LINGUIST List 9.1809

Sat Dec 19 1998

TOC: Michigan Discussions in Anthropology, Vol 13

Editor for this issue: Scott Fults <scottlinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. J. Dickinson, Linguistic Form and Social Action, MDIA Vol. 13

The editorial staff of Michigan Discussions in Anthropology, Vol. 13,
are pleased to announce the publication of "Linguistic Form and Social
Action". With this issue of Michigan Discussions in Anthropology we
join linguistically oriented anthropologists and anthropologically
attuned linguists who have, since the days of Sapir and Malinowski,
regarded language as constitutive of culture. We believe, however,
that although linguistic terminology has become part of our common
critical language, too often it merely serves as metaphor. Theorists
may deploy it to explain macro cultural phenomena but bypass the
opportunity to examine linguistic form. In the past decade the call
has come again to create a theoretical site encompassing fine-grained
linguistic analysis and the broader concerns of cultural anthropology,
in which grammar plays a key role in structuring social fields. The
papers in MDIA Volume 13, contributed by junior and senior scholars
with ties to the Linguistic Anthropology Program at the University of
Michigan, explore this set of issues from a range of theoretical and
methodological perspectives.

This volume is edited by graduate students affiliated with Linguistic
Anthropology at the University of Michigan. The program, established
by the Department of Anthropology in 1990, emphasizes the ethnographic
analysis of language within the larger context of social theory. We
seek to preserve the sense in which language is simultaneously a
formal system and one which is pragmatically deployed. Central to this
mission is a belief that the core concerns of cultural anthropology,
increasingly involving the analysis of 'discourse,' 'representations,'
and 'social action,' must also integrate analysis of linguistic
form. The papers in this volume integrate linguistic data and
ethnographic description and demonstrate rich microanalysis while
attending to the larger cultural context and to history. While the
articles stand on their own as examples of a new synthesis of
approaches to the study of linguistic form and social action, we also
hope that as a whole this volume will provoke further discussion of
the theory and practice of linguistically-oriented anthropology and
ethnographically-influenced linguistics.


For ordering information, please respond to this email, or visit: 

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~jherron/mdia13.html
 
 
CONTENTS

"Introduction"
Jennifer Dickinson and Mandana Limbert 

"Married to Dukha: Discourse Analysis of a Newar Woman's narrative of
suffering"
 Laura Kunreuther

"The power of the Drunk: Humor and Hegemony in China's Tibet"
Char Makley

"Ritual Language and Social Memory in a Chinese Secret Sworn Brotherhood"
Jean DeBernardi

"Do You Want to Go Forward? Turn Back! Etymology as National Defense in the
'New' Europe"
Penelope Papailias

"Sounding Country in Urbanizing Texas: Private Speech in Public Discourse"
Barbara Johnstone

"Purity and Power: The Geography of Language Ideology in Ukraine"
Laada Bilaniuk

"Pearls on the String of the Chinese Nation: Pronouns, Plurals, and
Prototypes in Talk about Identity"
Susan Blum

"On the Dialogic Emergence of 'Resistance': Participation Framing and
Collusion in a Prison Exit Interview"
James Herron

"Negotiating Meaning with the least (Collaborative) Effort"
Lesley Milroy

"Time, not the Syllables, Must be Counted': Quechua Parallelism, Word
Meaning, and Cultural Analysis"
Bruce Mannheim