Linguistic Anthropology and Popular Culture

[Christian Nelson]

Hal Schiffman wrote: "Is there not, instead, a tendency for popular culture to *reject*
our conceptions of language, and to substitute other conceptions? Are we complicit in
the construction of these popular ideas, or have we been simply ignored?"

Hal, I don't know if this fits in with your topic as you conceive it, but I would argue
that popular culture not only rejects some of our academic conceptions of
language/communication but that its conceptions frequently undercut, supress, etc.
academic ones. I would argue this based on my work, forthcoming in _Language and
Communication_, that argues communication researchers investigating compliance-gaining
as well as conversation analysts and ethnomethodologists are negatively affected by
their use of "popular" metaphors of language and communication. (Of course, I cite
Reddy's article on the "conduit" metaphor of language/communication.) What my paper
(among others), at least implicitly points out is that academicians are part of popular
culture, and so their writing naturally partakes of pop cultural conceptions embedded in
our very language about language and communication unless they study their own
linguistic/communicative practices. This means that communication scholars, linguistic
anthropologists, sociolinguists, etc., need to be reflexive in their research.

Talbot Taylor's work (as discussed in my forthcoming piece) also relates to your topic
in that he argues much of Western thought about language and linguistic understanding
arises from a "theorizing" of everyday understandings of language and communication.

Finally, Robert Craig (Communication, Univ. of Colorado) speaks to your specific
question more directly in one of the last ROLSIs (Research on Language and Social
Interaction)--the millenium issue. I know I've seen a paper or two further on this topic
but can't recall them now--perhaps Bob would have a bunch of cites for you.

Best,
Christian Nelson