[Linganth] EASA2026 CfP Unmaking and Remaking ‘Language’

Thu Jan 8 08:58:43 UTC 2026

Dear all,

We’re inviting papers for our panel at the EASA2026 conference in Poznań, Poland, entitledUnmaking and Remaking ‘Language’: Ontological Challenges to Language Archiving, Revitalization, and Pedagogyon challenges that may arise from the ontological variation of language for its documentation, archiving, revitalization, reclamation, and pedagogy. We are particularly interested in papers engaging with processes of translation, transduction, and co-operative transformations. The full abstract with references is below.

How to submit

- Submit via the EASA2026 Call for Papers portal – more info[here](https://easaonline.org/easa-conference/easa2026/call-for-papers/)
- Required: title; author name(s), & email(s); short abstract (≤300 characters); long abstract (≤250 words)
- Deadline:26 January 2026 (23:59 CET)
- Conference:21–24 July 2026, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań, Poland; hybrid format.

EASA2026 is a fully hybrid conference, so all panels and even some events/workshops will take place face-to-face as well as be streamed on Zoom. You can choose between online participation and face-to-face participation when you register for the conference.

Please feel free to share this with colleagues or students who might be interested.

Unmaking and Remaking ‘Language’:
Ontological Challenges to Language Archiving, Revitalization, and Pedagogy

Organizers:
Dora Savoldi (University of São Paulo)
Jan David Hauck (Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich)

Short abstract
This panel discusses challenges arising from the ontological variation of language for documentation, archiving, revitalization, reclamation, and pedagogy, focusing on processes of translation, transduction, and transformation as ontologically implicated crafts.

Long abstract
The concept of language has received renewed attention in recent years as part of efforts to decolonize key epistemological tenets of anthropology. Beyond critiques of the deprovincialization of Euro-American conceptions of language—undergirding nation-state policies but also language documentation and revitalization—these efforts aim at a deeper engagement with the disjunctures arising from ethnographic and activist work as a consequence of the ontological variation of language, including its materiality, force, and cosmopolitical dimensions (Ferguson 2019; Hauck and Heurich 2018; Hauck 2023; Pennycook and Makoni 2020).

In this panel we explore the implications of ontological variation for language documentation, archiving, revitalization, reclamation, and pedagogy, and attendant processes of translation, transduction, and transformation (Silverstein 2003; Hanks and Severi 2014). For instance, many communities understand distinct languages/varieties to be ontologically nonequivalent, ‘different things’ (Course 2018). Such a disjuncture between speakers’ and language advocates’ framing ofpatoisvs. ‘language’ was a reason for the failure of Occitan language revitalization (Costa 2025). By contrast, ontological differences may be the driving force behind Indigenous Brazilianretomada(retaking) experiences, where revitalization is tied to cosmopolitical relations withencantados(more-than-human entities) and the territory (Bonfim and Durazzo 2023). What are the implications for language pedagogy when a language has autonomous agency (Echeverri 2023)? How can a song be archived if its voice is that of a dead ancestor (Heurich 2018) or the manifestation of the power of the universe (Lewy 2019)? What is at stake when everyday speech, verbal arts, metadata, and rights regimes are transmuted onto recorders, into repositories, and back into community life?

This panel invites ethnographically grounded papers that interrogate transformations of ‘language’ as it moves through different enunciative modes in actual interaction, in pedagogical and revitalization programs, and in archival infrastructures. We invite contributions that discuss how different linguistic natures (Hauck and Heurich 2018) of enunciative modes may collide or articulate with revitalization and documentation regimes, and attendant processes of translation (Hanks and Severi 2014), transduction (Eisenlohr 2018), transmutation (Severi 2014), and co-operative transformation (Goodwin 2018). Putting translation and transformation at the center, this panel seeks to explore engagements with ‘language’ in documentation, teaching, or revitalization as ontologically implicated crafts: the collaborative making, unmaking, and remaking of language-objects and language-subjects across archives, classrooms, institutions, and ritual worlds.

References

Bonfim, Evandro de Sousa, and Leandro Durazzo. 2023. “Retomadas linguísticas indígenas no Nordeste, Minas Gerais e Espírito Santo: um mapeamento etnográfico.” Preprint,SciELO Preprints, July 28.

Costa, James. 2025. “Why Language Revitalization Fails: Revivalist vs. Traditional Ontologies of Language in Provence.”Language in Society54 (3): 569–89.

Course, Magnus. 2018. “Words beyond Meaning in Mapuche Language Ideology.” In “Language in the Amerindian Imagination,” special issue,Language & Communication63: 9–14.

Echeverri, Juan Alvaro. 2023. “Lenguaje es aliento: Aunque aprendas poco, se te abre el coco.”Forma y función36 (2).

Eisenlohr, Patrick. 2018.Sounding Islam: Voice, Media, and Sonic Atmospheres in an Indian Ocean World. University of California Press.

Ferguson, Jenanne. 2019.Words Like Birds: Sakha Language Discourses and Practices in the City.Lincoln & London: University of Nebraska Press.

Goodwin, Charles. 2018.Co-Operative Action.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Hanks, William F., and Carlo Severi. 2014. “Translating Worlds: The Epistemological Space of Translation.”HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory4 (2): 1–16.

Hauck, Jan David. 2023. “Language Otherwise: Linguistic Natures and the Ontological Challenge.”Journal of Linguistic Anthropology33 (1): 4–24.

Hauck, Jan David, and Guilherme Orlandini Heurich. 2018. “Language in the Amerindian Imagination: An Inquiry into Linguistic Natures.” In “Language in the Amerindian Imagination,” special issue,Language & Communication63: 1–8.

Heurich, Guilherme Orlandini. 2018. “The Shaman and the Flash Drive.” InFrom Filmmaker Warriors to Flash Drive Shamans: Indigenous Media Production and Engagement in Latin America,edited by Richard Pace, 148–157. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press.

Lewy, Matthias. 2019. “Generating Ontologies of Historical Sound Recordings. Interculturality, Intercollectivity, and Transmutation as Method.”El Oído Pensante7 (1): 172–93.

Pennycook, Alastair, and Sinfree Makoni. 2020.Innovations and Challenges in Applied Linguistics from the Global South.London & New York: Routledge.

Severi, Carlo. 2014. “Transmutating Beings: A Proposal for an Anthropology of Thought.”HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory4 (2): 41–71.

Silverstein, Michael. 2003. “Translation, Transduction, Transformation: Skating ‘Glossando’ on Thin Semiotic Ice.” InTranslating Cultures: Perspectives on Translation and Anthropology, edited by Abraham Rosman and Paula G. Rubel. Routledge.

———

Dr. Jan David Hauck
ERC Research Fellow
[Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society](https://www.carsoncenter.uni-muenchen.de/staff_fellows/programs-and-projects/jan_hauck/index.html)
Center for Advanced Studies
Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich
jandavidhauck.com

Principal Investigator
[Changing Environments, Changing Childhoods: A Cross-Environmental Ethnography of Moral Socialization in Three Small-Scale Societies](https://www.carsoncenter.uni-muenchen.de/outreach/third-party-projects/project_hauck/index.html)

--- Just published ---

Hauck, Jan David, and Francesca Mezzenzana. 2025. “[Growing Up in the Face of Change: Environmental Transformation and Child Socialisation in Indigenous South America.](https://www.berghahnjournals.com/view/journals/saas/33/1/saas330101.xml)” Social Anthropology/Anthropologie Sociale 33 (1): 1–14.

Hauck, Jan David. 2025. “[‘We All Live Well Together Now’: Ethics, Ontology, and the Face of the Other.](https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9655.14311)” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 31 (3): 874–98.
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