CFP - Visuality in Multi-Modal Semiotic Ecologies: Theory and Method at the Intersection of Linguistic and Visual Anthropology

[Erika Hoffmann-Dilloway]

Dear list members:


Nishaant Choksi and I are working on organizing a panel for the 2013 AAA
which will ideally be co-sponsored by the Society for Linguistic
Anthropology and the Society for Visual Anthropology.



A draft of our panel abstract (to be updated with information about
specific papers and edited to reflect emerging themes) is below.



Panelists will be encouraged to incorporate visual components into their
presentations in ways consistent with the methodological and theoretical
claims of their papers.



Please contact me off list to submit an abstract or with any questions.



Thanks!

All best,

Erika


Visuality in Multi-Modal Semiotic Ecologies: Theory and Method at the
Intersection of Linguistic and Visual Anthropology

Few (if any) linguistic anthropologists would argue with the idea that
linguistic practice draws on diverse material and embodied resources.
Nevertheless, close attention to the role of visual semiosis in
communicative ecologies is not as common a part of our analyses as might be
expected. Indeed, as Lempert points out in a forthcoming review, outside a
few notable exceptions (e.g., Enfield 2009; Goodwin 2003; Goodwin and
Tulbert 2011) explicit and sustained attention to multimodal integration
remains a frontier for our field. The reason for this “benign” neglect may
be less to do with our theoretical orientations than with methodological
challenges (described and grappled with by, for example, Tedlock 1983 and
Farnell 1995) of satisfactorily representing multi-modal semiosis in print
(though, as Ochs (1979) reminds us, theory and methodology are in a
bi-directional relationship).  However, for visual anthropologists, from
Bateson and Mead’s (1942) seminal photographic work in Bali to Strassler’s
(2010) recent award winning text, the multimodality of semiosis is
generally framed as presenting methodological and representational
opportunities rather than problems. This panel seeks to bring together
perspectives from linguistic and visual anthropology to ask what
methodological issues are involved in addressing visual modalities as part
of multi-modal semiotic processes. What kinds of tools are necessary to
account for the multiple ways in which visual forms interact with other
linguistic modalities?  What does a linguistic-ethnographic approach add to
visual analyses?
Description of specific papers.
Together we argue that (emergent from selected papers)



-- 
Erika Hoffmann-Dilloway
Assistant Professor of Anthropology
Oberlin College