Language Socialization and the Senses

[Nathaniel Dumas]

Thanks Dan! I forgot to mention I've seen that study--the papers just  
came out in Senses and Society, for those who are interested. I'm more  
curious about how the socialization part in naturally-occurring  
interactions work in making people cultural and institutional subjects  
who can (and cannot) sense in a particular way and also reproduce  
power through valued hierarchies of the senses. I could be wrong, but  
I think that is where we may be coming up short on in linguistic  
anthropology, due to our own biases towards the visual and aural  
senses (which is to be expected), and where the sociocultural  
anthropology discussions may be great interlocutors in pushing  
language socialization researchers to think about the roles of the  
other senses in making subjects.

On Jul 21, 2011, at 6:09 PM, Dan Slobin wrote:

> Check out mpi.nl for a big study on crosslinguistic difference in  
> lexicons of the senses at Max Planck Nijmegen.
>
> Sent from Dan's iPhone
>
> On Jul 21, 2011, at 21:03, Nathaniel Dumas <ndumas at LINGUISTICS.UCSB.EDU 
> > wrote:
>
>> Dear Colleagues,
>>
>> I hope everyone is well. Does anyone know of any studies that focus  
>> specifically on the language socialization of the senses? (i.e.,  
>> work that directly connects cultural ideas of the senses, as framed  
>> in the anthropology of the senses, to becoming a competent member  
>> of a community). As far as I know, there are tons of studies that  
>> use the concepts of professional vision and professional/lay  
>> hearing aspects. However, does anyone know of language  
>> socialization studies that also focus on how touch, smell, and  
>> taste (besides Ochs et al. 1996's "Socializing Taste," to a degree)  
>> are constituted as senses through language to newcomers and how  
>> these ideologically-laden senses are also shaped by language  
>> ideologies?
>>
>> Thank you in advance,
>> Nathaniel "Nate" Dumas

Nathaniel Dumas
UC President's Postdoctoral Fellow
Department of Linguistics
University of California, Santa Barbara
http://ucsb.academia.edu/NathanielDumas/About