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- Convenor:
-
Olga Orlic
(Institute for Anthropological Research)
- Location:
- 202
- Start time:
- 15 May, 2014 at
Time zone: Asia/Tokyo
- Session slots:
- 2
Short Abstract:
In this panel presenters will address the ways in which their research has benefited from perspectives that come both from linguistic anthropology and other subfields of anthropology, and discuss how future research could gain from a more broad-based or interdisciplinary perspective.
Long Abstract:
This panel explores the contributions which linguistic anthropology can make to the discipline as a whole. As a specialized area of study linguistic anthropology is a broad and multifaceted discipline that has always drawn upon other subfields of anthropology in research and practice. Although the "holistic" approach is often claimed as a distinctive quality of anthropology, all too often only superficial attention is paid given to such cross-field attempts, while the contributions of different subfields to any particular line of research and practice are seldom explicit. Biological foundations that make language a unique human quality and its inextricable link to cultural and social life indicate that very little about humanity can be studied without understanding human communication. Thus, questions such as those about culture, identity, ethnicity, migration and mobility, education, intercultural dialogue or conflict cannot possibly be answered without an understanding of dynamic processes in which linguistic practices both shape and are shaped by social practices and structures.
In this panel presenters will address the ways in which their research has benefited already from or drawn upon perspectives that come from outside of the particular subfield of linguistic anthropology, or how research in other subfields has benefited from theoretical and methodological advances in linguistic anthropology, and discuss how future research could gain from a more broad-based or interdisciplinary perspective.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Paper short abstract:
A vernacular education has started in Buton Island in eastern Indonesia, where a local dialect called Cia-Cia is taught while adopting Korean Hangul to transcribe it. This presentation will consider the project not only linguistically but also from multiple-social perspectives.
Paper long abstract:
This presentation will consider a unique vernacular education project which has started in 2009 at a small village in Buton Island in eastern Indonesia, where a local dialect called Cia-Cia is taught at some elementary schools while adopting Korean Hangul to transcribe the dialect. Some major newspapers such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Asahi, etc. shortly carried the news. These news attracted not a few academic interests, and some linguistic papers have pointed out that Hangul is phonetically not appropriate for transcribing the Cia-Cia.
After overviewing these linguistic discussions, this presentation will consider the project not only linguistically but also from multiple-social perspectives as follows; a) What is the social and political background of this phenomena? b) Who are the key figures of the introduction of Hangul, and what are their purposes? c) How have the local politics and educational systems in present Indonesia in the era of democratization and decentralization encouraged the adoption of Hangul? d) What is the influence of Hangul adoption upon the identity and historical rivalry among sub-ethnic groups in the Buton region and vice versa? e) How are the Hangul dissemination movements in Korea in the last decade? etc.
Through the discussion, this presentation would examine the social meaning of the adoption of foreign character, taking account of the relationship among the language, politics and human lives as a whole.
Paper short abstract:
To study singing requires a multidisciplinary approach. Musical and poetic/linguistic approaches can analyze its technical aspects, while an anthropological approach describes semantic aspects; these can be connected by semiotics. A study of reciprocal singing will offer an effective example.
Paper long abstract:
Singing is a multifaceted practice that requires a multidisciplinary approach. It offers both musical and poetic/linguistic expression. At the same time, it is a socially and psychologically framed performance. Here anthropology plays a significant role.
In most kinds of songs, the poetic/linguistic and the musical expression are entwined but essentially different, since language requires complex cognitive processing based on double articulation, but music doesn't. Music is a more direct medium that can convey emotion and social framework. The analytical concepts and methodology of linguistics and musicology can offer powerful means to clarify the song's technical features, but to understand its meaning for people, anthropology is required. This is apparent when we attempt to study reciprocal singing.
In the reciprocal singing style, singers attach improvised words to a fixed melody and sing with each other in the form of a conversation. Words are far more important than musical expression in this performance, since the creativity of singers is exerted. The melody is still indispensable, for it frames the situation and induces sentiment. To analyze this kind of song, we need to know the relationship between the words and melody, its poetic and linguistic aspects, and its aural features. Linguistic and musicological concepts and techniques must be introduced to this analysis. But to understand its meaning for people involved in this practice, it is essential to describe its ethnographic background and find a semiotic connection between the expression and its meaning. In this way, anthropology offers the foundation for the semiotic process.
Paper short abstract:
This contribution is meant to show the advantage that a systematic typological linguistic approach would provide for future research in anthropology. In order to support this view, I present a crosslinguistic survey on the expression of desires, which are highly cultural-bounded notions.
Paper long abstract:
In this contribution I will address the role that linguistic typology can play for the study of anthropological issues. Even if the importance of language as a means for understanding how culture shapes conceptualizations and social habits has been widely recognized in literature, I claim that a systematic interlinguistic approach would help in strengthening the explanatory power of interdisciplinarity.
In order to show that, I will present the results of a study on the encoding of desiderative notions , such as "wanting", "desire", "wish" and "hope", in a sample of 40 languages, and I will explain in which sense language offers a privileged perspective for the investigation of cultural diversity as far as how the concepts of desires are expressed.
The analysis is organized in two main parts. In the first section, I provide a general overview of the different ways of expression of desiderative notions found crosslinguistically in order to highlight their cultural links:
e.g. Ewe (Niger- Congo)
Me-kpɔ mɔ be â-va
1SG-see path COMP 3SG.OPT-come
"I hope/expect that she comes" = "I see she comes"
In the second part, I focus on crosslinguistic multifunctionality patterns which go over language-specific configurations: the notions of "want" is, for example, used to express also future and necessity, while the notion of "hope" has come to be associated to the notion of "waiting".
This interlinguistic survey on the expression of desire in different cultural settings is meant to show the need to foster the interconnections between linguistics and anthropology.
Paper short abstract:
This paper investigates the role of language attitudes in research on the identification processes. The comparison is made between the Istria region (the only officially bilingual Croatian region) and Korčula Island (a seemingly homogenous linguistic area).
Paper long abstract:
Research dealing with identity has been proliferating in past decades. Notions that reality without language does not exist (Berger and Luckmann, 1985) and that language and identity are intrinsically connected (Joseph 2004) are widely accepted. However it is also true that the role of language/s in identity construction and representation is quite often taken for granted, or simply not emphasized enough, as if it is something that is self-evident and self-explanatory. In the past decade researchers from the Institute for Anthropological Research in Zagreb have carried out two research projects that showed to what extent the language and cultural identity are inherently interconnected. One example is from Istria - the only officially bilingual Croatian region - where the Croatian and Italian standard varieties are (in some parts) official languages, and where their variants play a significant role in the process of constructing a regional Istrian identity. The other example is from the Island of Korčula, where it seems, at least at first glance, that local varieties could not possibly play such an important role in constructing local island identity. The matched-guise test was carried out among high school students on the Korčula Island and in several Istrian towns. Although different to some extent, the role of the language(s) in the construction of different levels of identity points to an important overlap between linguistic and identitarian practices in both areas due to multidimensional nature of language and its intersections with nation, region and other forms of social differentiation.
Paper short abstract:
This paper attempts to examine two Fijian discourse styles; colonial age documents and narratives about mythical past in the Dawasamu district, Fiji. It concludes that this stylistic difference of discourse from hypotaxis to parataxis indexes the semiotic shift from colonial to post-colonial age in Fiji.
Paper long abstract:
In the early twentieth century, the Native Lands Commission (NLC) of the colonial government in Fiji identified a group category called mataqali as a land-owning unit, and arranged native Fijian society into a three-layered structure: yavusa (clan), mataqali (lineage) and tokatoka (family), forming a district confederation of clans with the paramount chief. In doing so, the NLC compiled two kinds of documents, Ai tukutuku raraba and iVola ni kawa bula; the former archived the historical origins of each clan and their hierarchical order among lineages and families. The latter registered the successive members of clans.
Firstly, the paper analyses how Ai tukutuku raraba ontologically identifies or discursively created the materiality of 'clan' with historic origins and its 'hypotactic' writing style textualizes "district" as spontaneously developed as a result of clan gatherings over the course of history. Secondly, the paper examines how the narrative style of mythical past in Dawasamu shows 'parataxis', which describes the district as it came into existence when one of the clans brought the first paramount chief, i.e., stranger king, there. The paper concludes that this stylistic difference of discourse indexes the semiotic shift from colonial to post-colonial age in Fiji, in which the hierarchical order of group categories has been socio-culturally internalized through member registration in iVola ni kawa bula, which functions as indexical locus or secular 'ritual' to repeatedly evoke the serial order of cultural categories, or myth, as written in Ai tukutuku raraba.