[Linganth] Call for papers - AAA 2026 -On the verge of belonging: Language, precarity, and institutional thresholds

[Nora Tyeklar]

*Call for papers - AAA 2026 - American Anthropological Association Annual
Meeting*
November 18-22, 2026
St. Louis, MO
*Please see the panel abstract below.*

If you are interested in participating as a panelist, discussant, or chair,
contact Nora Tyeklar at nora.tyeklar at maine.edu by *Wednesday, April 15th.*

If you are interested in being a panelist, please also send along a paper
abstract 250-300 words in length by *Wednesday, April 15th.*

Thank you for considering!


*Panel abstract:*
*On the verge of belonging: Language, precarity, and institutional
thresholds*

What does it mean to live—and to speak—on the verge? This panel approaches
the 2026 theme through a linguistic anthropological lens to examine how
precarity is constituted through language within public-serving
institutions (Agha 2007; Woolard 2016).

Across contexts, institutions serving racially, ethnically, caste-marked,
migrant, and economically marginalized communities such as schools, health
systems, welfare offices, and community programs are increasingly
positioned at the edge of viability. Funding regimes tied to performance
metrics, bureaucratic filtering, and expanding authoritarian governance
place these institutions and the communities that depend on them on
uncertain ground, even as they remain sites where alternative futures are
voiced (Bourdieu 1991; Silverstein 2003).

Drawing on ethnographically grounded analyses, this panel examines how
language practices shape and are shaped by institutional precarity. Papers
analyze how discourse and interaction constitute experiences of being "on
the verge" of exclusion, abandonment, or bureaucratic disappearance, as
well as persistence and how feelings of un-belonging are produced,
circulated, and resisted across institutional encounters, policy genres,
media discourse, and everyday talk (Briggs 2005; Heller and McElhinny 2017).

This panel further shows how language mediates institutional survival
through funding structures, categorization practices, and audit regimes
that render institutions both indispensable and disposable (Shore and
Wright 2015). It also explores the linguistic production of racialized and
caste-marked subjectivities, the cultivation of aspiration through
institutional discourse, and the affective dimensions of precarity in
interactions among institutional actors and the publics they serve (Ahmed
2014; Berlant 2011), while considering alternative institutional forms and
shifting public discourse that reshape what can be said, administered, and
imagined (Foucault 1991; Hull 2012).

By foregrounding language as a central analytic, the panel asks how people
speak from the brink, narrate endurance, and make collective futures
imaginable when institutions themselves remain on the verge.


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[image: UMA]

Nora Tyeklar, PhD

she/her

Visiting Assistant Professor of Social Science

Social Science Program Coordinator

President's Council on Transforming Lives Co-Chair

University of Maine at Augusta
uma.edu | my.uma.edu

207-621-3282

46 University Dr.
Augusta, ME 04330

nora.tyeklar at maine.edu


UMA’s Heritage Month Calendar
<https://www.uma.edu/about/transforminglives/heritage-calendar/>

Digital Media co-Director, Society for Linguistic Anthropology
<https://linguisticanthropology.org/>


I live and work on the homeland of the Wabanaki Nations一the Penobscot,
Passamaquoddy, Maliseet, and Mi’kmaq一who have stewarded these lands for
generations and continue to do so today. I acknowledge this history and am
committed to respectful relationships that honor Wabanaki cultures,
histories, and contributions.
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