The University of Chicago. Language in Culture - I, II (Autumn 2014 Winter 2015)

Transcription

1 The University of Chicago Anthropology 37201, 37202; Comparative Human Development 37201, 37202; ISHum 35400, 35500; Linguistics 31100, 31200; Psychology 47001, Language in Culture - I, II (Autumn 2014 Winter 2015) Autumn 2014: Wednesdays and Fridays, AM, Pick Hall, Room 016 Michael Silverstein, instructor, Autumn Office: Haskell 313; phone: or m-silverstein@uchicago.edu for appointment, or drop-in Office Hour, Mondays, 1.30 PM 3.00 PM. William Feeney, course teaching assistant, Autumn Office Hours: Tuesdays, PM in Haskell 236; or by appointment; wfeeney@uchicago.edu Outline Through the systematic analysis of communication framed within several orders of abstraction and social encompassment, this two-quarter course sequence introduces students to some of the central theoretical concepts through which to conceptualize and investigate the semiotic processes out of which are precipitated language, culture, and the categories and groups of society. Throughout, we approach communication or, more broadly, semiosis as the essential and mediating process in-and-by which social phenomena and institutions exist and can be discerned both reflexively and analytically. First Quarter Here, we develop and apply semiotic concepts to the end of analyzing language in its several modes of duplex and dialectic functionality within contexts of discursive interaction. To this end, informed by an analysis of ritual, we consider the ways in which people deploy language and its penumbral sign systems in social life (pragmatics), defining themselves and others and doing [socially consequential] things with words. In Western ethno-perspective both lay and scholarly/scientific approaches have conceptualized language meta-semiotically through its representational or denotational function, culminating in structural accounts of both language and thought. But by sympathetically but critically understanding these, we can counterpose the dialectical complexity of the full meaning(s) of linguistic and other socio-semiotic forms actualized in discursively mediated interaction. In this way we develop an account of the mediating role of language in culturally significant practice and of social actors interactionally experienced conceptualization of it. Both are central factors in how people experience being in social groups, coloring the non-disinterested hence ideological -- knowledge they have of the worlds associated with membership and projectable therefrom. Second Quarter

2 2 This quarter s class builds on the first quarter s discussions of the workings of the interaction order, experienced as a (generally) micro- sociological node in the dialectical interplay of semiotic forces. This quarter turns more explicitly to macro- discursive processes in the semiotic mediation of sociocultural life. Beginning with the concept of language ideology as an example of reflexive discursive practice, the class explores the constitution of social institutions such as academic disciplines (e.g., linguistics ), nations, and (post)colonial projects. The second half of the class focuses on how inter-discursive processes come to mediate, and materialize, institutional forms, focusing in particular on forms of personhood, identity, and subjectivity; community; space; and mass-media objects. The more general aim of this quarter is to investigate the constitutive role of language and semiotic figuration in sociopolitical processes, and to see such cultural forms through a semiotic lens. Also note: Language in Culture III: Linguistic Anthropology Practicum. Spring, This class focuses on the methodological and analytic treatment of linguistic and ethnographic data, with particular focus on the linguistic anthropological analysis of discursive interaction. The course tacks between hands-on engagement with various technologies and methods for the treatment of audio and video data, critical discussion of various approaches to such data (e.g., conversation analysis, critical discourse analysis, multimodality, narrative, metrical structure and text-level indexicality), and group analysis of primary data. This third quarter of Language in Culture thus provides students with an opportunity, in a laboratory setting, to work through some of the empirical and analytical techniques and technologies upon which previous quarters theoretical discussion rests. Requirements: First Quarter For a regular quality grade: Regular engagement with readings and class discussions. Additionally, there will be two take-home essay assignments, at mid-quarter and at the quarter s conclusion, each asking for two short essays each of ca. 5 conventionally formatted pages length [ words] (thus ca. 20 pp. Quarter total) plus attached data, if relevant, that will require of you some conceptual development of issues raised by the dialogue between readings and lectures, and application of analytic methods to relevant illustrative material. For a grade of P [equivalent to qualitative B- or better]: Regular engagement with readings and class discussions, as revealed by weekly 350-word (plus-or-minus) essays, an MS-Word digital file ed to instructor s address. These should give a thoughtful response to or critique of note, NOT merely a précis or plot summary of two to three of that week s assigned reading items, at least one of them a required one [indicated by * ], relating them one to another in the thematic frame of a genealogy of

3 3 concepts or terms that is appropriately framed by the ongoing developments at that point in the course. Second Quarter For a regular quality grade: regular engagement with the readings and class discussions; weekly reaction papers to the readings; and a final research paper (15-20 pages). [NOTE: Class lectures and discussions are not intended to be merely plot summaries of readings, but are a selective reorganization and re-presentation of them in relation to an ongoing exposition summarized above and detailed in the points of the syllabus below. It is assumed that participants will have read at least the minimally required material to achieve a familiarity with the respective authors approach as first-order content. It is intended that that content should appear somewhat transformed in class. Hence, while it cannot be guaranteed that by having read the material you will follow the classes, long experience demonstrates that if you do not reasonably keep up with the readings, it is virtually certain that you will be unable to understand what is going on in class and in the course.] Readings: The first group of items includes key sources, from which at least sizable chunks will be assigned in the course of this quarter; these might be considered for purchase in paperback format. (They are on order at the Seminary Coop Bookstore, 5751 S. University Ave.) These include: Agha, Asif. Language and social relations. Cambridge University Press, ISBN: [LaSR] Austin, John L. How to do things with words. Second edition. Harvard University Press, ISBN: [HTDThWW] Bakhtin, Mikhail M. The dialogic imagination: Four essays. (Transl., C. Emerson & M. Holquist; ed., M. Holquist) University of Texas Press, ISBN: x [DI] Lyons, John. Linguistic Semantics: An introduction. Cambridge University Press, ISBN: [LS] Sapir, Edward. Language: An introduction to the study of speech. Harcourt Trade Publishers, 1955 et seq. [1921]. ISBN: [Lg] Saussure, Ferdinand de Course of general linguistics. (Transl., W. Baskin) McGraw- Hill Higher Education, 1965 et seq. [1915]. ISBN: [Cours] Searle, John R. Speech acts: An essay in the philosophy of language. Cambridge University Press, 1969 et seq. ISBN: x Silverstein, Michael & Urban, Greg, eds. Natural histories of discourse. University of Chicago Press, ISBN: [NHD] Whorf, Benjamin Lee. Language, thought, and reality: Selected writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf. (Ed., J. B. Carroll) MIT Press, 1964 et seq. [1956]. ISBN: [LTR]

4 4 The other major sources from which readings are drawn include the following, from which the shorter selections will be available as scans through the course Chalk site: Aarts, Bas, David Denison, Evelien Keizer, & Gergana Popova, eds. Fuzzy grammar: A reader. Oxford University Press, [FG] Bauman, Richard & Sherzer, Joel, eds. Explorations in the ethnography of speaking. Cambridge University Press, 1974; [EES] Benveniste, Emile. Problems of general linguistics. Transl., Mary E. Meek. University of Alabama Press, 1971 [PLG] Blount, Ben G., ed. Language, culture, and society: A book of readings. 2 nd edition. Waveland Press, [LCaS] Brenneis, Donald & Macaulay, Ronald H. S., eds. The matrix of language: Contemporary linguistic anthropology. Westview Press, [MoL] Briggs, Charles L., ed. Disorderly discourse: Narrative, conflict, and inequality. Oxford University Press, [DD] Duranti, Alessandro, ed. A companion to linguistic anthropology. Blackwell Publishing Ltd., [CLA] Duranti, Alessandro & Goodwin, Charles, eds. Rethinking context: Language as an interactive phenomenon. Cambridge University Press, [RC] Foley, William A. Anthropological linguistics: An introduction. Blackwell, [AL] Giglioli, Pier P., ed. Language and social context: Selected readings. Penguin Books, [LaSC] Goffman, Erving. Forms of talk. University of Pennsylvania Press, ISBN: x [FT] Gumperz, John J. & Levinson, Stephen C., eds. Rethinking linguistic relativity. Cambridge University Press, [RLR] Hickmann, Maya., ed. Social and functional approaches to language and thought. Academic Press, 1987 [SFA] Hill, Jane H. & Irvine, Judith T., eds. Responsibility and evidence in oral discourse. Cambridge University Press, [RE] Horn, Laurence R. & Ward, Gregory, eds. The Handbook of Pragmatics. Blackwell, [HoP] Hymes, Dell H. Language in culture and society: A reader in linguistics and anthropology. Harper & Row, [LiCS] Kroskrity, Paul V., ed. Regimes of language: Ideologies, polities, and identities. School of American Research Press, [RoL] Lee, Benjamin. Talking heads. Duke University Press, [TH] Levinson, Stephen C. Pragmatics. Cambridge University Press, ISBN: [Prag] Lucy, John A. Language diversity and thought: A reformulation of the linguistic relativity hypothesis. Cambridge University Press, [LDaT] Lucy, John A., ed. Reflexive language: Reported speech and metapragmatics. Cambridge University Press, [RL]

5 5 Matoesian, Gregory M. Law and the language of identity: Discourse in the William Kennedy Smith rape trial. Oxford University Press, ISBN: Mertz, Elizabeth & Parmentier, Richard J., eds. Semiotic mediation: Sociocultural and psychological perspectives. Academic Press, [SM] Parmentier, Richard J. Signs in society: Studies in semiotic anthropology. Indiana University Press, [SiS] Schieffelin, Bambi B., Woolard, Kathryn A., & Kroskrity, Paul V., eds. Language ideologies: Practice and theory. Oxford University Press, [LI] Taylor, John R. Linguistic categorization, 3 rd ed. Oxford University Press, [LC] Tyler, Stephen A., ed. Cognitive anthropology: Readings. Holt, Rinehart & Winston, [CA] Wortham, Stanton. Narratives in action: A strategy for research and analysis. Teachers College Press, Additionally, the journal articles are easily available through the University library s electronic portal for journal access under the journal name, or, for older material, through JSTOR, etc. (Because of financial implications of hits, journal editors ask us to have students access journal material individually.) Frequently occurring abbreviations: AE = American Ethnologist JLA = Journal of Linguistic Anthropology LinS = Language in Society For the first quarter, in every week s readings, which are listed in a topically and pedagogically suggested order, certain ones are indicated with asterisk (*), indicating the minimal set that ought to be done so as to allow comprehension of what is going on in class, if you are otherwise unavoidably occupied. The set indicated with an exclamation point (!) are, furthermore, highly recommended for a good picture of the topic to hand; frequently, exemplification in class will come from these as well. Note that sometimes these priority signs occur in the middle of an omnibus bibliographic listing, differentiating minimal and maximal chapters, sections, etc. within a single work or source. Also listed are classics, whether the first enunciation of a concept or the locus classicus for citation; or, they are important new pieces in their own right, and will contribute, e.g., by what other literature they cite, to a good starting bibliography on that topic. Target Calendar and Syllabus: The concepts and theses elaborated in some detail in the following week-by-week description of the course program can be used to advantage in three ways. First, in advance of the week s classes they provide an overview of the themes to be developed through readings and class sessions that week, so that students can critically approach the readings which themselves come from a great variety of perspectives with this framework in mind to orient discerning reading. Hence: Read through our week s

6 syllabus before turning to that week s work: note the new terms and key concepts to which you should pay attention in reading, and use these as a guide to at least one way to bring the readings into dialogue. Second, each week s outline indicates how the topics culled from aggregating the material in the readings will be integrated, insofar possible, in the class sessions; as one reads the material, one can note how certain concepts, theoretical developments, approaches, data used in the readings in one particular way may play a very different role in the overall presentation of the course as we use authors material in ways they may not have envisaged; the course is thus a dialectical engagement with the authors of the readings and thereby a critique of them. Try to read critically and to use your critical faculty to mediate between authors and our class discussions of their work. Third, the syllabus provides a means students can reflexively assess their retrospective understanding of the week s material, in that by the conclusion of the week s discussion in class students should be able to see: [a] that the concepts and theses in the outline have in fact been the material that week; [b] that these concepts and theses are now familiar, i.e., that the words, expressions and entextualizations [there s one!] are in language that (whatever the case before) now has come actually to denote something for you; [c] that the concepts and theses have been organized more-or-less in the way described in the course of the week s building-block of the cumulative syllabus; and [d] that the role of such concepts and theses in the cumulative discussion is clear (or at least not completely unclear). Use the detailed syllabus after the material has been presented in class to interrogate your understanding of the material at that point; bring questions to class on any things that remain opaque or unclear, or pursue them in office hours. 6

7 7 Week of Oct 1 3 Topics; Concepts and Theses Presented; Readings TEXT AND CONTEXT The discursive mediation of events of socially consequential mutual coordination of agents relationally inhabiting social roles: doing creating/ratifying/transforming identity-work and instantiating and creating kinds of social groupness thereby. Co-participation in the emergence of a structured, consequential social action that binds interactants. Events of consequential interaction as the phenomenal units of communicative physiology of social formations ( anatomy ) at both micro- and macro-scales. Roles and statuses in this light. Components of the communicative event, and the co-occurrence relations among them. Components as indexical signs of one another; the centrality of message or text among them, and its indexing of (pointing to) extratextual context. Two kinds of indexical relations: the text s appropriateness-to presumptive context; the text s effectiveness-in entailed context. The indexical compositionality of texts, segmentable into units of indexical sign-forms by how particular aspects of form index particular aspects of context. Degrees of entextualization (coming to formedness as text) of discourse in relation to the clarity of contextualization two sides of the same process. The problem of textual delimitation and possibility of textual selfdelimitation. Encompassing orders of communication and the different ways we study them. Macro-contextual interdiscursivity and intertextuality across events in institutional real-time of social process. Social process as interdiscursive chaining or networking [ extensional view of social institutionality]; the intensional idiom of circulation of cultural meanings and values, e.g., by extensional distribution patterns of textartifacts. Readings Classics: Giglioli, LaSC: *Hymes (21-44); Goffman (61-66). Blount, LcaS: Hymes (248-82, esp ) *Sapir, Edward. Communication. In, Selected Writings of Edward Sapir, ; Group, !Duranti & Goodwin, RC: Goodwin & Duranti (1-42).!Goffman, Erving. The interaction order. American Sociological Review (1983).

8 8 *Lyons, LS: ch. 1; ch.2, sec ; ch.9, sec , 9.6. *Agha, LaSR: ch. 1. Silverstein & Urban, NHD: Bauman, Richard & Briggs, Charles. Poetics and performance as critical perspectives on language and social life. Annual Review of Anthropology (1990). Oct 8 10 SEMIOSIS AND METASEMIOSIS, DISCURSIVE AND FUNCTIONAL ; CONSCIOUS AND UNCONSCIOUS IDEOLOGICAL REFLEXIVITY IN THE MATTER OF SOCIAL CONSEQUENTIALITY Just as indexical sign-forms point to co-occurrents in frameworks of spacetime and causal consequentiality, more generally, sign-vehicles stand-for their objects in multiple ways. Peircean scheme of semiosis and the place of representamen (plural, -mina), object, and interpretant in it. This is a meta-discourse about phenomenal [first-order] semiosis (how representamen relates to object: Peirce s ground), and thus a meta-semiotic discourse. The dependence of first-order semiosis on its interpretant is the degree to which meta-semiotic functionality is necessary to semiosis: meta-semiotic regimentation of the sign object relationship. Conventional sign phenomena are all interpretant-driven, thus necessarily meta-semiotically regimented. Circulation of meta-semiotic discourse at least biases such meta-semiotic functionality, as we will explore later as indexical order. Peirce s construction of iconic Firstness, indexical Secondness, and symbolic Thirdness. Peirce s search for the minimal criteria of an empirical rationality, yielding three dimensions of classification of possible semiotic phenomena. The Peircean semiotic vocabulary for comprehending the nested process of semiosis generating the triad of [1a] object -of-semiosis [1b] representamen (= sign[-vehicle] )-of-semiosis / [2] ground -of-semiosis, the kind of relation of object and representamen / [3] interpretant [= (conceptual) representamen to varying degrees determined by, or determinative of ground]. Vectorial representation or standing-for and determination or stipulating the stood-for and Peirce s notion of genuineness vs. degeneracy of signs. The intersection of trichotomies on each of these dimensions of classification determining Peirce s types of signs: (by [1]) Qualisigns Sinsigns Legisigns; (by [2]) Icons Indexes Symbols; (by [3]) Rhemes Dicisigns Arguments. Semiotics downshifting in conscious folk meta-semiotics: naturalizing socio-cultural semiosis.

9 9 The problem of indexical regularity, and in particular of the existence of indexical legisigns: conventional contextualization phenomena and the necessarily duplex nature of functionality. Metapragmatics as the interpretant function for indexical legisigns. Indexical presupposition and indexical entailment in pragmatics and their mediation by metapragmatics; the logical presupposition and entailment relations of explicit metapragmatic propositions. Rhematic iconic qualisigns and the qualia of realia. The problem of studying nondegenerate icons as distinct from emblems (generally discursively saturated conventional iconic textual elements). Emblematicity as a key mode of naturalizing (essentializing) linguistic and cultural forms; the emblems of identity through which we inscribe ourselves as social beings. The question of text vs. context: from standing-for in denotation to standing-within (mediating) in social cause-and-effect. Two kinds of texts are implied by these relational properties, what we will come to term denotational text ( what was/will-have-been said ) and interactional text ( what was/will-have-been done ). Metapragmatic discourse describing text-in-context vs. metapragmatic function establishing indexicality and thus distinguishing text from context. Conventions for representation of praxis via grammatically well-formed text-sentences comprising narrative text of metapragmatic discourse yield intuitions of volitional agentivity in purposive-functional 1 speech acts. Texts of social praxis interactional texts gel processually as such at a functional 2 level, becoming cotextually internally structured and thence differentiated from contexts. By contrast, the Enlightenment tradition of ethno-metapragmatic theorizing in Euro-American academic culture has presumed upon the reflective, representational inertness of denotational discourse in seeking to explain the resulting puzzle of the social effects and effectiveness of discourse: constativity and performativity (Austin); intentionality and implicature (Grice). J. L. Austin s theory of performativity to explain what-is-done in-andby discursive interaction. The concept of performativity as conventional ( Legisign ) or institutional consequentiality of utterance: the parsing of interactional text by projecting onto it grammatical utterance-form in denotational textsentences. The Austinian and like theories of constative vs. performative utterances; locutionary illocutionary perlocutionary utterance- acts and the forces they bring to bear on the social world so as to bring about

10 10 effects in it. Why this is a denotationally reductionist, fetishistic folk theory (cf. Trobriand gardeners, Aguaruna hunters). The taxonomy of act-types and the problem of metapragmatic descriptors in explicit primary performative [EPP] construction-types. Delocutionary verbs (Benveniste) and the sociohistorical specificity of lexicalization of metapragmatic descriptors; the growing edges of concepts of illocutionary types. Problems for an agentive model of meaningfulness that depends on taxonomically clear intentionalities of the communicating individual indexed by the metapragmatic predicate within textsentence scopes of denotational text. Accounting for pragmatic paradigms of illocutionary forms (Searle s illocutionary force indicating devices [IFIDs] ) that necessitate direct and indirect speech acts, with the explicit primary performative the most direct. The problem of locating intentionality in cooperative and collective speech acts; in much ritual speech. The more adequate understanding of the performative text-sentence as ritual formula uniting explicit, pseudo-predicating metapragmatic discourse and indexicalities of role inhabitance in ritual acts. EPPs are ritual oneliners with reflexive metapragmatic calibration so as to figurate on the plane of interactional textuality what they denote on the plane of denotational textuality: sense perlocutions (Sadock). EPPs and the flux of metapragmatic verb-stem lexicalization over time. Further denotationally reductionist theories in the Fregean tradition to cope with the plenitude of interactional effects of what is literally denoted in interactional context: Gricean intuitions of implicature vs. theories of denotational use in social action. The Gricean maxims and normative denotational information-flow under propositional regimentation. (Speaker) functional 1 purposivity in, and (addressee) functional 2 interpretability of violating maxims and triggering implicatures. The problem of the associability of particular text-sentence forms or other specific denotational material with particular implicatures. Conventionality vs. contextual contingency in an empirical view of discursive interaction. Can conventional implicature be differentiated from Gricean meaning nn? Can conversational implicature be at all determined non-posthoc? So-called implicatures constitute a poor way to get at indexical characteristics of language form relevant to interactional textuality. Readings

11 11 Classics:!Peirce, Charles Sanders. Collected papers, vol. 2, Elements of logic, sec ; ; [N.B.: section numbers, not pages]!austin, John L. How to do things with words, lectures 1-2, 5, 7-8, Grice, H. Paul. *Logic and conversation. In, idem, Studies in the way of words, ch. 2, *Meaning, ch. 14, !Meaning revisited, ch. 18, !Silverstein, Michael. Metapragmatic discourse and metapragmatic function. In Lucy, RL: Lyons, Semantics, I.: ch.4, esp. sec.4.2, !Agha, LaSR, ch. 1. Mertz & Parmentier, SM: Mertz (1-19);!Parmentier (23-48). */!Parmentier, Richard. *Peirce divested for nonintimates. In idem, Signs in society [SiS], 3-22, 1993.!Peirce s concept of semiotic mediation, 23-44, [= same paper as in SM]. Naturalization of convention, , 198. Bourdieu, Pierre. Language and symbolic power, ch. 3 Giglioli, LaSC: Searle (136-54). Searle, John R. Speech acts, ch. 3. Sadock, Jerrold. Speech Acts. HoP, !Hancher, Michael. The classification of cooperative illocutionary acts. LinS (1979). Lee, TH: chh. 2; 3. *Ervin-Tripp, Susan. Is Sybil there? The structure of American English directives. LinS (1976). Hill, Jane H. Read my article: Ideological complexity and the overdetermination of promising in American presidential politics. In Kroskrity, RoL: !Benveniste, Emile. Delocutive verbs. In idem, Problems of general linguistics [vol. 1 = PGL], ch. 23. Silverstein, Michael. The three faces of function : Preliminaries to a psychology of language. In Hickmann, SFA: Rosaldo, Michelle Z. The things we do with words: Ilongot speech acts and speech act theory. LinS (1982). Duranti, Alessandro. Intentions, self, and responsibility: An essay in Samoan ethnopragmatics. In Hill & Irvine, RE: ch. 1. Lyons, LS: secs Levinson, Pragmatics: secs ; ch.5. Oct HYPER-META-SEMIOTIC POESIS AND THE SELF- ENTEXTUALIZING AND HENCE PERFORMATIVE POWER OF RITUAL FORM: ANCHORING THE TEXT/CONTEXT BOUNDARY

12 12 Textuality and consequentiality: the poetics of text-in-context (entextualization/contextualization) in its functionally 1,2 full-tilt manifestation in ritual. Explicit poiesis and ritual form: differentiating the implicit metapragmatics of poetic function (Jakobson) in ritual events from the explicit metasemiotic hypertrophy of ritual appeal. Dynamic figuration as the diagrammatic (iconic) mode of ritual efficacy in cultural context. Roman Jakobson s poetic function understood as indexical cotextuality (signal-internal mutual contextualization) via real-space-time metricalization of unfolding text. Poetic function as the ultimate, if implicit metapragmatic of functional 2 determinacy by anchoring contextualizing indexicality in iconicity of context with maximally dense message form. Functional 1 contextualization thus depends on cotextualizing function 2. Metricalized text: contrasting grammatico-semantic principles of ordinal position in Saussurean syntagmatics vs. cardinal-measure principles of poetic pragmatics in entextualization real-space-time. Axis of selection paradigmatic equivalence vs. axis of combination syntagmatic equivalence. The inherently meta-semiotic calculation of tropic values of signs that emerges as a function of both. Laminations of principles of metricalized cotextuality and the illusion of dense, multi-dimensional textual objects. Achieving the architectonics of denotational entextualization as textual metapragmatics. Poetic composition by functional 1 design: practical bottom-up models (metrical parallelism and other kinds of ritual doggerel ). Metalanguage (metasemantic discursive form) vs. poetic language and their tension in denotational entextualization. The literal and the figurative. Metasemiotic hypertrophy as a trope of ritual s function 1 : Jakobsonian poetic function undergirding the tropological suggestion of the autonomy semiotic self-grounding of ritual text; ritual as a bounded spatiotemporalization of metasemiosis, underlying its causal efficacy. Metaphor and other constituent tropic figurations of the literal in dynamic spacetime: the architectonics of ritual as a tropic site claiming to autonomous cosmic power of cultural normativity (cf. Durkheim). Ritual is maximally effective interactional text-in-context: ritual action as a maximal poetics of cotextualization of tropes in a framework of minimal everyday, maximally cosmic contextualization invoking schemata of belief systems as metapragmatics. Ritual is the ne plus ultra of textuality

13 13 and effectiveness-in-(cosmic-)context. Indexical iconicity/iconic indexicality in dynamic figuration as the entextualization of ritual action. Dynamic figuration as indexical iconicity/iconic indexicality; its relation to folk intuitions of cause-and-effect performativity in cultural semiosis. Folk- or ethno-metapragmatic theorization of mystical intensional essences qualia in signs and/or in their users. Readings Classics: *Jakobson, Roman. Closing statement: Linguistics and poetics. In T. A. Sebeok, ed. Style in language, Sebeok, Thomas A. The structure and content of Cheremis charms. In Hymes, LiCS: Tambiah, Stanley J.!Form and meaning in magical acts. In idem, Culture, thought, and social action, *A performative approach to ritual, Foley, AL: *Keenan [=Ochs], Elinor. A sliding sense of obligatoriness: the polystructure of Malagasy oratory. Language in Society [LinS] (1973).!Caton, Steven C. Salaam tahiiya : Greetings from the highlands of Yemen. American Ethnologist [AE] (1986). Bauman & Sherzer, EES: ch.3, Fox (65-85;455-6);!ch.8, Irvine (167-91, ); ch.12, Sherzer (263-82; 461-4);!ch.17, Bricker (368-88) Parmentier, Richard. The political function of reported speech. In: Lucy, RL: [also in SiS, 70-97]. Hanks, William F. Sanctification, structure, and experience in a Yucatec ritual event. Journal of American Folklore (1984).!Perrino, Sabina M. Intimate hierarchies and Qu ranic saliva (tëfli): Textuality in a Senegalese ethnomedical encounter. JLA (2002).!Lempert, Michael. Discipline and debate (2012), ch.2, pp *Silverstein & Urban, NHD: ch. 11. Bauman (301-27). Briggs, DD: Brenneis (41-52);!Haviland ( ). *Brenneis, Donald L. Grog and gossip in Bhatgaon: Style and substance in Fiji Indian conversation. AE (1984) [= MoL ch.11]. Oct FROM RITUAL TO INTERACTION RITUAL: THE FUNCTIONAL CONSTITUENTS OF ORDINARY DISCURSIVE INTERACTION. What we do more generally when we communicate. Interactional text as an ensemble of coherence structures of consequential social action in

14 14 performance real-space-time. The problem, then, is to discern the dynamic figuration between denotational and interactional entextualization/contextualization in the poetics of everyday interaction: how what we say comes to count as what we do in interaction ritual. Denotational textuality and its functional partials. Referring and modally predicating via a deictically constructed envelope of anchors to the communicative event and its components. For language in particular, we have the intuition of talking about something as we engage in communication: Denotational function 1 as an unfolding structure of locating [indexing] referent(s) in universes of individuables and modally predicating states-of-affairs as true / false of them in some universe of imagined (im)possibility projected from the communicative context. Referential and modally predicational coherence across the time-course of discursive interaction. Referring and predicating as event-partials with appropriateness and effectiveness dimensions, particularly in respect of degrees and types of informational coherence. The organization of discourse as denotational text, an emergent, by degrees intersubjective structure of representational meaning. The concept of the text sentence as a realtime chunk of meaning-bearing form. Words and expressions in text sentences as the intuitive units of denotational form: the problem of token instantiation of lexemic unit-types in word- and expression-types. (To be resolved under Saussurean hypotheses about the sense of lexemes under grammatical analysis.) Deictic categories as abstract conceptual topologies concretely anchoring the referential and predicational material within their scope to the componential dimensions of the communicative event, to the ongoing, inprogress context of the hic-et-nunc [ here-and-now ]. Deixis as indexical denotation calibrating referents and predicables to roles, spatiality, temporality, event-coordination, etc. Ostension and extension of, and referring to, realia as individuables are consequential speech acts of mutual cognitive calibration. Singular definite reference: characterizing a referent with an expression as an identifying description in context; the indexical presuppositions on the use of a referring expression (existence; quantifiability; describability-incontext of the referent [Searle s axioms of reference ]). Descriptive capacity of expressions used in context and concepts of intensional descriptive backing (characterizability conditions). Intuition of the distinction between successful and correct, or literal

15 15 and metaphorical reference forces a distinction between asymptotic norms of denoting and any given act of referring. The extension of an expression-type, the doctrine of its literal denotation, the extension of an expression-token on an occasion of use. Predication as a speech act partial. Predicating states-of-affairs of referents, relative to inhabited roles in discursive interaction and relations to role-structures of other events. Intensional nature of predication, the communicative act of making-critical to interactional textuality of the truth (or falsity ) of a (sometimes very complex) characterizability condition applicable to one or more denotata, among them at least one referent of the utterance-event. Epistemic and other modal calibrations of predication with respect to the ongoing phenomenal experience of the communicative event. Indexical categories of ontological and epistemological orientations of communications-event participants relative to which predication constitutes a representation of states-of-affairs. (Implications for voicing / footing / stance, as we shall see.) The assumptions of text-sentence unitization of denotational discourse and the typology of predicate types as characterizability conditions; minimal but no maximal predication types in respect of referents. Predicate types in grammatical systems in relation to lexical verb types. Asymmetric default distribution of denotata-types as arguments of predicate-types. The problem of the intension of an expression-type: doctrines of sense. Sense presumed upon in referring and predicatding as the decontextualized descriptive backing associated with word- and expression-types. The more particular Saussurean hypothesis of (autonomous) grammaticosemantic structure Peircean thirdness or true symbolism we shall term it as what underlies the intuition of sense for common nouns, verbs, etc., and the phrasal expressions based on (constructionally headed by ) them, whether used in referring or in predicating. The functional universe of what goes on in creating denotational text. Deixis, indexicality and the layers of semantic and pragmatic signs that constitute denotational communication. The ever emergent nature of denotational text. Poetic chunking of information structure and the textually determined distribution of types of linguistic forms; lamination ( syncretism ) of semanticogrammatical and pragmaticogrammatical categories in combinatoric linguistic forms. Intuitions of topicality in relation to the referring/predicating cline, and the formal machinery in language for indicating this. Minimal complete denotational unit and the reconstructibility of discourse as a flow of such

16 16 segments as default metricalizations. Notions of default mapping across structural levels of denotational [= referential and predicational] cohesion: theme/rheme, relative to textual segments; topic/comment relative to textsentence segments; [topic]/focus relative to clausal structures in textsentences. Topicalization devices within text-sentences and topicmaintenance devices to mark continuity of topic. Denotational information [ what-is-said ] mediated by a textual organization along multiple deictic dimensions. Text sentence length chunks of precipitated denotational text vs. the interactionally relevant organization of conceptual import into a virtual poetics via deixis. The metapragmatic function 2 of virtual or implicit poetics of deictic pseudometricalization vs. the real or explicit poetics of fully ritual performance. Intuitions of coherence [= meaning ] of denotational text must be translated into poetic cohesion [= co-textuality] structures for analytic purposes. The multiple possible poetic parsings-in-progress in actual realtime interaction; the incompleteness (= lack of final interpretant ) of any such parsings vs. the necessity of some sufficient degree and kind of parsing for making denotational text the basis for participation in an interactional text. When is enough enough (relative to interactional textuality-in-the-making)? Readings *Searle, John R. Speech acts, ch. 4; ch. 7, sec. 7.2; ch.5, secs Levinson, Stephen. Pragmatics, ch.2. Lyons, John. LS, chh. 3; 5;6(;7);!10. *Lyons, John. Semantics, ch. 7, only.!carlson, Gregory. Reference. HoP, Quine, Willard V. Ontological relativity. Journal of Philosophy (1968), esp. pt. I. Benveniste, Emile. *The nature of pronouns. In Problems of General Linguistics [PGL], vol. 1, ch. 20;!On subjectivity in language, ch. 21; Temporal relations in the French verb, ch. 19. *Jakobson, Roman. Shifters, verbal categories and the Russian verb, secs. 1-2 only. In idem, Selected writings, vol. 2, !Levinson, Stephen C. Deixis. HoP, Agha, LaSR, ch. 6. Hanks, William F. The indexical ground of deictic reference. In Duranti & Goodwin, RC: !Gundel, Jeanette K., et al. Cognitive status and the form of referring expressions in discourse. Language (1993).

17 17!Brown, Gillian & Yule, George. Discourse analysis, ch.3, secs ; ch. 4; ch.5, secs ; ch. 6. Silverstein & Urban, NHD: Haviland, Mid-Quarter Essays due as ed MS-Word attachments by 7 November. [Prompts distributed 31 October.] Oct MAPPING DENOTATIONAL (EN)TEXT(UALIZATION) INTO INTERACTIONAL (EN)TEXT(UALIZATION) Adjacency-pair structures and the conventionalization of how denotational routine counts as the performance of speech acts. Linear adjacency pair sequences vs. the hierarchical, constituent-like structurings of relevant role inhabitance in social action: structure within within structure generated in local, temporally-bound (earlier-to-later) interactional sequences. Complex, dynamic participation frameworks even in one-participant interactional texts, where role-inhabitance anchors hierarchical structures that define pre- and post- sequencings, insertion sequences, crosstalk, by-talk (Goffman), etc. In addition to explicit metricalizations (turn-taking; parallelism; repetition; etc.) deictic topologies of pseudo-metricalization of denotational textsegments, its virtual poetics, underlie the dynamic figurations by which social events of discursive interaction ( what-is-done ) can be managed as interactional texts emergent from what-is-said. Goffmanian footing can be understood via the mediating role that denotational text plays in interaction. The implications of footing for achieving the role alignment of the self to (an)other(s) in laminated [=simultaneously in effect] frames of participation [= orderly inhabitance of relational roles] serially introduced into discursive interaction. The sometimes complex structures of lamination and their realtime shifts in the course of discursive interactions in participation frames. The establishment of relevant identities in relation to invocation of cultural knowledge of statuses and contextual roles. Indexically voicing identities by the use of elements of pragmatic paradigms with socially indicative effects. The contextual effects of accreting and transforming identities in interaction, and the generation of diagrammatic equivalences across various types of partitions and seriations of categories in social space. The experience of how various kinds of person communicates and presents self in everyday life in genres of communicative events, and the formation of ethno-metapragmatic ideas about these phenomena as status norms.

18 18 Thus: social cognition as reflexive knowledge of norms for how denotational textuality maps into interactional textuality in characteristic ways at particular sites of social interaction. Readings Classics:!Brown, Roger & Gilman, Albert The pronouns of power and solidarity, in Style in Language, ed. T. A. Sebeok, pp Geertz, Clifford. Linguistic etiquette. In idem, The religion of Java, pp *Goffman, Erving. Footing. Semiotica (1979). [also in idem, Forms of Talk]!Schegloff, Emanuel. Notes on conversational practice: Formulating place. In Giglioli, LaSC: Schiffrin, Deborah. Jewish argument as sociability. LinS (1984). Lee, David A., & Peck, Jennifer J. Troubled waters: Argument as sociability revisited. LinS (1995).!Agha, LaSR, ch. 7. Hill, Jane H. The voices of Don Gabriel: Responsibility and self in a modern Mexicano narrative. In: D. Tedlock & B. Mannheim, eds., The dialogic emergence of culture, *Kiesling, Scott F. Now I gotta watch what I say : Shifting constructions of masculinity in discourse. JLA (2001).!Kiesling, Scott F. Stances of Whiteness and hegemony in fraternity men s discourse. JLA (2001). Kiesling, Scott F. Dude. American Speech (2004). Silverstein & Urban, NHD: *Silverstein (81-105); *Irvine (131-59);!Mertz (229-49). Piller, Ingrid. Identity constructions in multilingual advertising. LinS (2001). Haviland, John B. Projections, transpositions, and relativity. In: Gumperz & Levinson, RLR, *Silverstein, Michael. The improvisational performance of culture in realtime discursive practice. In Keith Sawyer (ed.), Creativity in performance, Agha, Asif. Tropic aggression in the Clinton-Dole presidential debate. Pragmatics (1997).!Lempert, Michael. The poetics of stance: Text-metricality, epistemicity, interaction. LinS (2008).

19 19 Haviland, John B. Mu xa xtak av: He doesn t answer. JLA (2010). Shoaps, Robin A. Pray earnestly : The textual construction of personal involvement in Pentecostal prayer and song. JLA (2002). Nov 3 [Mon] 5 THE TWO FACES OF THE SENSE OF WORDS AND EXPRESSIONS: BAKHTINIAN ENREGISTERMENT VS. SAUSSUREAN STRUCTURALISM Two views of the community of use of denotational code: in terms of sociolinguistic enregisterment vs. in terms of implicitly shared norm of morpho-syntactic form. Register as a criterion of indexical coherence in denotational text, an implicit meta-pragmatic. Grammar as a criterion of categorial co-occurrence of constituents of the referring and modally predicating sentence, an implicit meta-semiotic of true symbolism. The register concept connects aspects of the entextualization and contextualization of denotational form with social stereotypy, an ethnometapragmatic model of social differences indexed in-and-by use of words and expressions. Bakhtin termed this state of the language community heteroglossia. The Bakhtinian concept of voicing elaborated from analysis of quoted utterance within the metapragmatic frame of narration; the role-inhabitance within the narrated universe and the role-inhabitance within the narrating universe. Heteroglossia ( enregistered sociolinguistic variability) as a narrative resource for indexing social differences of identity and interest. Explicit metapragmatic discourse vs. implicit metapragmatic discourse in the Bakhtinian view; direct, indirect, and free-indirect discourse types. Congruence and noncongruence of alignment of role-inhabitances across narrated/narrating universes figurated by stylistic usage. Heteroglossia as a metapragmatic resource for creating identity in relation to implicit, normative dialogic pair-parts: the implication of group membership across frames and the fashioning of social identities. Bakhtinian double voicing and the polyphonic nature of narrative. The discursive emergence of voice in two or more dialogues in dialectic relationship: an explicit one within, and (an) implicit one(s) across or over interactional textualities. The ethnographic study of voicing a self across interactional events. Persona and identity across discursive-interactional occasions. The intuitions of self hood in terms of the indexical processes of voicing in explicit and implicit first-person narratives. Macro-sociological dimensionalities of identity and the dialectics of their renewal and transformation through genred communication. Privileged

20 20 (ritual) sites of identity construction and transformation through denotational enregisterment, and the authenticity of identity. How identity is projectable into macro-social space. Bakhtinian senses of word and expression types essentially link them to discursive processes of enregisterment and thence to social differentiation of groups according to stereotypically projectable or ascribed structures of knowledge (later to be known as -onomic knowledge) they indexically invoke in-and-by one s use of tokens of them in entextualization-incontext. Within Peircean semiotics, Saussurean semiology can be seen as an empirically workable account of the true symbolic partials of the significance ( meaning ) of denotational signs-in-use. Structuralism is, thus, an hypothesis about a model of-and-for the symbolic character of cultural (linguistic) semiosis in the context of semiotics based in particular on the Lockean construal of denotational language. Structuralism s unique distributional method, syntagmatics determining paradigmatics, and thus structuralism s [system-] relative motivation of Saussurean senses ( arbitrary and conventional intensional categories of denotation) as the operative concepts of verbally mediated thought. Saussurean sense emerges as a property associable with linguistic sign types within a structure termed langue. Langue is deduced as the object of interest at the intersection of multiple dichotomous theoretical distinctions. The logic of the Saussurean arguments about: etymological token discontinuity vs. type continuity of form meaning pairings over temporal intervals; words-for-things denotational nomenclaturism vs. [ lexemes ]- for- concepts [indexical, iconic] motivation vs. arbitrariness of signification as a fundamental postulate; absolute (motivation) vs. [system-] relative (motivation); signification vs. value (valence); lexical [signification] vs. grammatical; real-time and real parole vs. systemic and virtual langue ; syntagmatic relations experienceable in præsentia vs. paradigmatic ( associative ) relations experienceable only in 20otential. The two orders of Saussurean temporality: diachrony vs. synchrony. The functional execution of langue in the realtime of parole, and the historical vicissitudes of langue phonetic law, analogy, etc. in the collective experience of the community of users. (Pay attention to the Saussurean allegory of the chess game and its multiple rhetorical uses and implied users!)

21 21 Saussurean distributionalism (methodological autonomism with respect to grammatical form) vs. the quest for the nature of sense in verbally coded conceptualization: valence of sign-types one in relation to another vs. sense as the emergently signified of a valence-bearing signifier. Postulated restrictively linear concatenative structure of signs in complex grammatical forms (the syntagmatic ) vs. the analytic implication of associative [= paradigmatic ] relations of signs. Instantiable ( real ; in præsentia ) syntagmatics vs. analytic ( virtual ; in potential ) paradigmatics. The resulting hypothesis that members of paradigms share components of sense and are in determinate sense -relations one with another. Saussurean proportional analogies at the center of the theory: differences of signifier [ form ] correlated with differences of signified [ meaning ]. Frustration of this ideal in actually occurring natural languages and the motivation of planes of analysis: (I.) phonology; (II.) morphology syntax; [(III.) sense -semantics]. Infinite productivity of certain analogies and the concept of levels of structure as a minimax solution. Compositionality of Saussurean sense and the attribution of senses to specific linguistic forms, esp. lexemes as members of grammatical (distributional) classes. Grammatico-semantic classes. Lexemes in langue vs. words and expressions in denotational text in parole. Grammar as implicit metasemantics for the [Saussurean] sense component of words and expressions. Readings Classics: *Bakhtin, Mikhail M. Discourse in the novel. In idem, The dialogic imagination, only.!voloshinov, Valentin N. Marxism and the philosophy of language, pt. II, ; pt. III, ch. 3, Benveniste, Emile. Saussure after a half-century. In PGL, vol. 1, ch. 3; The nature of the linguistic sign, ch. 4;!The levels of linguistic analysis, ch. 10. *Saussure, Ferdinand de. Course of general linguistics, Intro., chh. 2-5; pt. I, chh. 1-2; pt. II. Agha, LaSR, chh.!2; *3; 5. Wortham, Stanton. Narratives in action: ch.1-3, 5.!Wortham, Stanton E. F. Mapping participant deictics: A technique for discovering speakers footing. Journal of Pragmatics (1996). Ochs, Elinor, and Capps, Lisa. Narrating the self. Annual Review of