Based on a sociolinguistics with default multilingualism & ‘language’ replaced by ‘languoids’, ‘doculects’ & ‘glossonyms’ I make a default multilocated anthropology with documentation of places some online (locudocs), place names, ‘toponyms’, & then a locuoid, a representation of a set of locudocs.
Paper Abstract:
In a review of sociolinguistics in West and Central Africa Connell and Zeitlyn (2023) make some big suggestions about our default assumptions. They suggest that these should switch from a monolingual norm to default multilingualism and if at all possible we should stop talking about languages! Instead of language as an analytical or technical term they suggest talk of the trio of ‘languoids’, ‘doculects’ and ‘glossonyms’ (as suggested by Jeff Good and colleagues). These work as models for thinking about place and places: we should shift to a default multilocated anthropology as suggested in effect as recently as 1922 by Malinowski (is it still too soon?).
And we should consider a new terminology for thinking about places. This starts with the documentation of somewhere (a locudoc) and seeing how it relates to place names, ‘toponyms’ (i.e. creating a locudoc linking some data (documentation) with a toponym), and then through a process of analysis arriving at a locuoid, which is a representation of a set of locudocs.