AAA 2012 CFP: Languages of Democracy: Voice, Register and the Vernacularization of Democratic Discourse

[Elina Hartikainen]

Dear All, 

We are putting together a panel for the next AAA meeting that explores projects of 
democracy through the analytics of voice and register. We are still looking for one 
panelist. If you would be interested in participating please send a 
description/abstract of your paper to elina at uchicago.edu 

Submissions received by March 14th will be given preference. The panel abstract is 
below.


Thanks, 

Elina Hartikainen
Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Anthropology, University of Chicago
Pre-Doctoral Fellow, Carter G. Woodson Institute, University of Virginia


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Languages of Democracy: Voice, Register and the Vernacularization of Democratic 
Discourse

Organizers: Aaron Ansell (Monmouth University), Andrew Graan (Wake Forest 
University), Elina Hartikainen (University of Chicago/University of Virginia)

As liberal capitalism globalizes, vastly different political projects are framed as 
appeals to democracy. This panel asks how language practices rework 
democracy’s transcendent character to launch new political agendas and to 
invigorate or critique existing local social and political norms. Specifically, we ask 
how the dynamics of register and voice become key to processes of 
vernacularizing democracy. How do figurations of voice and register allow people 
to commensurate democratization with other political projects?  Under what 
circumstances do voice and register work to neutralize democracy’s potential 
threat to local operations of power? Conversely, when do the dynamics of voice 
and register help to protect local ideas of social justice from being overwritten by 
liberal values such as formal equality, deliberation and proceduralism? In short, 
how does the global spread of democracy affect local associations between 
persona and speech-form, and what are the political implications of this 
interaction?

In taking up these questions, this panel seeks to expand current analyses of the 
discursive construction of democracy by training focus on the semiotic and 
linguistic processes through which actors establish and negotiate democratic 
forms in and across social fields. Drawing on the linguistic anthropological 
concepts of voice and register, we examine the interactional alignments and 
contrasts by which democracy and its political subjectivities are brought to bear in 
contingent social action.  Ethnographically, papers examine the tension between 
democratization and patronage in northern Brazil, the ironies of international 
democracy promotion in post-conflict Macedonia, and the negotiation of 
democratic egalitarianism and ritual hierarchy among Brazilian practitioner-
activists of Candomble. Throughout, we explore the many languages of democracy 
and the recognizable social borders and boundaries that actors create and 
surmount through them in situated political action. 

Key words: democracy, voice, register