 'Speaking' and 'belonging' have a particular salience as indices of intimacy where connectedness is constantly reinforced through a distinct commonality of expression and certain social practices, such as very frequent visiting of one another, story-telling, recycling of names and a shared monistic philosophy. The Inugguit define themselves through a repertoire of communicative and behavioural strategies which are used to ensure that one is accepted in a supportive kin group - the social imperative for each member. Silence, story-telling, male-male banter and semantic precision facilitated by the morphology of Polar Eskimo all feed into communicative strategies. What is more, with a high degree of morpho-semantic plasticity, the language is alive with an ontological dimension and open to new shades of meaning through the addition of potentially several hundred independent affixes, and thousands of affix combinations.
Gareth Breen (UCL)
Paper short abstract:
Much has been written on the writings of the famous Chinese Christian preacher Watchman Nee (Ni Tuosheng 1903-1972). However all of these assessments of Nee's oeuvre assume a referential approach to language. In contrast, his modern-day followers focus upon the "edibility" of his writings.
Paper long abstract:
Watchman Lee's most prominent disciple, Witness Lee (Li Changshou 1905-1997), called the movement that formed around Nee's, and then Lee's, teaching and writing "the recovery of eating". During my fieldwork I discovered that while there is a lot of food sharing involved in the life of this group, their main focus is "eating the Lord" (Lee 2000), or "eating Jesus everyday" as one of their popular songs puts it. The primary way of eating the Lord is "eating His word" together and "consuming" Nee's and Lee's ministry which are considered an extension of the Bible
Ritual feasts hold a very important place in Chinese and Taiwanese lives (Chang 1977; Stafford 2000). In this paper I show how the ways in which Nee's (and Lee's) language is used within the group affords similar opportunities for sharing, reciprocal gifting and mutual nourishment as does food in these feasts. Moreover, Jesus as linguistic content of group meetings is said to "taste so sweet", while the successful enactment of a meetings is thought of as producing a "sweet-smelling fragrance for the Lord".
The use and imagining of language as food in these contexts leads me to re-think the relation between language and food in Chinese religious thought more generally. From here I suggest that while anthropologists have analysed food as a kind of "language" (e.g. Douglas 1972; 1984), it may be productive also to look comparatively at language as a kind of "food".
Sandhya Narayanan (University of Michigan)
Paper short abstract:
This paper will look at the different ways that linguistic difference has become an ideologized sign of inter-indigenous social difference between Quechua and Aymara speakers in the Peruvian Altiplano, influencing speaker identities and perceptions of the boundaries between languages and speakers.
Paper long abstract:
This paper will demonstrate how changing ideologies of "language" correspond to evolving stances and ideologies of inter-indigenous difference in Puno, Peru. Located in the Peruvian Altiplano, Puno is home to two major indigenous languages, Quechua and Aymara. Today, speakers of both these languages participate in a dominant discourse of ethnolinguistic difference that highlights the differences between the languages and emphasizes an essentialized view of ethnic differences between their corresponding speakers. However, a closer ethnographic view of this region shows that linguistic differences were not the main index of difference in the past, and may not continue to be so in the future. Through a combination of ethnographic and linguistic analysis, I will show how inter-indigenous difference in the region has been influenced to varying degrees by a fluid and changing set of ideological stances towards "language" and linguistic difference. In these examples, I will argue that while linguistic differences occupy an important social role in defining inter-indigenous relations in the region, the degree to which it has in the past and will continue to do so in the future is not as fixed as everyday practices and interactions involving these linguistic mediums are continuing to change in relation to competing discourses on contact, linguistic purity, and indigeneity. These shifts not only have altered how these languages are spoken today, but may also change the future of these speech communities and how the history of Quechua-Aymara relations may be remembered and recruited into other discursive practices.
Jan David Hauck (London School of Economics)
Paper short abstract:
This paper discusses how language and linguistic difference emerge in interaction. Analyzing everyday playful interactions of Aché children it examines the twin processes of constituting language as an object of consciousness and distinguishing between languages as separate entities.
Paper long abstract:
This paper analyzes how language emerges as an object in playful interactions of children in an Aché community in eastern Paraguay. The Aché are a recently settled hunter-gatherer collective, currently experiencing language shift from their heritage language, Aché, to the national language, Guaraní. The currently dominant medium of communication in the communities is a mixed code, in which language distinctions between these two are not relevant. However, children have begun to attend to such distinctions in everyday interactions and play. In these interactions they demonstrate a heightened metalinguistic awareness. In everyday practice, language is mostly a transparent interface through which we experience the world. Yet it can occasionally emerge as phenomenological object in interaction, a process that is intertwined with the emergence of linguistic difference. As distinctions between languages are made, language appears as communicative form and medium, distinct from message, speaker, and context. I argue that language and different languages should not be taken for granted as self-evident analytical objects, but as the results of specific interactional strategies. They emerge through the socialization of speakers into conceiving of and attending to particular communicative practices as languages. For the Aché children, this attention is informed by a communicative environment that includes frequent discussions about language endangerment, ongoing revitalization activities, and the experience of multiple languages. Within such a context, they have now begun to encounter different languages in the words they are using.