[Linganth] CFP: Communities etc.

[Steven Black]

Dear all,

Given that the SLA conference deadline has been extended, I thought I would circulate this CFP for a panel on new perspectives related to the concept of speech communities. If you are interested, please send me a brief description of your paper idea by November 8! The draft abstract is below my signature.

 

Take care,

Steve

 

Steven P. Black // Chair of the Committee on Ethics of the American Anthropological Association // Department of Anthropology // Georgia State University // P.O. Box 3998 // Atlanta, GA 30302-3998 // (404) 413-5168

 

 

Sources of Uncertainty: Communities in the Ongoing Process of Becoming

 

This panel presents new linguistic anthropological engagements with the concept of community, focusing on the ways that contemporary scholarship re-theorizes communities in ongoing processes of creation, mediation, maintenance, and transformation through and beyond language. The notion of speech community, developed as part of the ethnography of communication, has endured numerous iterations and reconceptualizations over the past fifty years. Despite significant poststructuralist critiques leveled against the concept—for instance, that it overstates homogeneity, delineation of a defined group, presence of shared linguistic features, and continuity over time—scholars of language and culture continue to return to speech community as a way to understand group formation and social action. This panel examines communities in ongoing processes of becoming, analyzing the linguistic, metalinguistic, cultural, and biological practices through which persons constitute themselves as being part of defined communities.

 

The panel title indexes Bruno Latour’s theorization of Actor-Network-Theory, especially his “first source of uncertainty: no group, only group formation.” This is itself a reframing of the Durkheimian notion that human groups do not simply exist but rather must be actively maintained, especially through orientation toward emblematic symbols that catalyze sentiments of identification. Panelists explore how persons create and maintain communities through practices that challenge traditional definitions of speech communities, such as metalinguistic evaluations and orientations toward use of emblematic terms or phrases, sharing of story frameworks among speakers of different languages, and adherence to biomedical treatment regimens. Collectively, the panel suggests the continuing relevance of communities, in ongoing processes of becoming, in mediatized, fractured, and border traversing linguistic contexts.

 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/linganth/attachments/20171101/43dd7a61/attachment.htm>