{"title":"Mapping Participant Frameworks in the Aitys of Birzhan and Sara","authors":"Eva-Marie Dubuisson","doi":"10.1111/jola.12349","DOIUrl":"10.1111/jola.12349","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Here the lens of the \"mapping problem\" described by Judith Irvine in participant framework studies is used to analyze shifts in the cultural tale “The Aitys of Birzhan and Sara” from its origin as an improvisational verbal duel in the late 19th century, to a Kazakh socialist opera during the Soviet period, to a nationalized historical reference in Kazakhstan. During the multiple recontextualizations of that social text, its discursive pragmatics and characters are preserved within the expanding and shifting participant frameworks enabled by the genre of aitys poetry. Birzhan and Sara are able to “speak”—as poets, characters, and ancestors—to a changing series of audiences, all of whom become involved and implicated in their words and story as a result. They—like all aitys poets and the tradition itself—become a source of cultural authority. Thus the mapping of this social text over time is used as an example, in order to explain why and how an oral tradition is able to overcome or absorb even serious intertextual gaps resulting from shifting historical and political contexts over a long twentieth century.</p>","PeriodicalId":47070,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Linguistic Anthropology","volume":"31 3","pages":"357-381"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-12-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48796067","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":"Structure, Ideology, Distribution: The Dual as Honorific in Santali","authors":"Nishaant Choksi","doi":"10.1111/jola.12343","DOIUrl":"10.1111/jola.12343","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This article draws on Judith T. Irvine's over two decades of work on ideologies of honorification to investigate and analyze the historical transformation of the use of the dual pronominal form in Santali, an Austro-Asiatic language spoken in eastern India. In Santali, the dual form is employed for single referents (both for the speaker and the addressee) during interactions restricted to affines of adjacent generations. However, in recent years the dual has also started to be used as a deferential honorific in a generalized sense, regardless of the kinship relation between interactants. The new usage has been driven by several factors, including the increasing exposure to education in the dominant Indo-Aryan vernaculars such as Bengali and Hindi, which use generalized honorifics, as well as movements that have aligned the use of such honorifics with projects for Santal autonomy centered around the spread of a distinct script for the language. The article argues that debates in the community around the notions of tradition and modernity, cultural and ethnic affiliation, and changing ideas of respect have shaped the ideological field conditioning the use and distribution of the honorific dual in Santali.</p>","PeriodicalId":47070,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Linguistic Anthropology","volume":"31 3","pages":"382-395"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-12-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41941594","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":"Reimagining Linguistic Heritage: Or How Mother Tongue Speakers Re-Create Their Language","authors":"Sarah Marleen Hillewaert","doi":"10.1111/jola.12338","DOIUrl":"10.1111/jola.12338","url":null,"abstract":"<p>In this article, I engage the “language as heritage” trope to critically examine a popular belief that underlies it: the idea that a shared language primordially connects an individual to a group of people, a homogenous culture and a particular territory—the notion of the ethnolinguistic group. Judith T. Irvine has long urged linguistic anthropologists to problematize the linguistic side of these classifications, to recognize the ideologies that shape both scholarly language descriptions and speakers’ own interactional practices (often in response to those official depictions). Here, I take on this challenge by considering both the contrived colonial standardization process of East Africa’s Swahili language, and contemporary Swahili speakers’ creative resistances to scholarly descriptions of “their” linguistic heritage. Orthographic and interactional practices from speakers of KiAmu, a Swahili vernacular spoken in coastal Kenya, illustrate how speakers creatively attempt to make their vernacular more “like itself.” Rejecting (post)colonial perspectives of Swahili as a distinctly “African” language, they are reimagining their linguistic heritage and its associated belongings to appeal to alternative identities and histories, that have hybridity and transoceanic interconnectivity at their core.</p>","PeriodicalId":47070,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Linguistic Anthropology","volume":"31 3","pages":"396-411"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-12-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43841971","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":"Shadows and Mirrors: Spatial and Ideological Perspectives on Sign Language Competency","authors":"Erika Hoffmann-Dilloway","doi":"10.1111/jola.12344","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/jola.12344","url":null,"abstract":"<p>In introducing the concept of “shadow conversations,” Judith T. Irvine (1996) sharpened our analytical understanding of instances in which conjectures about past and future moments in a chain of discourse events inform the distribution of participant roles in an unfolding interaction. Expanding upon this notion, this article considers how conversations that did or will not occur—or are imagined as having not occurred—can equally function as shadows that inform how unfolding interactions, and the participant roles entailed in their enactment, are understood. I analyze an exchange conducted in Maltese Sign Language (LSM), in which my status as a novice LSM signer led to a series of misunderstandings and repairs. In addition to illustrating the shadows cast by significant non-occurrences, the interaction and its mix-ups highlight the intersection of spatial and social forms of perspective taking. My analysis of the shadows that shaped interactive failure and success demonstrate the power of Irvine’s analytical tools to connect the material, embodied details of a particular interactive moment to complex interdiscursive chains and language ideological perspectives.</p>","PeriodicalId":47070,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Linguistic Anthropology","volume":"31 3","pages":"320-334"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-12-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71960592","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}
Sonia N. Das, Christina P. Davis, Erika Hoffmann-Dilloway
{"title":"Judith T. Irvine and the Social Life of Scholarship","authors":"Sonia N. Das, Christina P. Davis, Erika Hoffmann-Dilloway","doi":"10.1111/jola.12336","DOIUrl":"10.1111/jola.12336","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":47070,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Linguistic Anthropology","volume":"31 3","pages":"316-319"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-12-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43760593","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":"Evolving Studies of Language Ideologies in Honor of Judith T. Irvine: A Commentary","authors":"Susan U. Philips","doi":"10.1111/jola.12352","DOIUrl":"10.1111/jola.12352","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This commentary discusses papers in a special issue of the Journal of Linguistic Anthropology in honor of Judith T. Irvine.</p>","PeriodicalId":47070,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Linguistic Anthropology","volume":"31 3","pages":"446-450"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-12-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48456352","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":"Scaling Language Boundaries: Inclusion, Commensurability, and a Caribbean Coloniality","authors":"Janina Fenigsen","doi":"10.1111/jola.12348","DOIUrl":"10.1111/jola.12348","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Drawing on ethnography as well as media and archival sources, this article approaches issues of language and relations of power in Barbados along ideological axes of civilization, modernity, and intelligence. Its particular focus is on the ideologies of social and language boundaries and the semiotic processes of their construction, navigation, and policing. I use the concept of commensurability to engage with questions of inclusion, alterity, and (post)colonial selfhood brought into sharp relief by my Barbadian fieldwork and conversations.</p>","PeriodicalId":47070,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Linguistic Anthropology","volume":"31 3","pages":"412-428"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-12-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45504815","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":"Shadow Conversations and the Citational Practices of a Journal","authors":"Sonia N. Das","doi":"10.1111/jola.12337","DOIUrl":"10.1111/jola.12337","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Drawing on the resonances between Judith T. Irvine’s (1996) writings about “shadow conversations” and the broader linguistic anthropological literature on citational practices (Goodman et al. 2014; Nakassis 2013; Rhodes 2020), I explore how the <i>Journal of Linguistic Anthropology</i> has sought to and continues to engage with the politics of inclusion and diversity in the construction of disciplinary knowledge, focusing in particular on publishing in academic journals. Following an earlier attempt to include an inclusion criterion on the journal’s Scholar One review portal, I now instead endorse the views of my colleagues to adopt a variety of strategies to showcase the work of underrepresented yet critical voices in the discipline. I conclude by highlighting the influential role that linguistic anthropologists play in promoting dialogue about the interdiscursive dimensions of knowledge production in the academy.</p>","PeriodicalId":47070,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Linguistic Anthropology","volume":"31 3","pages":"335-339"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-12-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48111852","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":"Negotiating Linguistic Disruptions and Connections in Migratory Contexts: Language Practices among Child Migrants in an Urban Market in Ghana","authors":"Gladys Nyarko Ansah","doi":"10.1111/jola.12346","DOIUrl":"10.1111/jola.12346","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This article employs ethnographic methods to investigate communicative practices that shape the linguistic repertoires of child migrants in Agbogbloshie, an urban market in Ghana. Similar studies discuss the relationship between language and migration by focusing on language shift and loss among migrants; this article argues that migrants in complex linguistically diverse spaces—motivated by both social and economic dynamics of their space—make linguistic choices while negotiating their daily lives that lead to the development of complex, heterogeneous linguistic repertoires and practices. Data were gathered from interactions at childcare centers, where child migrants spend the day with peers and caregivers, and migrant homes, where child migrants spend the evenings and weekends with their families. The data reveal that while migrant parents negotiate their own multilingual practices with their migrant children, child migrants expand their linguistic repertoires through relationships and interactions with caregivers and peers in childcare centers and neighborhoods, leading to the development of heterogeneous language practices that neither their parents nor caregivers necessarily possess. The article concludes that migration may lead to complex linguistic diversity. The study contributes to Indigenous perspectives on linguistic diversity and our understanding of the structure and nature of super-diversification.</p>","PeriodicalId":47070,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Linguistic Anthropology","volume":"32 1","pages":"200-221"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-11-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42418899","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":"His Master’s Voice, Her Jokes: Voice and Gender Politics in the Performance of Rakugo","authors":"Esra-Gökçe Şahin","doi":"10.1111/jola.12351","DOIUrl":"10.1111/jola.12351","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This article explores the role of voice and voicing as a gendered construct in the performance of rakugo in Japan. Rakugo is a traditional genre of comedic storytelling, performed by a single actor. The genre sets a nostalgic tone for the simplicity of life in preindustrial Tokyo, through portrayals of foolishness and mockery of various human situations. A great majority of the rakugo performers are men. Despite the fact that rakugo is characterized with a technique of cross gender vocalization, rakugo performers state that the female voice is considered unsuitable for vocalizing the protagonists in rakugo stories. On the basis of ethnographic data gained from participant observation, and my own apprenticeship under a prominent rakugo master, I investigate the role of female voice as a “speaker” in the Bakhtinian “double-voiced discourse” of rakugo. The female voice is considered unsuitable to perform rakugo well, because women are denied the agency to reciprocate the androcentric ideology that views the genre as exclusively male authored.</p>","PeriodicalId":47070,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Linguistic Anthropology","volume":"32 3","pages":"476-495"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-11-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48457936","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}