37.2776, Confs: Panel at IPC20 - Talking About What and How: The Value of Ethnographic and Semiotic Engagement in Illuminating Our Praxis (Finland)

Tue Sep 1 07:05:02 UTC 2026

LINGUIST List: Vol-37-2776. Tue Sep 01 2026. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 37.2776, Confs: Panel at IPC20 - Talking About What and How: The Value of Ethnographic and Semiotic Engagement in Illuminating Our Praxis (Finland)

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Date: 30-Aug-2026
From: Judith Pine [pinej at wwu.edu]
Subject: Panel at IPC20 - Talking About What and How: The Value of Ethnographic and Semiotic Engagement in Illuminating Our Praxis

Panel at IPC20 - Talking About What and How: The Value of Ethnographic
and Semiotic Engagement in Illuminating Our Praxis
Short Title: IPC20

Date: 27-Jun-2027 - 02-Jul-2027
Location: Helsinki, Finland
Meeting URL: https://pragmatics.international/page/IPC20Helsinki

Linguistic Field(s): Anthropological Linguistics; Linguistic Theories;
Pragmatics; Sociolinguistics

Submission Deadline: 15-Oct-2026

The ethnographic and the semiotic are indelibly linked in linguistic
anthropology. Foundational voices in the engagement between linguistic
anthropology and semiotics make abundantly clear that we must ground
our analysis in actual events, in what we describe as “the
ethnographic” (Silverstein 1975, Silverstein and Urban 1996, Irvine
and Gal 2000, Agha 2007). And yet, ethnographers encounter a tension
when our analysis is of material from a culture other than our
own. This tension also requires that we turn a critical gaze onto our
own praxis, also acknowledging its extractive colonial past. While an
ethnographic praxis may allow us to evade what Davis (2017) describes
as linguistic extraction, or “the process of discussing languages and
[...] movements removed from the personal lives, communicative
practices, and embodied experiences in which they inherently are
embedded,” we nevertheless find ourselves more often speaking for,
rather than speaking with, our interlocutors. Hymes's Ethnography of
Communication since the 1960s/'70s has given us a helpful tool for
identifying the what of the ethnographic.
Adding to that, as linguistic anthropologist Michael Agar (2006)
argues, the ethnographic may be best defined as a kind of logic,
specifically an abductive logic informed by Peircean semiotics. The
“thick” description (Geertz 1973) that informs ethnographic writing in
anthropology seeks to explain phenomenon via abductive inference. The
Peircean semiotic lens which continues to be developed and refined in
linguistic anthropology offers a complex mechanism for this abduction
grounded in the observed speech events of the ethnographic how.
This panel explores the potential for semiotic conceptual frameworks
and is inspired in part by the work of Bernard Perley, Maliseet
linguistic anthropologist and artist, that invites both indigenous and
non-indigenous audiences to engage in the multifaceted, multivocal
complexity of indigenous being in the colonially-dominated world
through intertwined stories presented in both text and multimodal
installations. In particular, we draw attention to Keane’s notions of
semiotic ideologies and representational economies (2002, 2007), and
the recognition that we as scholars operate within such ideologies, as
tools for re-framing the presentation of ethnographic data to remove
the dominant (Western, subjugator, institutional, etc.) voice from the
center and place all participants in dialogue with one another.
Taking to heart Perley’s call for critical indigeneity, within which
ethnography is intended as a “catalyst for action” as a form of
engaged anthropology, and expanding this approach to consider a range
of complex intersectional identities encountered by linguistic
anthropologists, this panel asks what we can see through our semiotic
lens as we engage ethnographically with indigenous, immigrant, and
diasporic communities. When we look from a different center what do we
see? How might this perspective inform practice for ourselves and our
audiences?
We are seeking papers which reflect on the use of the conceptual tools
of semiotics and language and semiotic ideologies – in the
ethnographic project as an inherently reflexive process impacted at
all points by theoretical lenses. We welcome scholars at all career
stages to join us in this conversation.

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