[Linganth] New Book: The Verbal Art of Mobility in West Africa

[Chip Zuckerman]

Dear fellow linguistic anthropologists,

I write to announce the publication of a new book, *The Verbal Art of
Mobility in West Africa, *by fellow linguistic anthropologist, Nikolas
Sweet. The book's blurb, as well as a link to its IU Press website, is
below. I imagine it will be of interest to many of you.

Very best wishes,
-Chip


https://iupress.org/9780253071477/the-verbal-art-of-mobility-in-west-africa/

In recent years, migration across urban centers and national borders has
radically reshaped West African societies and sparked a global debate on
the legal and cultural processes of immigration. Along newly constructed
international highways in southeastern Senegal, young men and women travel
between regional centers and their hometowns in the wake of a gold-mining
boom that has brought new opportunities as well as risks.
Previous scholarship on migration has often emphasized the movement of
bodies and things. In *The Verbal Art of Mobility in West Africa*, instead
of considering language primarily as a way to describe mobility as it
happened, author Nikolas Sweet positions language as an essential
infrastructure through which individuals forge material connections and
communication channels across space and borders. This reinterpretation of
migration emphasizes that language is a form of social action in its own
right—one that does not merely reflect experiences in the world but can
bring things into being. Mobility emerges not only from an individual's
given mobile history, but also through an attention to the linguistic
resources deployed in everyday interactions with others.
Based on ethnographic research on social interaction, verbal creativity,
and mobility in southeastern Senegal, *The Verbal Art of Mobility in West
Africa* reveals how migrants use language to build social networks and
mitigate risk amid socioeconomic and environmental precarity.

-- 
Charles (usually, Chip) Zuckerman
Assistant Professor of Formative Education, Boston College
You can read some of my academic work here
<https://bc.academia.edu/CharlesZuckerman>.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/linganth/attachments/20250128/c21ec135/attachment.htm>