Bodies that speak: Languages of differentiation and becoming in Amazonia
Publication date: Available online 30 March 2018Source: Language & CommunicationAuthor(s): Casey HighAbstractIn this article I consider the metaphysical underpinnings of a specific language ideology in Amazonian Ecuador by comparing Waorani ideas about the agency of speech in shamanism and funerary practices to their engagements in language documentation. I relate the notion of language as a force inseparable from the bodies of speakers to concepts of language as “culture” in research to document their language. By considering how Waorani consultants have come to see certain features of their language in video recordin...
Source: Language and Communication - July 11, 2018 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research
On logophagy and truth: Interpretation through incorporation among Peruvian Urarina
Publication date: Available online 4 April 2018Source: Language & CommunicationAuthor(s): Harry WalkerAbstractThis paper develops an Amazonian critique of Western theories of interpretation as grounded in correspondence between a proposition and a state of affairs, and of truth as correspondence between mind and reality. For the Peruvian Urarina, language has materiality and force and implies a non-arbitrary relationship between signifier and signified, and is moreover based in a very different mode of adequation of person to world: a process grounded in absorption rather than representation. The view that words are effect...
Source: Language and Communication - July 11, 2018 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research
Language in an ontological register: Embodied speech in the Northwest Amazon of Colombia and Brazil
Publication date: Available online 12 April 2018Source: Language & CommunicationAuthor(s): Janet ChernelaAbstractSpeakers of Eastern Tukanoan languages in Brazil and Colombia construe linguistic differences as indices of group identity, intrinsic to a complex ontology in which language is a consubstantial, metaphysical product—a 'substance' in the development of the person. Through speech, speakers of the same language signal a corporality based in theories of shared ancestry and mutual belonging while speakers of different languages signal difference. For Tukanoans, then, one creates one’s self in the act of speaking....
Source: Language and Communication - July 11, 2018 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research
Words beyond meaning in Mapuche language ideology
Publication date: Available online 24 April 2018Source: Language & CommunicationAuthor(s): Magnus CourseAbstractWhat is the difference between the Mapuche language, Mapudungun, and Spanish? Perhaps the term “difference” is a clue to the approach from which my thinking on this topic has emerged. For in using the term “difference” I follow a particular genealogy of anthropologists who have asked the question of whether our difference is the same kind of difference as theirs, with “ours” and “theirs” themselves being relative constructs. Our question thus becomes a question about a question: are we asking whet...
Source: Language and Communication - July 11, 2018 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research
Leave-taking as multiactivity: Coordinating conversational closings with driving in cars
Publication date: Available online 18 May 2018Source: Language & CommunicationAuthor(s): Pentti HaddingtonAbstractThis paper uses conversation analysis and video-based methods to study how the driver and passengers interact in order to coordinate multiple activities in cars. The video data have been recorded in naturally occurring driving situations in Britain and Finland. The analysis focuses on leave-taking during drop-offs, i.e. situations where the driver is pulling over for a momentary stop to let a passenger out of the car. It shows how in-car participants time and coordinate the conversation's closing step by step w...
Source: Language and Communication - July 11, 2018 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research
Civility and mobility: Drivers (and passengers) appreciating the actions of other drivers
Publication date: Available online 19 May 2018Source: Language & CommunicationAuthor(s): Eric LaurierAbstractMy analysis centres on a dominant aspect of civility between vehicles: appreciation. I examine the inter-vehicular interaction that precedes and accompanies the ‘hand-up’, before then widening the analysis to consider the ‘thank you’ and its role in the intra-vehicular activities of driver and passenger. I differentiate between the weaker expectations of appreciation when vehicles are passing by one another and the stronger expectation involved in ‘letting in’ or ‘letting out’. In considering how rig...
Source: Language and Communication - July 11, 2018 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research
A study at 30th street
Publication date: Available online 21 May 2018Source: Language & CommunicationAuthor(s): Kenneth LibermanAbstractTraffic's order exceeds what traffic signs and laws are capable of regulating, and local collaborative work by motorists resolves many problems. A videotaped study of traffic flow at a busy intersection controlled by four-way stop signs revealed that when strict adherence to rules and signs impedes traffic flow, regulations may be ignored. Some ethnomethods that drivers used to maintain efficient order are identified and described, and the contrast between ethnomethodological analysis and formal analyses of orde...
Source: Language and Communication - July 11, 2018 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research
Contrasting linguistic ecologies: Indigenous and colonially mediated language contact in northwest Amazonia
Publication date: Available online 21 May 2018Source: Language & CommunicationAuthor(s): Patience EppsAbstractThis paper investigates the dynamics of multilingualism and the linguistic outcomes of contact involving indigenous languages in the northwest Amazonian Vaupés region. Despite points of continuity, a significant contrast exists between the processes and products of multilingual interaction among indigenous groups and that involving colonial entities. While indigenous interactions have tended to involve language maintenance, grammatical diffusion, and limited lexical borrowing, contact between indigenous and Europe...
Source: Language and Communication - July 11, 2018 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research
Intersubjectivity and other grounds for action-coordination in an environment of restricted interaction: Coordinating with oncoming traffic when passing an obstacle
Publication date: Available online 24 May 2018Source: Language & CommunicationAuthor(s): Arnulf DeppermannAbstractThis paper asks whether and in which ways managing coordination tasks in traffic involve the accomplishment of intersubjectivity. Taking instances of coordinating passing an obstacle with oncoming traffic as the empirical case, four different practices were found. 1. Intersubjectivity can be presupposed by expecting others to stick to the traffic code and other mutually shared expectations. 2. Intersubjective solutions emerge step by step by mutual responsive-anticipatory adaptation of driving decisions. 3. Int...
Source: Language and Communication - July 11, 2018 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research
Crossing the street: How pedestrians interact with cars
Publication date: Available online 24 May 2018Source: Language & CommunicationAuthor(s): Sara Merlino, Lorenza MondadaAbstractThis paper analyzes crossing the street as a form of communication between pedestrians and drivers, who are participants characterized by different types of mobility, and distinct rights and obligations. Based on video recordings of couples having a stroll in an urban environment, the analyses focus on the mundane practices and the visual resources (gaze and gestures) through which pedestrians organize the sequential and temporal trajectories of crossing, and negotiate their right to cross the stree...
Source: Language and Communication - July 11, 2018 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research
Learning to communicate: Managing multiple strands of participation in driving lessons
This article examines how trainee drivers and instructors engage in interaction with each other and with other entities partaking in traffic. Drawing on Goffman's notion of participation, the article argues that three strands of participation are at stake, i.e. intra-unit participation (taking place within the car), inter-unit participation (between traffic participants) and cross-unit participation (e.g. between drivers of different cars). The analysis of how trainee drivers and instructors deal with unexpected traffic events shows that these multiple strands of participation are intertwined in a way that is sensitive to ...
Source: Language and Communication - July 11, 2018 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research
Patterns of lexical correlation and divergence in Casamance
Publication date: Available online 26 May 2018Source: Language & CommunicationAuthor(s): Rachel WatsonAbstractThe Casamance region of southern Senegal is characterized by extensive societal and individual multilingualism with many minority languages maintained. Complex patterns of correlation and divergence in the lexica of languages in Casamance reflect the social and historical interactions between populations. This paper examines the lexica of three languages – Joola Kujireray, Joola Banjal and Baïnounk Gubëeher – which stand in differing historical and contemporary relations to one other. It uses a list of over 5...
Source: Language and Communication - July 11, 2018 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research
The sociocultural dynamics of indigenous multilingualism in northwestern Australia
Publication date: Available online 26 May 2018Source: Language & CommunicationAuthor(s): Alan RumseyAbstractThe indigenous languages of the Northern Kimberley region of Western Australia comprise a single genetic family (Worrorran), with three branches, and extensive multilingualism across them. Languages are understood to have been directly installed in the landscape by ancestral creator figures. On that basis language difference – especially in lexicon - figures as an important aspect of social identity. In the center of the Worrorran region there has been structural convergence due to diffusion across the three branch...
Source: Language and Communication - July 11, 2018 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research
A small speech community with many small languages: The role of receptive multilingualism in supporting linguistic diversity at Warruwi Community (Australia)
Publication date: Available online 26 May 2018Source: Language & CommunicationAuthor(s): Ruth SingerAbstractAt Warruwi Community (pop. 400), nine very different Indigenous languages are still widely used, which is unusual in the contemporary Australian Indigenous context. Using the receptive multilingual mode, speakers frequently address one another in different languages. This mode offers speakers of small languages such as Mawng (ca. 400 speakers) an alternative to accommodating to larger languages such as Yolngu-matha (ca. 2000 speakers). Although not unique to Warruwi, receptive multilingual practices are part of a set...
Source: Language and Communication - July 11, 2018 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research
How did the mobility scooter cross the road? Coordinating with co-movers and other movers in traffic
Publication date: Available online 29 May 2018Source: Language & CommunicationAuthor(s): Paul McIlvennyAbstractThis paper reports on a video-based conversation analysis of a mobility scooter user in their everyday life. A collection of road ’crossings' are examined to see how users manage their conduct to be seen to be doing a ‘crossing’ by other ‘movers’. In the approach to a crossing place, users and their co-movers prepare for a ‘safe passage’ across the flow of traffic and scan the mobilescape for an anticipatory ‘window of opportunity’ for joint mobile action. Furthermore, they negotiate their right ...
Source: Language and Communication - July 11, 2018 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research
