FW: Call for papers AAA 2014

[Kephart, Ronald]

Folks, forwarding this, just in case…


From: Kamala Russell <kamala at berkeley.edu<mailto:kamala at berkeley.edu>>
Date: Saturday, March 15, 2014 12:26 PM
To: "LINGANTH-request at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG<mailto:LINGANTH-request at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG>" <LINGANTH-request at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG<mailto:LINGANTH-request at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG>>
Subject: Call for papers AAA 2014

Hi,
 Is it possible for me to forward along the following call for papers or does an administrator need to do so?
Best,
 Kamala Russell


Subject: CALL FOR PAPERS, AAA 2014
Call for Papers: Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological
Association 2014
Location: Washington DC
Panel Title: TBA
Organizers: Terra Edwards and Kamala Russell


Edward Sapir famously claimed that "language is an essentially perfect
means of expression and communication among every known people" (1995
[1927]:7). In other words, languages do everything their speakers require
of them. However, recent scholarship in linguistics and anthropology has
drawn our attention to systems that do not satisfy this stipulation. We
know grammars articulate to and within materially, affectively,
semiotically, and institutionally organized worlds. But, some linguistic
and semiotic systems have been outstripped by their worlds, whether through
rapid socio-historical change, such as colonization, development,
urbanization, or labor migration (Bakker 1997; Gal 1979; Hanks 2010, Hymes
1971, Inoue 2011, Povinelli 2011); differences in language proficiencies
and capacities (Gilmore, 2011, Goodwin 2004); or differences in material
conditions of access and acquisition (Brentari et al. 2012, Goldin-Meadow
and Feldman 1977, Morgan and Mayberry 2012, Sandler et al. 2005, Senghas
and Coppola 2001, Sicoli 2013). Such circumstances may lead to language
loss, dialect leveling, dialect divergence, rapid language change, language
emergence, or the emergence of rudimentary, stripped-down, or relatively
unelaborated language-like systems.

We are calling for papers that explore cases where linguistic and semiotic
systems do not, or can't yet, do all of what their speakers need them to
do. How do their speakers make up the difference? Do their efforts have
consequences for the complexity, density, or maturity of the grammar
itself? How can we synchronically describe systems that haven't caught up
to the pragmatic demands placed on them? What are the linguistic and
semiotic processes by which such languages play catch-up? How do people
alter or institutionally bolster their communicative practices to make
their language snap back into joint with their social and perceptual
worlds, whether through revitalization projects or other sorts of social
movements? What are the socio-political implications of doing scholarship
that claims that the language in question isn't "perfect" in Sapir's sense?
We welcome all papers that draw attention to the (temporary) exhaustibility
of a semiotic repertoire, the impossibility of uptake, the relative
complexity, density or maturity of grammars, and the methodological and
ethical problems that emerge therewith.



Please send abstracts to Terra Edwards (terraedwards at berkeley.edu<mailto:terraedwards at berkeley.edu>) and
Kamala Russell (kamala at berkeley.edu<mailto:kamala at berkeley.edu>) by April 5, 2014.





References:

Bakker, Peter (1997). *A Language of our Own: the genesis of Michif. *New
York: Oxford University Press.

Brentari, Diane, Coppola, Marie, Mazzoni, Laura and Goldin-Meadow, Susan
(2012). When does a system become phonological? Handshape production in
gestureres, signers, and homesigners. *Natural Language and Linguistic
Theory*30, 1-31.

Gal, Susan (1979). *Language Shift. *London: Academic Press.

Gilmore, Perry (2011). We call it `Our Language': A children's Swahili
pidgin transforms social and symbolic order on a remote hillside in
up-country Kenya.*Anthropology and Education Quarterly* 42, 370-392.

Goldin-Meadow, Susan and Feldman, Heidi (1977). The Development of
Language-Like Communication Without a Language Model. *Science* 197, 22-24.

Goodwin, Charles (2004). A Competent Speaker who Can't Speak: the Social
Life of Aphasia. *Journal of Linguistic Anthropology* 14, 151-170.

Hanks, William F. (2010). *Converting Words: Maya in the Age of the
Cross.*Berkeley:
University of California Press.

Hymes, Dell (1971). *Pidginization and Creolization of Languages. *New
York: Cambridge University Press.

Inoue, Miyako (2011). Stenography and Ventriloquism in Late Nineteenth
Century Japan. *Language and Communication* 31, 181-190.

Morgan, Hope E. and Mayberry, Rachel I. (2012). Complexity in two-handed
signs in Kenyan Sign Language. *Sign Language &Linguistics* 15, 147-174.

Povinelli, Elizabeth (2011). The part that has no part: enjoyment, law, and
loss. *GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies* 20, 287-308.

Sandler, Wendy, Meir, Irit, Padden, Carol and Aronoff, Mark (2005). The
Emergence of Grammar: Systematic Structure in a New Language.*Proceedings
of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America* 102,
2661-2665.

Sapir, Edward (1995 [1927]). Language. In Ben Blount (ed.), *Language,
Culture, and Society *Long Grove, Illinois: Waveland.

Senghas, Ann and Coppola, Marie (2001). Children Creating Language: How
Nicaraguan Sign Language Acquired a Spatial Grammar. *Psychological Science*
 12.
Sicioli, Mark (2013). Fragments of a Language Practice: Documenting the
Chinantec Whistled Speech Register.  *Recovering Voices Seminar *Smithsonian
Institution, Washington