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- Convenors:
-
Valentina Vapnarsky
(Université Paris Ouest - CNRS)
Michel de Fornel (EHESS)
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- Formats:
- Workshops
- Location:
- S304
- Sessions:
- Friday 13 July, -
Time zone: Europe/Paris
Short Abstract:
This workshop is dedicated to fine-grained analyses of how situations of uncertainty are revealed, handled and eventually overcome through language use, as part of multimodal communication. It is mainly addressed to researches in the domains of linguistic anthropology and pragmatics.
Long Abstract:
This workshop is dedicated to fine-grained analyses of how situations of uncertainty are revealed, handled and eventually overcome through language use, as part of multimodal communication. It is mainly addressed to researches in the domains of linguistic anthropology and pragmatics.
Studies in pragmatics have amply demonstrated that oral communication is based on inferentially-driven interpretations and mutual knowledge, induced by the diverse components of verbal interactions. At the same time, many non-routine interactions involve some uncertainty as regards the elements which make up the context of interpretation: the perception of the event itself, be it unexpected or ritualized, the nature or identity of the entities/persons present, the assessment of others' intentions and knowledge, the anticipation of the co-participant actions, and more broadly the understanding of the outcome of the current event.
This workshop will discuss the various linguistic devices (e.g. markers of modality, evidentiality, causality, lexicon selection, prosodic contours) as well as the other semiotic resources of communication (gesture, posture, gaze, etc.) used by the participants in order to reveal or make manifest the uncertainty of the situation. These linguistic and communicative means play a substantial role in the unfolding of the situation, and the way uncertainty may evolve into (partial) understanding or rather be assumed as a shared stance by the other participants, and how it is used contextually as an instrument of social integration or exclusion. They are crucial to the comprehension of the role of uncertainty in culturally defined types of interactions.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Friday 13 July, 2012, -Paper short abstract:
Through combined linguistic, discourse and acoustic analyses, this study of the spontaneous communication of three children with autism shows that echolalia may serve as an interactional resource by which the affected child pursues contextually appropriate social actions and marks different epistemic and affective stances towards his interlocutors.
Paper long abstract:
The repetition of the speech of others or oneself often constitutes a considerable portion of the early speech of those children with autism who develop language. Traditionally referred to as echolalia, such proclivity to repeat has been conceived of as an automatic behavior that bears no or minimal communicative function and compromises intersubjectivity.
Through an innovative integrated methodology, which combines linguistic, discourse and acoustic analyses, this study of the spontaneous communication of three children with autism shows that echoes may serve as an interactional resource by which the affected child not solely pursues contextually appropriate social actions but also remarks upon the borrowed status of his echo, whether through aligning with or distancing himself from its source.
More specifically, we demonstrate that (1) immediate echoes are not automatic responses entailing minimal cognitive processing and emotional resonance. Rather, they accomplish a range of interactional goals by being delivered at differing time onsets, and with distinctive prosodic contours. (2) Delayed echoes, which present variations in pitch and voice quality that qualify them as ventriloquations, are employed systematically to mark different epistemic and affective stances.
The children in our study thus deploy linguistic and prosodic resources to dispel the uncertainty that commonly results from their proclivity to use repetitive and formulaic speech, which often baffles their interlocutors.
This study prompts us to go beyond a symptomatic characterization of echolalia in autism to acknowledge the complex interactional work that affected children accomplish through echoing. It also invites appreciation of the insights that fine-grained qualitative analysis of talk-in-interaction can offer to the study of autistic communication.
Paper short abstract:
In this paper it is shown that surprise is a source of uncertainty in verbal interaction. This paper is based on a sample of examples taken from American series and aims to explore uncertainty in speech situations. Language use is related to multimodal communication.
Paper long abstract:
We aim at analysing situations of uncertainty triggered by a reaction of surprise in verbal interaction. Our data are drawn from American series and analysed from a pragmatic perspective. We address situations where some fact is expressed by a participant but disclaimed by the co-participant because this fact is unexpected. Typically, uncertainty is introduced by interrogative sentences containing modal auxiliaries calling into question factual evidence:
Susan: Oh, yeah? Well, guess what? I didn't tell Mike. Carlos did. So who's your loose cannon now?
Gaby: What? Why would Carlos do that?
Susan: Oh, I don't know. Maybe because unlike you, he has a conscience. (Desperate Housewives)
The expression of surprise destabilizes the speaker, who subsequently uses markers of uncertainty.
In other cases, the speaker's strategy may appear more assertive:
- Are you interrogating me?
- No, of course not. You're a victim.
- And why would you say that?
- Because it's obvious to me what's going on here. (Desperate Housewives)
The speaker likewise relies on a strategy of justification, but this time he does not consider other possible options. But even in such instances, the reaction of surprise forces the speaker to adjust his/her discourse. Here, the use of obvious weakens the justification, since the presence of a certainty marker may - paradoxically - express less certainty than a mere assertion.
We claim that the modal remoteness marked by would, could or should in questions bearing on facts introduces surprise and uncertainty, which triggers various justification strategies from the other speech participants.
Paper short abstract:
Les locuteurs des langues minorisées sont souvent exposés à des stigmates sociolinguistiques. Le cas d'une communauté nahua nous montre les réactions discursives à ces stigmates et nous invite à réfléchir au rôle du chercheur dans l'émergence d'une catharsis utile pour les locuteurs.
Paper long abstract:
Les locuteurs des langues minorisées sont souvent exposés à des stigmates sociolinguistiques qui entraînent la mort de leurs langues et cultures (Hale 1998 ; Bourdieu 2001 ; Avilés 2005). Ce processus, qui s'avère la plupart du temps traumatique, n'est pas silencieux. Le cas de la communauté de Santa Catarina (Mexique), où la langue originaire - le nahuatl - est au bord de l'extinction, nous montre combien sont importantes les réactions discursives aux stigmates et à l'auto-rejet linguistique (Avilés 2005 et 2007), menant à ce que Phillipson (2003) a nommé « linguicide ». Auto-interruptions, silences, phrases impersonnelles, formules rhétoriques, stratégies d'évitement… Les récits de vie des locuteurs nahuas trahissent leurs regrets, leur amertume et parfois leur colère, face à la rupture du veto catégorique auxquels sont soumis les acteurs stigmatisés (Goffman 2001). Le travail ici proposé souhaite mettre en évidence ces réactions affectives parfois inattendues, qui amènent toute une série d'interrogations : ces réactions discursives sont-elles exclusivement le fruit de stigmates sociolinguistiques ? Les trouve-t-on dans d'autres contextes linguistiques ? Ne s'agit-il pas de normes communicatives locales destinées aux étrangers et aux chercheurs ? Au-delà de l'analyse des stigmates provoqués par la minorisation linguistique, ce travail nous invite ainsi à réfléchir sur les façons par lesquelles le chercheur, en tant que participant aux interactions, peut contribuer à l'émergence des réactions discursives et à un éventuel processus de catharsis utile pour les locuteurs - par exemple lors de la réalisation d'entretiens semi-structurés, au cours desquels des sujets tabous sont thématisés. Nous cherchons donc à envisager une sorte d'anthropologie des affects, centrée sur la compréhension critique, réflexive et co-participative des conflits sociolinguistiques.
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores the linguistic and pragmatic devices used in the transmission process of ritual knowledge and the performance of shamanism among the Quechua-speaking indigenous people of the Peruvian Amazon.
Paper long abstract:
This paper explores the linguistic and pragmatic devices used in the transmission process of ritual knowledge and the performance of shamanism among the Quechua-speaking indigenous people of the Peruvian Amazon. A comparison between two contexts of transmission reveals the recent invention of a new mean of transmission through writing papers among quechua-speaking urban shamans, contrasting with the traditional learning of ritual songs. The pragmatic analysis of two corpus of ritual songs (ikara or icaros), the first one exclusively oral from a ritual specialist from a remote community of the Pastaza River, and the second one partially written by a Quechua urban shaman, shows a deep evolution in the transmission and performance of shamanic knowledge. In both cases however, the memorization of ritual knowledge is linked to a personal experience of "direct" communication with spirits in a state of altered consciousness. This learning procedure allows the shaman to lend his voice to the spirits invoked during the curing performance, while the patient will be in his turn partially identified with the pathogenic agents invoked through ritual speech. A close attention is paid to the cognitive asymmetry characterizing the relationship between the shaman and the patient during curing ceremonies, and the uncertainty arising from this specific ritual context. Relying on detailed ethnography and pragmatic analysis of discourse, the analysis will focus on the polyphonic encoding of ritual action through the use of language and the multimodal expressions of shamanic agency.
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores how statements of certainty and uncertainty may be combined in specific discourses -prophecies among the contemporary Yucatec Mayas-, and the relations between (un)certainty and temporal domains. It articulates linguistic, pragmatic and anthropological analyses.
Paper long abstract:
This paper explores different ways in which statements of certainty and uncertainty may be combined in specific discourses, as well as the relationship between (un)certainty and temporal domains, especially the future. The analysis focuses on gnomic-like assertions - prophecies among the contemporary Mayas -; it studies the means used by Mayan speakers to subtly nuance or qualify such statements, and the pragmatic, cultural and historical reasons which motivate these discursive strategies.
The Yucatec Mayas have a long tradition of prophetic discourse, which is part of their conception of history, commonly discussed, often invoked for the interpretation of collective events and decisions concerning social action.
This tradition was revitalized and took on special religious and political importance among a sub-group of Yucatec Mayas, known as the Cruso'ob, in the middle of the 19th century, with the continuous creation of a corpus of prophecies, understood as quotations of divine speech acts. This also led to the emergence of a prospective marker (bíin) specialized for the reference to prophetic events, and more generally to predetermined and irrevocable events, outside the control of human contingencies, a future of certainty.
However, the mention of prophecies is usually accompanied by marks of uncertainty, or non assertion (including the modalizer wa'le and various reportatives). This linguistic markers index different stances with respect to the legitimacy and authority of speakers and utterers, the ability to interpret the present. They ground the constitution and negotiation of the historical knowledge of the past and the future, as well as the interplay of social identities which are intimately related to it among the Cruso'ob Mayas.
Paper short abstract:
Based on fieldwork and extensive video recordings of pain consultations of children suffering from heavy communicative impairment, this paper explores the ways participants in these medical settings are lead to change from uncertainty to certainty. We will first analyze the linguistic and semiotic resources by which participants express their uncertainty about the pain behavior of the children. We will then show how such uncertainties can be overcome and describe the interactional means which allow the practitioner to consistently reappraise her clinical evaluation.
Paper long abstract:
This paper examines multi-participant communication in medical pain consultations for children suffering from heavy communicative impairment. Focusing on these particular medical settings, we will show that deep uncertainties about the location and evaluation of the pain are likely to be raised either during the anamnesis (when the problem of the patient as seen by the parents or the caring staff is announced), or during the physical examination of the child by the pain specialist.
Based on fieldwork and extensive video recordings of pain consultations, this paper explores the ways participants in these medical settings are lead to change from uncertainty to certainty. We will first analyze the linguistic and semiotic resources by which participants express their uncertainty about the pain behavior of the child. We will then show how such uncertainties can be overcome and describe the interactional means which allow the practitioner to consistently reappraise her clinical evaluation.
E-paper: this Paper will not be presented, but read in advance and discussed