January SLA column

[Jim Wilce]

Dear linguistic anthropologists:

Here is the column for January.  I have a few hours in which to make
changes if you have suggestions.

All the very best,

Jim


SOCIETY FOR LINGUISTIC ANTHROPOLOGY (Contributing Editors: Jim Wilce and
Cyndi Dunn)
	This last column I (JW) will edit contains my selective and
unofficial reportage on the 1999 annual meetings, and my historical musings
on the state of our subdiscipline.
We can use a 1970 essay by Dell Hymes, pointing out five different
contributions "linguistic method" can make to "ethnography," to measure
some changes in linguistic anthropology.  Linguistic method, first,
"facilitates," i.e., provides ethnographic access to an unfamiliar people.
Whether it is because they are doing their fieldwork "at home" or they rely
on the work of other scholars of language to ease them into learning to
speak in a new community, I'd say fewer graduate students rely on
"linguistic methods" in this way today.  The second, data-"generating,"
function of linguistic method is still evident when, for example, Bourdieu
(1991) uses Labov to make some of his points; investigators of language
provide grist for others' mills.  Whenever we see ethnographic texts
sprinkled with native terms used as metonyms for insiders' categories or
knowledge, we are seeing the third function, "validating" the
ethnographer's status.  But such use of native terms out of their speech
contexts is rightly criticized from both postmodern and empiricist
standpoints.  As for the fourth or fifth uses of linguistic method,
linguistic anthropologists are, by definition, uniquely qualified. At the
turn of the millennium, we continue to offer "penetrating" insights (using
linguistic methods for "Šreaching deeper, commonly tacit, levels of thought
and pattern" [much in evidence at the 1999 meetings' panels]) and
foundational visions (using linguistic insights to build social theory) for
the broader discipline, and to learn from it as well.  As an example of the
latter, linguistic models of "performativity" are spawning ever more
culture-theoretic insights through the work of Judith Butler and Kira Hall,
among others.
	Let me pursue further the continuity and discontinuity between the
themes and methods we pursue at the turn of the millennium and those
characterizing linguistic anthropology in the 1960's.  In broad terms, the
types of work represented in the Gumperz and Hymes collections of 1964 and
1971 are still with us.  Those of us who cross-identify as sociolinguists
tend to analyze biggish data sets and use some tried-and-true methods.  I
am struck by the way the matched guise procedure developed by Lambert in
the 1960's is being used in the Ukraine in the 1990's by Laada Bilaniuk, as
it was by Woolard in Catalonia in the 1980's.  Conversation analysis (CA)
has collected new adherents; anthropological practitioners have examined
taped conversations in languages of Asia and Oceania. Although those who
include bodies-in-social-space in their analysis of talk might be framing
their work in relation to different theories, 1960's concerns-with the
coordination of speech and movement and the intersubjective production of
acts and meanings-are evident in recent work.  Some of us still study
genres of verbal art, giving new attention to performance and genre as
theoretical constructs; our theorizing of both performativity and
performance becomes "foundational" for social sciences.  Whether or not
they foreground continuities with work by Bernstein or Gumperz, some
contemporary linguistic anthropologists work at the intersection of class,
locality, power, solidarity, and linguistic codes-increasingly in
multiethnic and multilingual societies.  Furthermore, 1950's rumors of the
death of "the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis" have turned out to be greatly
exaggerated; the '80's and '90's have witnessed the publication of quite a
few volumes addressing linguistic relativity.  The popularity of Pinker's
Language Instinct , with its rather unconstrained critique of Whorf has,
perhaps, contributed to Whorf's ongoing relevance for linguistic
anthropologists, even as they may critique his work.  Research on
children's use of language, pioneered by Ervin-Tripp, evolved into
increasingly ethnographic studies; Ochs, Schieffelin, and their students
have fleshed out the paradigm of "language socialization."  Gender was not
a clear focus in the early Gumperz and Hymes collections, but issues around
language and gender have certainly focused much of our energy since then.
Investigators have turned from simple correlations to deconstructing gender
categories and exploring gender performances, always linked with class and
other "variables."
	I have framed this history as one of continuity.  Stephen O.
Murray's Theory Groups and the Study of Language in North America  includes
some apt warnings about constructing such visions of continuity.  But I
have larded my references to continuity with notes of new departures.  In
making a transition to what is very current news as I write (just after the
annual meetings), let me move from theory to practical reifications of it
in the textbooks we use.  The state of the books we teach with is a measure
of the state of our art.  Until 1997 there was only one textbook-Nancy
Hickerson's-whose title was simply Linguistic Anthropology.  Duranti's was
the second.  The fact that it was brought out by Cambridge, and in their
"red book" series on linguistics, says something about the status of the
subdiscipline.  It is also noteworthy that quite a few major
publishers-Cambridge, Oxford, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Routledge, to name a
few-publish outstanding series that include or are exclusively devoted to
linguistic anthropology, and other publishers regularly bring out
monographs by linguistic anthropologists.  A recent edited collection,
Natural Histories of Discourse (Silverstein and Urban, eds.), made its way
to the center of discourse in one 1999 AAA panel.  Let me speak more
generally about what the meetings accomplished or announced.

INFORMAL REPORT FROM THE 1999 ANNUAL MEETINGS
	My report will mix impressions from the SLA Board meeting, the SLA
business meeting, and some of the many excellent sessions organized by our
members.  At the 1998 meetings, a new student essay contest was
inaugurated.  In November 1999, the winners of the first SLA Student Paper
Award were announced:  co-authors Andrew Wong and Qing Zhang (Department of
Linguistics, Stanford University) received the award for their paper,
"Tongzhi men zhan qi Lai!: The Linguistic Construction of the Tongzhi
Community." Members of the Award Committee were Barbara LeMaster, Bambi B.
Schieffelin and Alessandro Duranti.
	The JLA changed editors in 1999, and the annual meetings included
updates from both editors.  Outgoing editor Judith Irvine reported that the
journal had received 19 submissions in the first part of the year.
Alessandro Duranti had received six more since assuming the editorship in
August.  At the SLA business meeting, then-President Duranti and Charles
Briggs reported on a survey of the role of linguistic anthropology in North
American departments (watch for a report in an upcoming AN issue).  Duranti
noted that SLA membership grew by about 20% this year.  There must be a
connection between this fact and the constant problem at the annual
meetings, viz., that key sessions are schedule in small rooms which, of
course, are bursting at the seams.  Briggs also mentioned a need for more
post-dissertation level linguistic anthropology grant submissions to the
NSF; certainly grants are key to the institutional strength of any research
agenda, including those our section believes in.  In addition to the NSF, I
would personally recommend that column readers whose work touches deafness,
medicine, or psychology seek research funding from one of the many
institutes and programs within the NIH.
	There is more good news regarding our institutional position.
Because of its increase in membership, the SLA was afforded three invited
session spaces at the meetings, which were filled with the double session,
"Real-Time Discourses of Whiteness: Linguistic Production of Identity and
Ideology," (Sara Trechter, organizer) and "The Relevance of Critique in
Discourse Analysis" (James Collins and Monica Heller, organizers).  In
addition, seventeen SLA-reviewed organized sessions were held, and eighteen
individual papers were organized into sessions.  To borrow the themes of
some of those panels, we are pioneering critical studies of communities of
interpretation and communities of style.  Outgoing program organizer
Barbara LeMaster handed a successful legacy to Laura Miller.  Those 1999
AAA Executive sessions which were organized by SLA members were highly
visible performances (with plenty of performative oomph, I'd say) of our
role in the whole discipline.  There is perhaps a danger (as there was
when, 30 years ago, linguistic anthropologists were so anxious to address
themselves to key themes in Chomsky's paradigm) that some will accuse us of
me-too-ism.  But linguistic anthropologists go far beyond that in
demonstrating how much we have to contribute to an understanding and
critique of "modernity" (see the executive session organized by Miyako
Inouye and Joel Robbins).  To the extent that we have been effectively
asserting the relevance of our terms, our "lexicon for the millennium" (the
forthcoming special issue of JLA that arose out of a 1998 AAA Executive
session) (including narrative "time telling," subject of Frank Proschan's
AAA Executive session), linguistic anthropologists might also be
influencing the terms of the debates important to anthropology as a whole.
	Elinor Ochs is now SLA President-elect.  Jill Brody continues as
SLA Secretary-Treasurer.  Ana Celia Zentella is one of the SLA Board's
members-at large.  The other, John Haviland, also serves on the AAA Human
Rights Committee, where he could help SLA members pursue concerns for
language rights, among others.  Pam Bunte has filled the linguistic
anthropology slot on the AAA Nominations Committee.  Congratulations to SLA
member Susan Gal not only on beginning her section presidency but on
becoming chair of Anthropology at U Chicago.   Congratulations also to SLA
members Jane Hill and Don Brenneis.  Without detracting from the four-field
perspective and contribution of the outgoing AAA President, Hill, and the
new President-elect, Don Brenneis, it is heartening to our section to have
representing anthropology as a whole.
	I close with reference to the SLA invited session on "The Relevance
of Critique in Linguistic Anthropology."  In the words of the discussant,
Mary Bucholtz, and presenter Jan Blommaert, the session asked "What is the
role of the historical, the economic, the political, in producing the
linguistic issues we seek to understand?  What is the role of the
linguistic in producing the historical, the economic, the political? How do
global processes shape local contexts and how, if at all, does the local
get to talk back?"  These are, it seems to me, new and vital questions for
our subdiscipline to be asking.  Other panels asserted that the critique of
referentialism has been made well, but that linguistic anthropology must
continue to press home the critique of personalist intentionalism as an
ideology of semiosis pervasive in academia and in our social worlds-an
ideological touchstone of modernity. The meetings give evidence that the
discipline is well positioned to carry on with this and other unfinished
items on our agenda.

CALL FOR PAPERS
The Center for Language, Interaction, and Culture Graduate Student
Association at UCLA and the Language, Interaction, and Social Organization
Graduate Student Association at UCSB call for papers for The Fourth Annual
Conference on Language, Interaction, and Culture to be held May 18-20, 2000
at UCLA.  Papers should address topics at the intersection of language,
interaction, and culture, and data should consist of naturally occurring
behavior. Potential methods include, but are not limited to, conversation
analysis, discourse analysis, and ethnographic methods.  Send 3 copies of a
500-1,000 word extended abstract of the paper, including title, a brief
description of methodology, and a description of the data, to arrive by
February 14.  No information identifying the author may appear in the
abstract. Send to: CLIC Graduate Student Association University of
California, Los Angeles Department of Applied Linguistics P.O. BOX 951531,
3300 Rolfe Hall Los Angeles, CA 90095-1531

-Useful addresses-
Susan Gal, President, SLA; Department of Anthropology, U Chicago, 1126 East
59th Street/Haskell Hall; Chicago, IL 60637; 773/702-2551
s-gal at uchicago.edu
Alessandro Duranti, Editor, Journal of Linguistic Anthropology,
aduranti at ucla.edu Department of Anthropology, UCLA; Los Angeles, CA
90095-1553.
Laura Miller, SLA Program Organizer, Dept of Soc and Anthro, Loyola U, 6525
North Sheridan Road, Chicago, IL 60626; lmille2 at luc.edu; 773/508-3469; fax
508-7099.
Society for Linguistic Anthropology listserve: sla at list.sscnet.ucla.edu
Cyndi Dunn, SLA column co-editor, (940) 565-3311, cdunn at unt.edu.
Richard Senghas, new SLA column co-editor and linganth e-mail list
administrator, owner- linganth at cc.rochester.edu or
richard.senghas at sonoma.edu.
Jim Wilce, Assistant Professor
Anthropology Department
Box 15200
Northern Arizona University
Flagstaff AZ 86011-5200

fax 520/523-9135
office ph. 520/523-2729
email jim.wilce at nau.edu
http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~jmw22/ (includes information on my 1998 book,
Eloquence in Trouble: The Poetics and Politics of Complaint in Rural
Bangladesh, ISBN 0-19-510687-3)
http://www.nau.edu/asian
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