{"title":"“Mother tongue” or “broken Arabic”: Competing discourses about Jordanian Sign Language (LIU) in Amman","authors":"Timothy Y. Loh","doi":"10.1111/jola.70003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/jola.70003","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This article examines competing discourses about Jordanian Sign Language (LIU) among deaf and hearing people in Amman, based on ethnographic fieldwork at an educational start-up for deaf children and at a deaf cultural center. In these spaces, how my interlocutors discussed the use and value of LIU took on conflicting ideological tones: on the one hand, they would emphasize the importance of access to sign language for deaf children, described as the “mother tongue” (<i>al-lugha al-ʾumm</i>) of deaf people. On the other hand, they would make comments that disparaged LIU as a form of “broken Arabic” (<i>ʿarabi mukassar</i>). I argue that these contradictory discourses can be productively read as forms of rhetoric: for instance, calling LIU the “mother tongue” of deaf Jordanians, rooted in its materiality, is a way for the start-up staff to convince audiences to support their cause, while describing LIU as “broken Arabic,” while incorrect, is useful insofar as it asks students of sign language not to sign in conformity to Arabic grammar. Building on recent work on sign language ideologies, I argue for understanding these contradictory discourses in the contexts in which they are deployed and for the centrality of language to deaf personhood in Jordan.</p>","PeriodicalId":47070,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Linguistic Anthropology","volume":"35 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2025-05-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/jola.70003","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144074482","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Throw your voice: Suspended animations in Kazakhstani childhoods By Meghanne Barker, Ithaca: Cornell University Press. 2024. pp. xv + 232","authors":"Alex Warburton","doi":"10.1111/jola.70006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/jola.70006","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":47070,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Linguistic Anthropology","volume":"35 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2025-04-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144074777","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Telling Blackness young Liberians and the raciosemiotics of contemporary Black diaspora By Krystal A. Smalls, New York: Oxford University Press. 2023 pp. [x + 294pp.]","authors":"Benjamin Puterbaugh","doi":"10.1111/jola.70005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/jola.70005","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":47070,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Linguistic Anthropology","volume":"35 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2025-04-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144074741","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Imperialism without prestige: The Russian language, chronotope, and the paradoxes of linguistic decolonization in Lithuania","authors":"Marina Mikhaylova","doi":"10.1111/jola.70004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/jola.70004","url":null,"abstract":"<p>While in postcolonial contexts the language of the former imperial power is often associated with modernity and prestige, in Lithuania, which has a history of Russian domination, the Russian language indexes backwardness and vulgarity. In this article, I argue that this semiotic inversion is due to the coexistence of competing chronotopes linked to divergent political orders, the functioning of languages as indexes of chronotopes, and linguistic alignments precipitated by the Russia–Ukraine War. Based on ethnography and interviews, this article shows how linguistic practices can become charged sites of chronotopic contestations and exclusions in contexts situated along the intersection of geopolitical orders.</p>","PeriodicalId":47070,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Linguistic Anthropology","volume":"35 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2025-04-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144074389","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Excluding unlaughter: Humor as affective practice in a youth detention center for boys","authors":"Rickard Jonsson, Anna G. Franzén","doi":"10.1111/jola.70002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/jola.70002","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Ahmed has suggested that refusing to laugh may be used as a political strategy for oppressed groups. But what happens when it becomes a tool of discipline and exclusion? Drawing on a video ethnographic study of incarcerated boys and their staff in detention home treatment, this paper focuses on one of the boy's struggle for inclusion. Despite formal equal treatment, his exclusion was maintained by the others' refusal to laugh at his attempts to be funny. We thus aim to study, in interactional detail, how unlaughter may work as a subtle yet powerful affective practice.</p>","PeriodicalId":47070,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Linguistic Anthropology","volume":"35 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2025-03-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/jola.70002","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144074609","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"“You're Soviet trash!—You're a liberass!”: The political life of social slurs","authors":"Maria Sidorkina","doi":"10.1111/jola.70001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/jola.70001","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This paper is about “social slurs,” or dysphemisms for collectivities and their members. Social slurs thrived in Russian politicized milieus of the 2010s, during the “two Russias culture war.” Examples of social slurs include <i>mrakobesy</i>, <i>vatninki</i>, <i>bydlo</i> (used for Putin supporters), and <i>liberasty</i>, <i>demshiza</i>, <i>kreakly</i> (used for regime opponents). For the benefit of US readers, these can be idiomatically translated as ignoramuses, rubes, sheeple, and liberasses, democrazies, bobos. In Russia, social slurs have been employed to attribute characteristics of enregistered social personae to both political supporters and opponents of the regime. These attributions, in turn, have been used to evaluate the conduct of participants in public life against the norms of interaction rituals central to modern political imaginaries.</p>","PeriodicalId":47070,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Linguistic Anthropology","volume":"35 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2025-02-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144074714","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"“Are you Navajo or Inuit?” Identity, television dialogue, and Indigenizing semiotics","authors":"Monika Bednarek, Barbra A. Meek","doi":"10.1111/jola.12449","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/jola.12449","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This study analyzes Indigenizing semiotic tactics in television narratives from the United States, combining corpus linguistic methodology with a theoretical framing inspired by linguistic anthropology. Given recent changes in the US television landscape, we analyze two landmark series with First Nations showrunners: <i>Reservation Dogs</i> and <i>Rutherford Falls</i>. Specifically, our dataset consists of all dialogue transcribed from both series' first two seasons. We use generic (e.g., <i>Native</i>, <i>Indian</i>, and <i>tribe</i>) and specific (e.g., <i>Navajo</i>, <i>Lakota</i>, and <i>Oglala</i>) identity labels as a starting point, combining corpus linguistic analysis of these labels with a semiotic analysis of selected scenes. The study identifies not only what identity work is being done by such labels but also how they are leveraged in the creation of an Indigenizing semiotics that disrupts “White” settler colonial frameworks that have traditionally been promoted in the media, enacting semiotic processes that we call <i>overlay</i>, <i>icon-marking</i>, and <i>erasure-marking</i>. A comparison with supplementary data from Australia allows us to show that these Indigenizing tactics are not limited to one country. Finally, the study demonstrates how a semiotic analysis of identity labels is a useful way “into” a larger corpus.</p>","PeriodicalId":47070,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Linguistic Anthropology","volume":"35 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2025-02-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/jola.12449","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144074730","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Rethinking Zapotec time: Cosmology, ritual and resistance in colonial Mexico By David Tavárez, Austin: University of Texas Press. 2022. pp. xvii + 458","authors":"Sergio Romero","doi":"10.1111/jola.70000","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/jola.70000","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":47070,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Linguistic Anthropology","volume":"35 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2025-02-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144074250","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Heteroglossic management in Instagram: Emerging ideological dynamics among Basque youth","authors":"Agurtzane Elordui","doi":"10.1111/jola.12448","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/jola.12448","url":null,"abstract":"<p>In this paper, I explore the monolingual and polylingual stylistic behaviors on Instagram among Basque native young people within the project Gaztesare. By means of an in-depth qualitative study, I try to explain in which sense such monolingual and polylingual behaviors or styles are socially significant signs of difference (Gal & Irvine, 2019). The study reveals that those styles are organized in an axis of differentiation (Gal, 2016; Gal & Irvine, 2019) that takes the contrasting monolingual and polylingual styles as iconic representations linked to different personhoods or person-types. The participants of the study consider them tools to shape and create contrasting voices that interilluminate each other in different contexts on Instagram. The study also informs about new ideological dynamics among these young people. In fact, the most innovative results in this study are about the enregisterment of the polylingual style I study. It is becoming an exclusive in-group talk, and it is acquiring stereotypic indexical values related to informality. It is, moreover, being naturalized as a “social network speech” with which young people recreate multiple multicultural and playful voices.</p>","PeriodicalId":47070,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Linguistic Anthropology","volume":"35 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2024-12-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/jola.12448","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144074719","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"“A world beyond this one”: Sustaining afro-brasilidade through language, ritual, and culture teaching in a northeastern Brazilian school","authors":"Adrienne Ronee Washington","doi":"10.1111/jola.12446","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/jola.12446","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This research advances racioreligious linguistic ideologies as a concept to examine discursive processes whereby language, race, and spirituality become entangled within cultural lenses. It begins by exploring the racialization of Yoruba-inspired (<i>Nagô</i> in Bahia) spiritualities and linguistic/semiotic practices under colonialism and racial slavery. It continues into the modern context with an extended example situated in a northeastern Brazilian school, where Nagô/Yoruba typifies Blackness. The data highlight how interlocutors in this school, working within affirmative racioreligious linguistic ideologies and the values they assign, engage in education as racioreligious identity work to resist racial, religious, and linguistic prejudices, sustain traditional knowledge, and affirm Afro-Brazilianness.</p>","PeriodicalId":47070,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Linguistic Anthropology","volume":"34 3","pages":"518-542"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2024-11-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142861867","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}