AAA Panel CFP on Language Variation and Masculinities in Publics

[Nathaniel Dumas]

Dear Colleagues,

There's still a few more spots left on this proposed double panel.  
Please contact me ASAP at ndumas at linguistics.ucsb.edu if you are  
interested in submitting an abstract. In the meanwhile, happy Friday!

Best,
Nate

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Nathaniel Dumas <ndumas at linguistics.ucsb.edu>
> Date: February 12, 2013 11:03:51 AM PST
> To: LINGANTH at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG
> Subject: AAA Panel CFP on Language Variation and Masculinities in  
> Publics
> Reply-To: Nathaniel Dumas <ndumas at linguistics.ucsb.edu>
>
> Dear Colleagues,
>
> Please see the CFP below for the double panel proposal and forward  
> to others who may be interested. This is for the 2013 American  
> Anthropological Association Meetings.
>
> Best,
>
> Nate
>
> ------
>
> Troubling the Masculine Voice of Publics:  Language Variation as a  
> Semiotic Resource for Competing Masculinities
>
> Co-Organizers: Nathaniel W. Dumas (University of California, Santa  
> Barbara) and Qiuana Lopez (University of California, Santa Barbara)
> Discussants: Asif Agha (University of Pennsylvania) and Scott F.  
> Kiesling (University of Pittsburgh)
>
> Ethnographic studies of publics from sociocultural and linguistic  
> anthropologists have demonstrated the complex nature in which  
> publics are ongoingly experienced, constructed, and deployed as  
> powerful mechanisms for recruiting (dis)identification with  
> particular subjectivities (e.g., Amrute 2010; Briggs 2005; Gal and  
> Woolard 2001; Subijanto 2011). From the beginning, scholars  
> underscored the idea that publics are racialized, sexualized, and  
> engendered in diverse and conflicting ways, particularly around the  
> question of male hegemony. At the same time, sociolinguists and  
> linguistic anthropologists of variation have reconsidered  
> masculinity as a metapragmatic label that does not always refer to  
> communicative practices exclusively done by men (e.g., Kiesling  
> 2005, 2011; Milani 2011; see also Halberstam 1998). Masculinity has  
> come to be seen as a social accomplishment by social actors through  
> culturally recognized performatives, including variation, that  
> competes with other masculinities for dominance in communicative  
> contexts. However, most of this work privileges the language  
> ideology of the vernacular as a private and authentic site for  
> researching the construction of masculinity, with little detail to  
> the leaky boundaries between public and private (Hill 2001) for the  
> construction of identity.
>
> In this vein, this panel brings understandings of variation as  
> indexing multiple masculinities in conversation with research on the  
> complex dynamics of publics. In particular, we seek to bring  
> together scholars that continue to complexify the heuristic of  
> “publics” by shifting the discussion away from publics as male- 
> dominated to a focus on publics as arenas of competing performatives  
> of masculinities, particularly voicing via variation and its  
> combination with other semiotic resources by social actors within  
> and beyond conventional gender dichotomies. Possible paper topics  
> may include but are not limited to:
>
> •      How do social actors use sociolinguistic variation, as an  
> indexical field (Eckert 2008), for constructing multiple and, at  
> times, conflicting masculinities within publics?
> •      In what ways do social actors and institutions draw on  
> discourses of metapragmatic regimentation (Silverstein 1993) for  
> legitimizing and delegitimizing (non)acceptable masculinities in  
> publics?
> •      How do publics restrict different masculinities from being  
> displayed through discourses on variation that seem to be gender-less?
> •      In what ways do publics differentially value racial, sexual,  
> and class masculinities performed by men, women, and transgendered  
> persons through variation and other semiotic resources?
> •      How do social actors negotiate and/or contest the leaky  
> boundaries between publics and private space (Hill 2001) while doing  
> various masculinities via variation?
>
> Please send a 200-word abstract to ndumas at linguistics.ucsb.edu for  
> consideration. If you have any further questions, email me at the  
> address.
>
> Nathaniel Dumas
> Visiting Postdoctoral Researcher
> Department of Linguistics
> University of California, Santa Barbara
> http://ucsb.academia.edu/NathanielDumas/About
>
>

Nathaniel Dumas
Visiting Postdoctoral Researcher
Department of Linguistics
University of California, Santa Barbara
http://ucsb.academia.edu/NathanielDumas/About