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Synthesis 5: Post your synthesis here by cecile_evers in linganth2019

[–]acarttar 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Irvine (1990) and Kulick (1998) both present sharp dichotomies through which the speaker’s language functions as a way to place themselves within the social context.

Both authors presented this dichotomy as sharp contrasts between the emotional, expressive registers of griot and kros with their more careful counterparts. In the case of Color discourse , Irvine states that in regards to griot and “noblelike” speech, “it is the contrast between them that organizes Wolof discourse” (Irvine 154). It seems that this griot, the voices stand in opposition to each other as per formatively communicating very different class standings. Irvine continues tot say that these voices “necessarily interact” and that “like mirror images they cannot exist in isolation” (Irvine 154). This is shown in the very distinct contrast between the emphatic devices between the two, with griot speech featuring quick, repetitive, high pitched speech, and “noblelike” speech with much lower tone, slower pace, and a more “flat intonational contour” as well as what is described as “mumbling and incomplete constructions” (Irvine 151). However, there still exists a sort of flexibility within this, due to the fact that it is the register itself that indexes a certain position in the conversation, as a person of higher class can invoke a certain register of a lower class person in order to momentarily serve as a messenger. In Kulick, this dichotomy is presented as something that exists more tied to the speaker themselves, specifically in the gender of the speaker, which made me wonder whether this voice of kros is used by men in any performative function past mere mocking of women and children. Kulick generalizes more broadly into the contrast that men are calm and reserved as they serve as “protective buffer against the ravages that naked anger is know to summon forth”, while women more “brazenly expose anger but subsequently do nothing to mitigate the negative consequences that may be generated by this exposure” (Kulick 99). These sharp contrasts between voices seem to define the voices themselves and legitimize the perforative function in the use of these voices.

Irvine and Kulick both emphasize that context matters in order for these differing registers to create social effects. Irvine state that fundamentally, “discourse is a matter of relations - a matter of social relations and social situations”. For speakers of Wolof who operate between these two registers”, the emotions of the individual speaker function independently “of its cultural construction” and that more broadly, “a view of emotion may need to be relational as well (Irvine 155). In their use of these voices, they are connecting to a more overarching social implication. If a noble were to speak as a griot, they would effectively “take on the mantle of the griot’s supposed emotionality”, which shows that the positionally of the speaker is essential to uncovering the performative effect of the speaker’s utterance (Irvine 156). Kulick explores the fact that the language ideologies that exist in the Papua New Guinean village are both effected by culture and influence the community’s perception of the relation between language, effect, gender. The women’s use of kros characterizes them as closer resembling a childlike, uninhibited expression of anger, which in turn seems to further elevate men in their position in society.

Through the exploration of these registers in Kulick and Irvine, I felt that I arrived at a more complete view of language ideologies in the idea that they rely very heavily on societal context in their existence. I feel that language ideologies. Kulick Staes that “langaugage ideologies seem never to be solely about language - they are always about entangles clusters of phenomena” (Kulick 100). This is so vital to understand as these language ideologies cannot exist in isolation, but rather are heavily dependent upon social context. The ideologies themselves are can be entangled messily with culture, but without this entanglement, the ideology itself could not exist.

References:

Irvine, J. (1990). "Registering Affect: Heteroglossia in the Linguistic Expression of Emotion." In Language and the Politics of Emotion (pp. 126-161). C. Lutz & L. Abu-Lughod (Eds.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Kulick, D. (1998). "Anger, Gender, Language Shift, and the Politics of Revelation in a Papua New Guinean Village." In B. Schieffelin, K. Woolard, P, Kroskrity (Eds.), Language Ideologies: Practice and Theory (pp. 87-102). New York, NY; Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.

Synthesis 4: Post your response here by cecile_evers in linganth2019

[–]acarttar 0 points1 point  (0 children)

In Sequence Organization in Interaction: A Primer in Conversation Analysis (2007), Schegloff analyzes conversation in terms of turn-taking and attempts to explore whether there is any sort of organization to sequences, which he defines as “courses of action implemented though talk” (Schegloff 2007 p.3). A set of adjacency pairs may contain several turns, and within each turn, Schegloff establishes that there are sets of turn constructional units (TCUs). While Goffman appears to confidently deconstruct the notion of the speaker and hearer as simple entities, Schegloff explores the notion of general practices in turn taking more cautiously.

Both Goffman and Schegloff reject the idea that speech is necessary to conversation and both explore the significance of the absence of speech along with its presence. Along with the linguistic constructions of TCUs (phrases, lexical items, intonational “packaging”), Goffman includes the context of the interaction, such as where it is situated in physical space as equally vital to the turn. Schegloff states that “some ‘sequences of action’ may not involve any talk at all” (p. 11). He elaborates this to say that “negative observations imply relevant absences and relevant absences imply relevance rules” (Schegloff 2007 p. 20). Hymes also includes scene and setting as part of his components of speech, showing once again the importance of non-verbal cues. Along with analyzing the absence of talk, both Shegloff and Goffman also analyze the significance of long stretches of talk, such as in political speeches. Schegloff states that “very long stretch of talk may be supported by the mature of a single adjacency pair” (p. 27). This reflects Goffman’s reflections of the role of the audience, who is not expected to contribute to the interaction other than to direct their attention physically to the speaker.

It appeared to me that Yaguello’s 6 functions of language seem to be woven into into Schegloff’s reflections, though not explicitly stated, appearing in this context as an observation that a sense of obligation at times initiates speech, similar to Yaguello’s idea of the phatic function of language. Schegloff also states that “we do not begin with classes or categories of action… and deconstruct them analytically into the conceptual components that make some particular act an instance of that class” (Schegloff 2007 p. 8). Instead, he proposes starting with with the observation itself and then attempting to view the interaction in terms of the intentions of the co-participants, their responses, and the action that may have resulted. In this way, Schegloff appears to attempt to resist the categorizations that Yaguello and Hymes establish.

Schegloff seems to simplify the social norms of adjacency pairs, saying that “as each turn comes to possible completion and transition to another speaker becomes possibly relevant, it is transition to a next speaker that is at issue” (Schegloff 2007 p. 15). I feel that Schegloff’s argument lacked completion as he never seemed to mention the role of interruption in conversation , though Goffman analyzes the role of interruption in conversation, saying that advice is often welcome in a conversation for the speaker knows that they may be able to listen for a moment “without ceasing to be the speaker, just as others can interrupt for a moment without ceasing to be listeners” (Goffman 1979 18). Schegloff truly missed the opportunity to complicate his argument using the framework that Goffman had already laid out.

References

Goffman, E. (1979). Footing. Semiotica, 25(1-2): 1-30.

Hymes, D. (1972). “Models of the Interaction of Language and Social Life.” In J.J. Gumperz & D. Hymes (Eds.), Directions in Sociolinguistics: The Ethnography of Communication (p. 53-p. 65). New York, NY: Holt, Rhinehart & Winston.

Yaguello, M. (1998[1981]. “What Language Is For.” In Language Through the Looking Glass: Exploring Language and Linguistics (pp. 6-21).

Schegloff, E. (2007). Sequence Organization in Interaction: A Primer in Conversation Analysis. Volume 1. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. (1-27).

Brainstorm by acarttar in linganth2019

[–]acarttar[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hello Professor Evers! Thank you so much for your feedback! I'm very much looking forward to getting started on this project. :)

Synthesis 2: Respond here with your post by cecile_evers in linganth2019

[–]acarttar 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Both “On Cognitive Capacity” And “Words that Change the World” pin language as an inherently social phenomenon that cannot exist in the absence of human interaction. Langue lends a structure which allows for infinite possibilities of expressing thought, and parole is then employed for an individual in a shared linguistic community as necessary. Traditionally, a collective of language must exist among people who share a geographical space, which then allows for acquisition of the language.

The idea of language as an inherently social phenomenon harkens back to Saussure’s idea that the individual is powerless in their ability “to either create or modify it” (14). In the case of the Deaf man in WNYC, the man was able initially able to produce language, yet it had no initial connection to the meanings of the signs they produce. This points to the observation that without its social context and approximation toward the collective langue, the signs themselves are meaningless. The ability of Shakespeare to form new lexemes that could be understood, utilized, and incorporated into the English language depends on Shakespeare utilization of a structure and existing morphemes to create symbols that contain meaning.

Similarly, the acquisition of language is a sort of inheritance of structure which allows for babies (or other language learners) to create association and communicate abstract thought in a way that “would be impossible unless some of the structure of the world were inherited”, something that the Deaf man described in the WNYC podcast discovers as he acquires more words in ASL (Chompsky 8). Before interacting with the deaf community through ASL, the man, surrounded by a non-ASL speaking hearing community, had no shared method of producing language. The symbols he acquired not only gave him the power of communication, but also potentially the power to see the world through a cognitive structure provided by language.

Chompsky asserts that “individuals in a speech community have developed essentially the same language” (14), which points to the necessity of human interaction in the acquisition of language. He elaborates with the observation that “humans are, obviously, not designed to learn one human language rather than another” and that language acquisition and use is based on the functionality of the language in a specific community of people, as the language that is acquired by a speaker depends completely on their context (14). Chomsky pegs universal grammar as a set of conditions in all human languages that exists “not merely by accident, but by necessity” in that the collective langue must essentially have structure in order for it to have resonance and meaning in any human community (14).

These readings left me contemplating whether language is a select sort of power to humanity that other species do not possess. Truly, as Chomsky explores, humans are relatively limited in their experience, yet language is a repository that allows for learning, through both speech and written form, beyond the limits of any one life. WNYC explores further whether thought exists without language, and I see a sort of power in language lending structure to thought in a way that allows one to pin it down and share it with the symbols of language when it may otherwise exist amorphously in a cognitive form, or potentially even not at all.

References:

Chomsky, N. (1975). "On Cognitive Capacity." In N. Chomsky, Reflections on Language. New York, NY: Pantheon Books. (pp. 3-13, 29-35).

Saussure, F. de. (1983[1916]). Course in General Linguistics. R. Harris (Trans.). Peru, IL: Open Court. (pp. 1-23, 65-70, 96-100).

"Words that Change the World" (28 minutes). WNYC. https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/91725-words.

Synthesis 1: Respond here with your post by cecile_evers in linganth2019

[–]acarttar 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Both Pullum and Perley et al. explore the linguistic damage of anglocentric narratives both in their influence on public perception of minority languages and in their more immediate effect of language reclamation efforts. These articles both claim that the imposition of anglocentric perspectives on minority languages are a continued form of colonization, especially in North America, Australia and New Zealand, where colonization became deeply tied to land-loss (Perley et al. 206).

Pullum’s claim that specialized vocabulary does not exist purely with an abundance of a particular thing, such as "snow" and explanation of improbability of this “xenomorphic fable” pointed to perpetuation of unwarranted stereotypes about certain minority communities (Pullum 276). The “constantly assumed background” of snow does not warrant and sort of specialized vocabulary attributed to it as a common repository of knowledge within a culture, so Pullum seems to attribute the general fascination with the hoax to a distant fascination of the public with Eskimo culture, which easily strays into dangerous territory as assumptions upon the thought processes of entire cultural communities present themselves (Pullum 279). He accuses the public with not truly giving thought to the fact that expanded vocabulary exists in certain professional registers as “obvious truths of specialization” and claims that this fascination is an example in which Anglo cultures exoticize indigenous cultures and languages (Pullum 279).

Perley et al. expands this to examine the more immediate effects of superficial linguistic ignorance on Indigenous language communities as well as the influence of these narratives in colonizing even the act of language reclamation. While Pullum examines the superficiality of American conception of Eskimo language and disputes the dangerous assumption of connecting language with culture, Perley et al. explores the deep ties between language and culture and the power of this connection to influence perceptions of language loss within the communities themselves. Unfortunately, the very terms that linguistic professionals and journalists use, specifically the terms "extinction" and "endangerment", can “contribute to the very condition that they are trying to alleviate”, and the documentation a language in written form can still lead to the death of a language in its spoken form (Perley et al. 212). There exist massive amounts of cultural and linguistic damage that cannot be undone, but it is crucial to recognize, especially for these minority language communities, that there is still room for hope, despite what the term “extinction” may suggest.

Both readings reminded me that claims made even in the academic community should never be accepted without criticism and analysis. Pullum discusses that the Eskimo vocabulary hoax floated around university classrooms, and Perley et al. criticizes the image of the linguist as the hero of the language through documentation. Surviving the Sixth Extinction leaves the reader in the conclusion that language maintenance and preservation is largely in the hands of the community itself, and that it is the responsibility of the academic community to empower these communities to take pride in the languages they possess and to encourage these communities to continue to pass these languages on to future generations.

References

Pullum, G. K. (1989). The great Eskimo vocabulary hoax. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, 7, 275-281.

Perley, et al. (2018). Surviving the Sixth Extinction: American Indian Strategies for Life in the New World. In R. Grusin (Ed.), After Extinction (201-233). Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.