FW: LAST CFP: Sots-speak: Regimes of Language Under Socialism. (Princeton, May 20-22, 2011). Deadline: Feb.17.

[Woolard, Kathryn]

-----Original Message-----
From: Roland Moore <rolandmo at PACBELL.NET>
Reply-To: An H-Net List for the Society for the Anthropology of Europe
<H-SAE at H-NET.MSU.EDU>, Roland Moore <rolandmo at PACBELL.NET>
Date: Wed, 9 Feb 2011 20:23:26 -0800
To: "H-SAE at H-NET.MSU.EDU" <H-SAE at H-NET.MSU.EDU>
Subject: LAST CFP: Sots-speak: Regimes of Language Under Socialism.
(Princeton, May 20-22, 2011). Deadline: Feb.17.

>From: "Serguei A. Oushakine" <oushakin at Princeton.EDU>
>
>CALL FOR PAPERS
>
>SOTS-SPEAK: REGIMES OF LANGUAGE UNDER SOCIALISM
>May 20-22, 2011
>
>PRINCETON UNIVERSITY
>DEPARTMENT OF SLAVIC LANGUAGES AND LITERATURES
>
>http://slavic.princeton.edu/events/calendar/detail.php?ID=2027
>
>The attempt to build communism in Eastern Europe was accompanied by the
>development of a distinctive language paradigm, first in the Soviet
>Union, then‹by a process of cultural translation and local adaptation‹in
>the satellite  states of the Socialist Bloc. The official discourse
>possessed its own ³speech genres² (tied to specific communicative
>contexts, social roles, and political  tasks), easily recognizable
>rhetorical patterns and lexical peculiarities. It is intuitively obvious
>that this discourse, which we provisionally label ³sots- speak,² was
>instrumental in legitimizing and perpetuating the political system, in
>shaping individual psychologies and cultural expressions. However, our
>knowledge of its exact nature and practical existence remains sketchy, as
>the topic still awaits systematic research. The aim of this conference is
>to bring together scholars whose work helps shed light on the
>politico-ideological  idiom(s) of state
> socialism, so that we can begin to develop a sophisticated,
>multi-layered picture of this special universe of discourse. A deeper
>understanding of its constitutive linguistic features and the tendencies
>that  define its evolution represents a major desideratum on its own; yet
>we see this understanding as prerequisite for engaging in questions of
>broader cultural  significance and soliciting a range of
>(inter)disciplinary inquiries (sociolinguistics, social psychology,
>anthropology, philosophy, cultural and literary studies,  political
>science, etc.). The following questions merely suggest a few general ways
>in which to frame our investigation; each of the areas can be illuminated
> through analysis of specific topics:
>
>* What is the relation between the linguistic theories and utopias of the
>cultural avant-garde and the linguistic regimes of state socialism?
>
>* Can we isolate and analyze expressive features uniquely native to these
>regimes? What are the stable rhetorical patterns and lexical inventories
>of sots-
>speak? What communicative functions do they serve?
>
>* What was the social reception of the ideological ³tongues² of socialism
>in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe? How can we study the dynamic
>between
>inherited mentalities and the novel linguistic paradigms?
>
>* What is the relationship between language and political power? What
>powers are invested or (assumed to reside) in language? How effective was
>official
>language in fulfilling the functions with which it was charged? How do we
>know? What determines this efficacy?
>
>* What is the relationship between signified and signifier in sots-speak,
>between ideological meaning and its material carrier? How does it change
>over
>time (the fading of meaning, the public¹s de-sensitization toward the
>appeal of ideologically charged language, etc.)?
>
>* How are social roles and identities concretely played and claimed in
>the use of official idiom (the performance Stephen Kotkin has called
>³speaking
>Bolshevik²)?
>
>* Does sots-speak presuppose a distinctive kind of relay between
>speaker/author and recipient/audience? What is the dynamic of stated and
>implied meaning in this discourse? How are unstated meanings coded and
>deciphered in specific discursive genres and situations?
>
>* What values (representational, stylistic, semantic) does sots-speak
>assume when it is taken up into artistic discourse?
>
>* What constitutes linguistic dissidence under state socialism? What are
>the subversive appropriations of the official idiom in everyday life,
>unofficial folklore,
>and artistic texts?
>
>* What has been the ³posthumous² fate of sots-speak? With what new
>value(s) has it been invested after the end of state socialism in Russia
>and
>Eastern Europe?
>
>We invite abstracts of no more than 300 words, accompanied by a short CV,
>to be submitted by February 17, 2011 to fried at ujc.cas.cz
>
>Inquiries regarding the conference¹s topic, organization, or submission
>process  should be directed to ppetrov at princeton.edu
>
>Those selected to give presentations will be contacted in early March,
>2011.
>
>All participants must submit a full version of their paper by April 22,
>2011; the  papers will be posted on the conference's website and remain
>available for the
>duration of the event.
>
>We expect to be able to offer a limited number of travel subsidies to
>participants from abroad.
>
>Program committee:
>   Petre Petrov (Princeton)
>   Mirjam Fried (Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague)
>   Eliot Borenstein (NYU)
>   Serguei Oushakine (Princeton)
>   Kevin Platt (University of Pennsylvania)
>
>http://slavic.princeton.edu/events/calendar/detail.php?ID=2027