column final

[Jim Wilce]

Dear colleagues:

This is the final draft I sent Susi Skomal over the weekend.  My apologies
for misspellings (especially Miyako Inoue's name) and omissions (especially
of a note of thanks to our outgoing President) in the previous version.
Please note, too, that my choice to mention only those books entitled
"Linguistic Anthropology" is in no way a slight to those who have written
other fine books we all have used over the years.

I can't promise that all of this will appear in our column in its present
form.  That's up to chief editor Skomal.

Very best regards,

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, fewer graduate students see the need for
"linguistic methods" today-missing insights such methods provide even to
native speakers.  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
ethnopoetics and 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 scheduled 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, who is the
contact for all who want to organize invited sessions (by Mar. 1; see her
address, below).  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.  We saw a stunning
assertion of that role in the contribution to an understanding and critique
of "modernity" made in the AAA Executive Session organized by Miyako Inoue
and Joel Robbins.  To the extent that we have been effectively asserting
the relevance of our terms-our "lexicon for the millennium"- linguistic
anthropologists are, we hope, not only reflecting the larger discipline's
debates but also be influencing the terms of those debates.  I am referring
not only to the forthcoming special issue of JLA (which arose out of a 1998
AAA Executive session) but to the rethinking of key terms like narrative as
"time telling" in Frank Proschan's 1999 AAA Executive session.
	Let me echo the sentiment of the SLA business meeting in gratitude
to outgoing SLA President Duranti for the effectiveness of his work for the
section; that will continue in his work on the AAA Executive.
Congratulations to Elinor Ochs, SLA's President-elect.  Jill Brody
continues as SLA Secretary-Treasurer.  Ana Celia Zentella continues as 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 (outgoing AAA President) and
Don Brenneis, the new AAA President-elect.  We don't want to claim that
they only work within linguistic anthropology-they do much more- but it is
heartening to our section to have them representing anthropology as a whole.
	I close with reference to the SLA invited session on "The Relevance
of CritiqueŠ."  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.

AES MEETINGS (Michael Silverstein, U Chicago)
	 At the spring 1999 Portland, Oregon meeting of the American
Ethnological Society, SLA mounted two excellent symposia.  I would urge SLA
members who are also AES members once again to think about our continuing
presence among other sociocultural anthropologists by organizing sessions
for AES (see the AES columns for information on theme and venue).  Note
that any of the 1999 AAA sessions described above might well have been an
outstanding contribution to AES as well.  Additionally, the AES, the
Canadian Anthropological Society/Socie'te' Anthropologique Canadienne, and
the Society for Cultural Anthropology are now arranging to hold a joint
Spring meeting in Montreal in early May, 2001 with the overall theme,
"Politics, Culture, and Inequality."  As organizer for SCA, I intend
focusing on matters of technologies, genres, and institutions of
communication as they inflect the experience of inequalities of one or
another sort.  Any and all ideas about how SLA interests and members might
join in this venture are welcome at m-silverstein at uchicago.edu.

CALLS 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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