Course Schedule - Fall 2010

Weekly readings will be marked by where they can be found: bookstore (see Course Book List); book reserve (see Course Reserve List for complete listing by week), e-reserve, office for my office, or online for articles available for downloading from the web. E-reserve articles can be found on the library's Course Page for Anth 411 E-reserves. Just type in the password and find the article you need. Note that most of the articles and excerpts are available in books on reserve. Please let me know as soon as possible if you have any trouble obtaining the readings. Please print out all online and e-reserve readings to read them. Bring all readings to class.

For paper guidelines and a summary of assignment due dates, see Course Requirements.

Week 1
Week 2
Week 3
Week 4
Week 5
Week 6
Week 7

Week 8
Week 9
Week 10
Week 11
Week 12
Week 13

 

Week One - Language and Performativity: Emergent Realities

Tues Aug 31  Introductions and Goals of the Course

Thurs Sept 2 Language, History, Power

  • Williams, Raymond. "Culture," and "Language," in Marxism and Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977. pp. 11-44. (bookstore and book reserve, 5 copies).

To deepen your understanding of issues and concepts raised this week, consult these sources:

Willams, Raymond. Keywords: a Vocabulary of Culture and Society, Revised edition. NY: Oxford University Press, 1983. (book reserve).

Bauman, Richard. "Performance," in Int'l Encyclopedia of Communications, Oxford, 1989.

Duranti, Alessandro. "Ch. 1, The Scope of Linguistic Anthropology," Linguistic Anthropology. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1997. (book reserve).

Duranti, Alessandro, ed. Key Terms in Language and Culture. Blackwell, 2001. (bookstore, book reserve)

Dworkin and Roman, ed.s Views Beyond the Border Countery:Raymond Williams and Cultural Politics. London: Routledge, 1993. (see me).

Inglis, Fred. Raymond Williams. Routledge, 1995. Phil Shannon review

Higgins, John. Raymond Williams. Literature, Marxism and Cultural Materialism. London and New York: Routledge, 1999.

Check these links out for further information on this week's topics!

Use these links as quick references and contextualizing material. To really delve, you need to print and read all essays, or go look at books and articles in Further Reading.

Remember that materials on the web MUST be evaluated as critically as any other texts we consider in this course. For brief guidelines on thinking critically about the web, click HERE.

Raymond Williams

TBA

 

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Week Two - Models of Linguistic Form and Function

Sept. 7 The Saussurean paradigm

  • Saussure, Ferdinand de. "Introduction," ch's 2-5 (pp. 6-23,); "Part One, General Principles," ch's 1-3 (pp. 65-100); "Part Two: Syncrhronic Linguistics," ch's 1-8 (pp. 101-139), in Course in general linguistics, edited by Charles Bally and Albert Sechehaye in collaboration with Albert Riedlinger ; translated, with an introduction and notes by Wade Baskin, New York : McGraw-Hill, 1966 (c1959) (paperback, lib. has 5 copies). (bookstore, book reserve, 5 copies) NOTE: Do NOT use the Harris translation, 1986
  • Yaguello, Marina. ch. 4-6, pp. 28-43s. Language through the Looking Glass: Exploring Language and Linguistics. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1998 (1981). P106.Y34. (bookstore, book reserve, 4 copies).

Sept 9 Jakobson on multifunctionality

  • Jakobson, Roman. "Linguistics and Poetics," in Language in Literature, edited by Krystyna Pomorska and Stephen Rudy. Cambridge, Mass. : Belknap Press, 1987 PN54 .J35 1987 (e-reserve, book reserve) (lib. has 4 copies).
  • Yaguello, Marina. Ch. 1, Ch. 10, Language through the Looking Glass: Exploring Language and Linguistics. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1998 (1981). (bookstore, book reserve, 4 copies). P106.Y34.

Chomsky, Noam. Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. Cambridge, Ma: MIT press, 1965.
Locus classicus of his famous distinction between "competence" and "performance", drawing on and refiguring Saussure's Langue vs. Parole distinction.

Culler, Jonathan. Ferdinand de Saussure. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986.

Jakobson 1942 Six Lectures on Sound and Meaning. Lectures II-IV, pp. 23-107. P217.J3213 1978. articulates his critique of Saussurean linguistics

Jakobson, Roman. "Two Aspects of Language and Two Types of Aphasic Disturbances," in Language in Literature, edited by Krystyna Pomorska and Stephen Rudy. Cambridge, Mass. : Belknap Press, 1987 PN54 .J35 1987 (1956). (book reserve) (lib. has 4 copies).

Derrida, Jacques. Of Grammatology. translated by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press, c1997. Online excerpt.
articulates his famous critique of Saussurean linguistics.

Caton, S. "Contributions of Roman Jakobson". Annual Review of Anthropology 16: 223-60, 1987. (JSTOR)

Waugh, L.R, and M. Monville-Burston. "Roman Jakobson: His Life and Work," in On Language: Roman Jakobson. Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 1990. (book reserve, 5 copies).

Silverstein, Michael. "Functions," in Duranti, Alessandro, ed. Key Terms in Language and Culture. Blackwell, 2001. (bookstore and book reserve)

Stasch, Rupert. 2006 Structuralism in Anthropology. The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, 2nd edition, vol. 12, pp. 167-170. Oxford: Elsevier. (4 pages).

Manning, Paul. [unpub]. Words and Things, Goods and Services: problems of translation between language and political economy. Begins with discussion of structural similiarities between nascent fields of linguistics and economics.

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Week Three - Constituting Linguistic and Cultural Worlds: Anthropological Approaches

Sept. 14 Magic, Performance and Power: Coral Gardens

  • Malinowski, Bronislaw. "An Ethnographic Theory of Language and some practical corollaries," Coral Gardens and their Magic, Vol. 2, Part 4, 1965 (1935) or 2002 (1935). (book, e-reserve, lib. has 2 copies old; 2 copies new).
  • Handout guidelines for Midterm Paper.

Sept 16 Emergent Worlds: Sapir, Whorf and World View

  • Sapir, Edward. 1929. "The Status of Linguistics as a Science," in Selected Writings in Language, Culture and Personality, edited by David G. Mandelbaum, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1956 [c1949] (ereserve, book reserve, 10 copies).
  • Review: Sapir 1927. "Unconscious Patterning of Behavior". (ereserve).
  • Whorf, Benjamin. 1939. "Relation of Habitual Thought and Behavior to Language," in Language, thought, and reality; selected writings. Edited and with an introd. by John B. Carroll. [Cambridge] Technology Press of Massachusetts Institute of Technology [1956] P27 .W53. (ereserve, book reserve, 4 copies).
  • Slide: Whorf's gas drum example

Silverstein, Michael. 1977. "The Limits of Awareness," in Duranti, ed., Linguistic Anthropology: A Reader, Blackwell, 2001. (book reserve)

Hill, Jane and Bruce Mannheim. "Language and World View," Annual Review of Anthropology 21, 1992. (JSTOR).

Berlin, B and P. Kay. Basic Color Terms: Their Universality and Evolution, Berkeley: Univ. of Calif. Press, 1969.
Early argument against extreme linguistic relativism view attributed to Whorf.

Sahlins, Marshall. "Colors and Cultures," in Semiotica 16: 1-22, 1976.
Early critique of Berlin and Kay's conclusions

Hill, Jane. "Language and World View," in Linguistics: The Cambridge Survey, Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1988.

Gumperz and Levinson. "Rethinking Linguistic Relativity," in Current Anthropology 32, 1991 (JSTOR).

Darnell, Regna. "Personality and Culture: the Fate of the Sapirian Alternative," in Stocking, ed. Malinowski, Rivers, Benedict and Others, 1986.

Darnell, Regna. Edward Sapir: Linguist, Anthropologist, Humanist. Berkeley: Univ. of CA press, 1990.

Duranti, Alessandro. "Linguistic Diversity," in Linguistic Anthropology. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1997. (see me).

Duranti, Alessandro. "Relativity," in Duranti, Alessandro, ed. Key Terms in Language and Culture. Blackwell, 2001. (bookstore and book reserve)

Darnell, Regna. "Linguistic Relativity and Cultural Relativism," in Invisible Geneologies: A history of Americanist Anthropology. Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 2001. (see me).

Malinowski, Bronislaw. "The Problem of Meaning in Primitive Languages," in Ogden and Richards, eds., The Meaning of Meaning: A Study of the Influence of Language Upon Thought and of The Science of Symbolism. NY: Harcourt Brace, 1923. (book reserve, lib. has 1 copy, or see me).
Sapir critiqued this essay a year before he published "Status of Linguistics as a Science.

Tambiah, Stanley. "The Magical Power of Words," Man, New Series, Vol. 3, No. 2. (Jun., 1968), pp. 175-208,(JSTOR), also reprinted in Culture, Thought and Social Action. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 1985[1968]. (Reed has three copies)
Sustained critique and rethinking of Malinowski's data and conclusions in Coral Gardens.

Leach, Edmund. 1957 The epistemological background to Malinowski's empiricism. Firth ed. Man and culture: an evaluation of the work of Bronislaw malinowski. London: routledge.
Scathing critique of the limitations of Malinowski's pragmatism and functionalism.

Bronislaw Malinowski (1884-1942)

Notes on Malinowski
Vanderbilt anthropology course notes and images on Malinowski.

Malinowski Life and Works
British lib. of political and economic science, detailed entry on Malinowski's life and works.

Malinowski and Ethnopoetics
Jerome Rothenberg comments on Malinowski's contributions to the field of ethnopoetics.

Edward Sapir (1884-1939)
Darnell and Irvine's biography

Benjamin Lee Whorf (1897-1941)
David Lavery's website devoted to Whorf

Dan Moonhawk Alford on Benjamin Whorf
Engaging debates, includes line by line rebuttal of Chomsky's famous rebuttal of Whorf's perspective on language and world view.

Wikipedia on the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

TBA

 

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Week Four - Doing things with Words: Speech Act Theory

Sept. 21 Austin's Performatives

  • Austin, J.L. 1962. Lectures 1-5, (pp. 1-66), Lecture 8 (p. 94-108), Lecture 11 (133-147), How to do things with words, 2nd edition, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1975. (Bookstore and book reserve).
  • Slide: Austin's Felicity Conditions

Sept. 23 Searle's Reformulation

  • Searle, John. "a Taxonomy of Illocutionary Acts," in Expression and meaning : studies in the theory of speech acts. Cambridge, Eng. ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 1979. P95.55 .S4 (e-reserve, book reserve, 1 copy).
  • Slide: Searle vs. Austin
  • Assign trios 2

Austin, J.L. "Performative Utterances," in Philosophical Papers, 2nd edition, Urmson and Warnock, eds., London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1970(1956).
good brief summary of his arguments.

Searle, John. especially Ch.s 2 and 3 (pp. 22-71), Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language. Cambridge University Press, 1984(1969). (book reserve).

Searle, John. A classification of Illocutionary acts Language in Society 5: 1-23, 1976.

Grice: "ch. 1 Prolegomena" (sustained critique of Searle) and ch. 2 Logic and Conversation, in Studies in the Ways of Words, Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1989. (2 hardcover in lib.).

Wittgenstein, Ludwig. paragraphs 1-88, 197-242, 398-427, 630-693, Philosophical Investigations. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1967. (see me).
Contemporary of Austin, articulates his 'language games' theory of meaning in use touted by recent linguistic anthropologists. See film on him in Reed library.

Levinson, S. Ch. 5 Speech Acts, Pragmatics, Cambridge, 1983. (lib. has 2 copies).

Duranti, Alessandro. "Speaking as Social Action," in Linguistic Anthropology. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1997. (see me).

Hall, Kira. "Performativity," in Duranti, Alessandro, ed. Key Terms in Language and Culture. Blackwell, 2001.

Sbisa, Marina. "Act," in Duranti, Alessandro, ed. Key Terms in Language and Culture. Blackwell, 2001. (bookstore and book reserve)

Roy D'Andrade, ed. Searle on Institutions. in Anthropological Theory, March 1 2006, Volume 6, No. 1. Available online [very recent debates btw anthro critics and Searle himself!]

 

John Langshaw Austin (1911-1960)

Austin Profile
Philosophy pages' brief biography of Austin

Austin's Work
Philosophy pages' brief overview of Austin's work

Notes on Austin
English Prof. Warren Hedges' notes on Austin's How to do things with Words

John Searle (1932-)

Searle Profile
Philosophy pages' brief biography of Searle.

Searle articles online
These are pdf files Searle himself posted on his website at Berkeley.

Interview with Searle
Fascinating interview with the man himself the Institute of International Studies, Berkeley.


Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951)

Wittgenstein's work on language
Austin and Searle in some ways were engaged in a polemic against Wittgenstein's ideas. Philosophy pages' brief overview of Wittgenstein's work

Films in Reed Library:

The philosophy of language. BBC Worldwide Americas, Inc. : Films for the Humanities and Sciences, 1997
Berkeley philosopher of language John Searle discusses the question: "How does language relate to thought and to reality?"

Bryan Magee talks to John Searle about Wittgenstein. BBC Education & Training ; devised and presented by Bryan Magee, BBC, 1987

Youtube:

Obama's swearing in ceremony (January 2009)

CNN on Obama's swearing in mistakes

Fox news and Glenn Beck on Obama's swearing in mistakes

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Week Five - Doing things with Words: Performativity Refined

Sept. 28 Derrida's Critique

  • Derrida, Jacques. 1971. "Signature, Event, Context, " in Limited, inc., Evanston: Northwestern Univ. Press, 1988 (lib. has 4 copies). (ereserve, book store, book reserve). Do NOT read the version of this article in Margins of Philosophy, it is a different translation!
  • Optional: Searle, John. 1977. "Reiterating the Differences: a Reply to Derrida," Gylph 1 (10 pp.) (e-reserve).

Sept. 30 Rosaldo's Critique

Duranti, Alessandro and Charles Goodwin, "Rethinking Context: an Introduction," in
Duranti and Goodwin, eds. Rethinking context : language as an interactive phenomenon, Cambridge [England] ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 1991.

Keenan, Elinor Ochs. 1976. "The Universality of Conversational Postulates," in Language in Society 5: 67-80.
Response to Grice's theoryof universal conversational "implicatures".

Silverstein, Michael. "Cultural Prerequisites to Grammatical Analysis. in M. Saville-Troike, ed., Linguistics and Anthropology: Georgetown Univesity Round Table on Languages and Lingustics 1977 (pp. 139-51). Washington, D.C: Georgetown University press, 1977.

Silverstein, Michael. 1979. "Language structure and linguistic ideology," in The Elements: a Parasession on Linguistic Units and levels. Clyne, Hanks, Hofbauer, eds., Chicago: C Linguist Soc., , pp. 193-247.

Hollan, Douglas. "Cross-cultural Differences in the Self," in Journal of Anthropological Research 48(4): 283-300, 1992.

Levinson, S. Ch. 5 Speech Acts, Pragmatics, Cambridge, 1983.

Duranti, Alessandro. "Speaking as Social Action," in Linguistic Anthropology. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1997. (see me).

Jacques Derrida (1930-)

Johns Hopkins Guide profile of Derrida

Johns Hopkins guide entry on "deconstruction"

Stanford Profile of Derrida
Stanford presidential lectures links on derrida's life and works

Of Grammatology (1967) online
Marxist.org excerpt from on grammatology

Derrida Online Archive
Extensive online archive of Derrida texts

Roundtable discussion w/Derrida 1994

Culture machine's interview with Derrida 1998

TBA

 

 

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Week Six - Linguistic Form and Performative Contextualization: Indexicality

Oct. 5 Pierce's Semiotic

  • Hoopes, ed., "Introduction," Pierce on Signs: Writings on Semiotics by Charles Sanders Pierce, Chapel Hill: Univ. of N. Carolina Press, (ereserve, book reserve, 5 copies).]
  • Pierce, Charles. Ch. 7 "Logic as Semiotic: The Theory of Signs," (98-119) in Philosophical Writings of Pierce. Buchler, ed. New York: Dover Publications. 1955 (1940). (ereserve, Book reserve, 4 copies)
  • Slide: Pierce's Ten Classes of Signs

Oct. 7 Indexicality, language and culture

  • Jakobson, Roman. 1957 "Shifters and Verbal Categories," in On Language, edited by Linda R. Waugh and Monique Monville-Burston, Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 1990 (pp. 386-392), (ereserve,book reserve, 5 copies) P121.J27 1990;
  • Silverstein, Michael. 1976 "Shifters, Linguistic Categories, and Cultural Description." In Meaning in Anthropology, ed.s K. Basso and H. Selby, pp. 11-56. GN452.5.M4. (ereserve, book reserve, 5 copies).
  • Slide: Jakobson and Silverstein on shifters

Pierce, Charles. Ch. 6 "The Principles of Phenomenology," (pp. 74-97) in Philosophical Writings of Pierce. Buchler, ed. New York: Dover Publications. 1955 (1940).

Caton, S. "Contributions of Roman Jakobson". Annual Review of Anthropology 16: 223-60, 1987. (JSTOR)

Duranti, Alessandro and Charles Goodwin. "Rethinking Context: an Introduction," in Duranti, Alessandro and Charles Goodwin, eds. Rethinking context : language as an interactive phenomenon, Cambridge [England] ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 1991

Duranti, Alessandro. pp. 199-213 in Linguistic Anthropology. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1997. (see me).

Charles S. Peirce (1839-1914)

Online Dictionary of Peirce's terms in his own words

Philosophy pages Peirce Life and Works

Johns Hopkins Guide Peirce Life and Works
Essay by Leroy Searle.

Stanford Encyclopedia Peirce Profile
Comprehensive essay by Robert Burch

Peirce's Logic
Essay in Stanford Encyclopedia by Eric Hammer.

Peirce Edition Project

TBA

 

 

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Week Seven - Performance in Context: The Ethnography of Speaking

Oct 12 Emergent Structures: Frames and Interpretive Politics

  • Bateson, Gregory. "A Theory of Play and Fantasy," in Steps to an Ecology of Mind. New York: Ballantine Books, 1972. (e-reserve, article and book reserve, 1 copy in library)
  • Goffman, Erving. "Footing," in Forms of Talk. Philadelphia: Univ. of Penn. Press, 1981. (ereserve, bookstore and book reserve, 2 copies in lib., one missing).
  • Assign trios 3, Discussion Sign-up

Oct 14 Performance in speech events

No weekly assignment due

Hymes, Dell. Foundations in Sociolinguistics: An Ethnographic Perspective. Philadelphia: Univ. of Penn, Press, 1974.
Foundational text for sociolinguistic challenge to Chomskyian linguistics' dichotomy between competence and performance.

Hymes, Dell. "On Communicative Competence," in Duranti, ed., Linguistic Anthropology: A Reader, Blackwell, 2001. (book reserve)
Programmatic piece spelling out his critique of Chomsky's performance/competence dichotomy.

Hymes, Dell. "Breakthrough into Performance," in Ben-Amos and Gowstein, eds. Folklore: Performance and Communication, The Hague. 1975.
Oft-cited seminal ethnography.

Bauman, Richard and Joel Sherzer. "The Ethnography of Speaking," in Annual Review of Anthropology 4, 1975. (JSTOR).

Darnell, Regna. "Correlates of Cree Narrative Performance," in Explorations in the Ethnography of Speaking, Bauman and Sherzer, eds., Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1989. (book reserve, 10 copies).

Gumperz, John. Discourse Strategies, 1982 P95.45 .G8 1982 c.2 (2 in lib.)
Develops his notion, based on Goffman, of "contextualization cues" in conversation.

-----------------. "Contextualization and Understanding," Duranti, Alessandro and Charles Goodwin, eds. Rethinking context : language as an interactive phenomenon, Cambridge [England] ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 1991.

Goffman, Erving. "Felicity's Condition," in The Goffman Reader, Lemert and Branaman, eds., Blackwell, 1997.
Explicitly critiques Austinian speech act theory.

J. E. Limon; M. J. Young. Frontiers, Settlements, and Development in Folklore Studies, 1972-1985 Annual Review of Anthropology, Vol. 15. (1986), pp. 437-460. (JSTOR)
Important critique of early performance studies in anthropology arguing the focus has been too micro, not enough attention to larger political economic contexts.

Bauman, Richard. "The Role of Performance in the Ethnography of Speaking," in Working Papers Proc. Cent. Psychosoc. Studies 11: 3-12, 1987.

Bauman, Richard and Joel Sherzer. "Introduction to the 2nd Edition," in Explorations in the Ethnography of Speaking, Bauman and Sherzer, eds., Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1989.

Bauman and Briggs. "Poetics and Performance as Critical Perspectives on Language and social life," Annual Review of Anthropology 19: 59-88, 1990. (JSTOR)
Updated approach responding especially to Limon and Young's critique.

Goodwin, Marjorie. "Participation," in Duranti, Alessandro, ed. Key Terms in Language and Culture. Blackwell, 2001. (bookstore and book reserve).

Gregory Bateson (1904-1980)

Bateson Online
comprehensive site on Bateson, short bio, many online articles

Bateson Links
Univ. of colorado school of educ. page of links on Bateson

Anton-Luca Bateson Online
Alexandru Anton-Luca's comprehensive site on Bateson at Indiana univ.

Bateson Profile
Anthrobase entry on Bateson, hyperlinked to other theorists and concepts

Erving Goffman (1922-1982)

Goffman Profile
brief bio, info re: his life and works

Celebrating Goffman
By Eliot Freidson, in Contemporary Sociology, 12 (4) July, 1983: 359-362. This paper was read at a memorial session for Erving Goffman at the Eastern Sociological Society meeting in Baltimore, March 4, 1983.

Goffman Profile
Diane Blackwood essay on G's life and works


Youtube:

George W. Bush's infamous shoulder rub of German Chancellor Angela Merkel (CBS footage, G-8 summit, July 2006)

George W. Bush is booed by Dems at 2005 State of the Union speech

Senator Arlen Specter confronted at town hall meeting (on health care, Aug. 2009)

Congressman Dingell town hall meeting pre-event crowd (Aug. 2009)

Petaluma town hall meeting angry responses from crowd (Aug. 2009)

Rep. Caster town hall meeting disrupted (Aug. 2009)

S. Carolina GOP rep Joe Wilson yells "you lie!" to President Obama (ABC news, Obama speech to joint session of congress, Sept 2009)

SNL parody of Joe Wilson's outburst

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Midterm Paper Due Friday October 15, 5 pm, my office

 

Fall Break - Oct. 18-22

 

Week Eight - Formality, Meaning and Agency: Performativity in Ritual

Oct 26 Ritual Performance: constraint or creativity?

  • Bloch, Maurice 1974 (1989) Symbols, Song, Dance, and Features of Articulation: Is Religion an Extreme Form of Traditional Authority? Ritual, History, and Power: Selected Papers in Anthropology. London School of Economics Monographs on Social Anthropology 58. London: Athlone Press. (ereserve, book reserve, 4 copies).
  • Tambiah, Stanley. 1979. A Performative Approach to Ritual, Proceedings of the British Academy, 65: 113-169. Reprinted in in Culture, thought, and social action : an anthropological perspective. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1985. (e-reserve).

Oct 28 Formality and Agency

  • Irvine, Judith T. 1979 "Formality and Informality in Communicative Events." American Anthropologist. 16: 248-67. (JSTOR).
  • Dubois, John. 1993 Meaning without Intention: Lessons from Divination. Responsibility and Evidence in Oral Discourse. Ed. Jane H. Hill and Judith T. Irvine. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (e-reserve, book reserve, lib. has only 1 copy).
  • Handout guidelines for Final Paper.

Bloch, Maurice, ed. 1975 Introduction. Political Language and Oratory in Traditional Society. New York: Academic Press.

Brenneis, D., and Myers, eds. Dangerous Words: Language and Politics in the Pacific. NY: NYU Press, 1984.
Hanks, William. "Sanctification, Structure and Experience in a Yucatec Ritual event," Journal of American Folklore 97: 131-166, 1984. (JSTOR)

Duranti, Alessandro 1993 Truth and Intentionality: An Ethnographic Critique. Cultural Anthropology. 8 (2): 214-45. (JSTOR)

Boddy, Janice 1994 Spirit Possession Revisited: Beyond Instrumentality. Annual Review of Anthropology. 23: 407-34. (JSTOR)

Ahearn, Laura M. 2001 Language and Agency. Annual Review of Anthropology 30: 109-137. (JSTOR)

Ahearn, Laura. "Agency," in Duranti, Alessandro, ed. Key Terms in Language and Culture. Blackwell, 2001. (bookstore and book reserve).

Keane, Webb. 1997 From Fetishism to Sincerity: On Agency, the Speaking Subject, and their Historicity in the Context of Religious Conversion. Comparative Studies in Society and History. 39: 674-693. (JSTOR)

Keane, Webb. "Language and Religion," A Companion to Linguistic Anthropology, ed. Alessandro Duranti, Oxford, UK: Blackwell, July 2002. (see me).
Good overview of performativity and agency issues in relation to religion, ritual and language.

Keane, Webb. 2007. Christian Moderns. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.

Duranti, Alessandro. "Intentionality," in Duranti, Alessandro, ed. Key Terms in Language and Culture. Blackwell, 2001. (bookstore and book reserve).

Early anthropological applications of speech act theory to ritual:

Rappaport, Roy. "Obvious Aspects of Ritual," reprinted in Ritual and religion in the making of humanity. Cambridge, U.K. ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 1999. (Lib. has 5 copies).

Ahern, Emily (Martin) 1979. The Problem of Efficacy: Strong and Weak Illocutionary Acts. Man. (NS) 14 (1): 1-17. (JSTOR)

Finnegan, Ruth. "How to do things with words: performative utterances among the Limba of Sierra Leone," Man 4: 537-552, 1969. (JSTOR)

Foster, M. "When words become deeds: an analysis of three Iroquois Longhouse speech events," in Explorations in the Ethnography of Speaking, Bauman and Sherzer, eds., Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1989 (1974). 345-67. (book reserve)

Ravenhill, P.L. "Religious Utterances and the theory of speech acts," in Language in Religious Practice. W. Samarin, ed. Rowley, MA: Newbury House, 1976.

Early religious studies applications of speech act theory to ritual:

Wheelock, Wade. 'The Problem of Ritual Language: From Information to Situation," Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 50(1), 1982.

Staal, Fritz. "the Meaninglessness of Ritual," Numen, 26(1),1979.

TBA

 

 

Fused Numinous Experience? (Tambiah, p. 164)

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Week Nine - The Dialogics of Emergent Performances

Nov 2 Bakhtin's Dialogics

  • Bakhtin, Mikhail. Editor's Introduction and "Discourse in the Novel," (pp. 257-366), The dialogic imagination : four essays; edited by Michael Holquist ; translated by Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist Austin : University of Texas Press, c1981. (Bookstore and book reserve, lib. has 5 copies).
  • Slide: Types of Dialogism

Nov 4 Bakhtinian Analyses

  • Hill, Jane. "The Grammar of Consciousness and the Consciousness of Grammar," Brenneis and Macaulay, eds. The Matrix of Language. Boulder: Westview press, 1998. (e-reserve, bookstore and book reserve).
  • Limon, Jose. "Carne, Carnales, and the Carnivalesque: Bakhtinian Batos, disorder, and Narrative discourses," Brenneis and Macaulay, eds. The Matrix of Language. Boulder: Westview press, 1998. (e-reserve, bookstore and book reserve).

Volosinov, V.N. 1929. Marxism and the Philosophy of Language. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press 1986.
Bakhtin, Mikhail. Speech Genres and Other Late Essays, 1986.

Todorov. Mikhail Bakhtin: The Dialogic Principle. 1981.

Holquist, Michael. Dialogism: Bakhtin and his World. New York: Routledge, 1990.

Stewart, Susan. "Shouts on the Street: Bakhtin's Anti-Linguistics," Critical Inquiry 10, December 1983.
Very good introduction to Bakhtin.

Stam, Robert. "Mikhail Bakhtin and Left Cultural Critique," in Ann Kaplan, ed. Postmodernism and its Discontents, London: Verso, 1988.

Tedlock, Dennis and Bruce Mannheim. "Introduction," in Tedlock and Mannheim, eds. The Dialogic Emergence of Culture. Chicago: Univ. of Illinois Press, 1995. (bookstore and book reserve).

Bauman, Richard. "Contextualization, Tradition and the Dialogue of genres: Icelandic Legends of the kraftaskald, in Duranti and Goodwin, Rethinking Context. 1990.

Bauman, Richard. "Genre," in Duranti, Alessandro, ed. Key Terms in Language and Culture. Blackwell, 2001. (bookstore and book reserve)

Briggs, Charles. "Generic vs. metapragmatic dimensions of Warao narratives: who regiments performance?" in Lucy, ed. Reflexive Language: Reported Speech and Metapragmatics, Cambridge, 1993.

Hill, Jane. "The Voices of Don Gabriel: Responsibility and Self in a Modern Mexicano Narrative," in Tedlock and Mannheim, eds. The Dialogic Emergence of Culture. Chicago: Univ. of Illinois Press, 1995. (bookstore and book reserve).

Makley, Charlene. “The Power of the Drunk: Humor and Resistance in China’s Tibet,” Jennifer Dickinson et al, (Eds.), Linguistic Form and Social Action, Michigan Discussions in Anthropology 13: 39-79, 1998. (see me!)

Keane, Webb. "Voice," in Duranti, Alessandro, ed. Key Terms in Language and Culture. Blackwell, 2001. (bookstore and book reserve).

Ivanov, Vyacheslav. "Heteroglossia," in Duranti, Alessandro, ed. Key Terms in Language and Culture. Blackwell, 2001. (bookstore and book reserve).

Mikhail Bakhtin (1895-1975)

Klage on Bakhtin
Mary Klages' essay on Bakhtin's life and works.

Zappen on Bakhtin
James P. Zappen's comprehensive essay on Bakhtin's life and works, published in Twentieth-Century Rhetoric and Rhetoricians: Critical Studies and Sources. Ed. Michael G. Moran and Michelle Ballif. Westport: Greenwood Press, 2000. 7-20.

Morson and Emerson on Bakhtin
Johns Hopkins guide to Literary theory profile on Bakhtin by Gary Saul Morson and Caryl Emerson

The Bakhtin Circle
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy's account of the Bakhtin Circle

Bakhtin Bibliography
Jen Lawrences' Bakhtin bibliography

Bakhtin Centre
The Bakhtin Centre at the University of Sheffield, UK; links to database on primary and secondary works on/by Bakhtin and his circle, email discussion lists and more.

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Week Ten - Rethinking Context: Power, Ideology, Political Economy

Nov 9 Language and Political Economy: Bourdieu and Williams

  • Bourdieu, Pierre. 1982. Ch's 1-2 (pp. 37-89), ch. 3 (pp. 105-116). John Thompson, ed., Language and Symbolic Power. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 1991. (bookstore and book reserve).
  • Williams, Raymond. #'s 6-9 (pp. 108-135) in Marxism and Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977. pp. 11-44. (bookstore and book reserve, 5 copies).

Nov 11 Anthropological applications

Manning, Paul. 2006. "Words and Things, goods and services: Problems of translation between language and political economy," Language and Communication 26: 270-284.

Maurer, Bill. 2006. The Anthropology of Money. Annual Review of Anthropology.

Miller, Daniel, ed. 2005. Materiality. Duke University Press. [Essays by Webb Keane, Bill Maurer and others rethinking materiality as semiotic/pragmatic politics].

Graeber, David. 2001. Toward an Anthropological Theory of Value: The False Coin of Our Own Dreams. Palgrave.

Althusser, Louis. "Ideology Interpellates Individuals as Subjects," in Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays, pp 170-83.

Silverstein, Michael. 1977. "The Limits of Awareness, " in Duranti, ed., Linguistic Anthropology: A Reader, Blackwell, 2001. (book reserve)
Argues need attention to ideologies that inform views of language and language use.

J. E. Limon; M. J. Young. Frontiers, Settlements, and Development in Folklore Studies, 1972-1985 Annual Review of Anthropology, Vol. 15. (1986), pp. 437-460. (JSTOR)
Important critique of early performance studies in anthropology arguing the focus has been too micro, not enough attention to larger political economic contexts.

Friedrich, Paul. 1989. "Language, ideology, and political economy." American Anthropologist 91:295-312. (JSTOR)

Duranti, Alessandro and Charles Goodwin. "Rethinking Context: an Introduction," in Duranti, Alessandro and Charles Goodwin, eds. Rethinking context : language as an interactive phenomenon, Cambridge [England] ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 1991.

Gal, Susan. 1995. “Language and the ‘arts of resistance.’”Cultural Anthropology 10(3):407-424. (JSTOR).

Gal, Susan. 1989. "Language and Political Economy," Annual Review of Anthropology 18. (JSTOR).

Thompson, John B. 1984. "Symbolic violence: language and power in the writings of Pierre Bourdieu." In Studies in the Theory of Ideology. Berkeley: University of California Press, 42-72.

Kruger, Loren. "Placing the Occasion: Raymond Williams and Performing Culture," in Dworkin and Roman, ed.s Views Beyond the Border Countery:Raymond Williams and Cultural Politics. London: Routledge, 1993. (see me).

Errington, Joseph. "Ideology," in Duranti, Alessandro, ed. Key Terms in Language and Culture. Blackwell, 2001. (bookstore and book reserve)

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Week Eleven - Queer Performativity

Nov 16 Butlerian approaches

  • Butler, Judith. 1990. pp. 163-190. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, 10th anniversary edition, London: Routledge, 1999. (e-reserve, bookstore and book reserve).
  • ----------------. "On Linguistic Vulnerability," in Excitable Speech: a Politics of the Performative. New York: Routledge, 1997. ereserve, (bookstore and book reserve).

Nov 18 Anthropological applications (Charlene at AAAs?)

  • Leap, William. "Performative Effect in Three Gay English Texts," In A. Livia and K. Hall (eds.), Queerly Phrased: Language, Gender, and Sexuality. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 310-325, 1997. (e-reserve, book store and book reserve, 5 copies)
  • Hall, Kira. "Go Suck your Husband's Sugarcane! Hijras and the Use of Sexual Insult," In A. Livia and K. Hall (eds.), Queerly Phrased: Language, Gender, and Sexuality. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 430-460, 1997. (e-reserve, book store and book reserve, 5 copies)

Livia, Anna and Kira Hall. ‘It’s a girl!’: Bringing performativity back to linguistics.” In A. Livia and K. Hall (eds.), Queerly Phrased: Language, Gender, and Sexuality. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 3-18, 1997. (book store and book reserve, 5 copies)
A somewhat confused attempt to reclaim performativity theory for a linguistic anthropological approach to queer theory.

Parker, Andrew and Eve Sedgewick. "Introduction: Performativity and Performance," in Parker and Sedgewick, eds. Performativity and Performance, NY: Routledge, 1995.

Worthen, W.B. "Drama, Performativity and Performance," PMLA, Oct 1998, Vol 113, Number 5. (see me).
Hall, Kira. "Performativity," in Duranti, Alessandro, ed. Key Terms in Language and Culture. Blackwell, 2001. (bookstore and book reserve)

Ochs, Elinor. "Indexing Gender," in Duranti, Alessandro and Charles Goodwin, eds. Rethinking context : language as an interactive phenomenon, Cambridge [England] ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 1991.
ling. anth. alternative to Butlerian gender performativity.

Bordo, Susan. "Postmodern Subjects, postmodern bodies, postmodern resistance,"Unbearable Weight, 1993.
Important early critique of Butlerian performativity as resistance.

Weston, Kath. 1993. "Do Clothes Make the Woman? Gender, Performance Theory, and Lesbian Eroticism," reprinted in Gender in Real Time: Power and Transience in a Visual Age, New York: Routledge, 2002.
Important early critique of Butlerian performativity as resistance.

"The Professor of Parody"
University of Chicago Law School professor Martha Nussbaum's scathing critique of Butler's work.

Morris, Rosalind C. "All Made Up: Performance Theory and the New Anthropology of Sex and Gender," Annual Review of Anthropology 1995.24:567-92. (JSTOR).

Case, Sue-Ellen, ed. Cruising the performative : interventions into the representation of ethnicity, nationality, and sexuality / edited by Sue-Ellen Case, Philip Brett, and Susan Leigh Foster PublicationBloomington : Indiana University Press, c1995

---------------------. Performing feminisms : feminist critical theory and theatre / edited by Sue-Ellen Case Publication Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press, c1990

---------------------. Split britches : lesbian practice/feminist performance / edited by Sue-Ellen Case PublicationLondon ; New York : Routledge, 1996

Judith Butler (1956-)

  • Judith Butler Online
    David Gauntlett's Theory.org site on Butler. Includes his essay on her, links to her works, other essays on her work.
  • Judith Butler Interview:
    A 1993 interview with Judith Butler, extracted from Peter Osborne and Lynne Segal’s Gender as Performance: An Interview with Judith Butler. Addresses her work in Gender Trouble and other publications, the politics of feminist and queer theory, and more.
  • Judith Butler Bibliography
    Extensive, searchable bibliography of primary and secondary sources.
  • "The Professor of Parody"
    University of Chicago Law School professor Martha Nussbaum's scathing critique of Butler's work.

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Week Twelve - Performance and Risk

Tues Nov 23 Signs of Recognition

  • Webb Keane. Tues., ch.s 1-5. Signs of recognition : powers and hazards of representation in an Indonesian society, Berkeley: University of California Press, c1997 (bookstore and book reserve, lib. has 5 copies)

Thanksgiving Break - Nov 25-26

Tues Nov 30 Signs of Recognition II

  • Webb Keane. Ch. 6 and Conclusion. Signs of recognition : powers and hazards of representation in an Indonesian society, Berkeley: University of California Press, c1997 (bookstore and book reserve, lib. has 5 copies)

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Week Thirteen - Implications

Thurs Dec 2 The Limits of Ethnographic Awareness

  • Goffman, Erving. 1983. "Frame Analysis of Talk," (Excerpt from "Felicity's Condition,") in The Goffman Reader, Lemert and Branaman, eds., Blackwell, 1997 (p 167-192). (e-reserve, book reserve).
  • Briggs, Charles. 1990 (1986). Ch. 3 "Interview techniques vis-a-vis native metacommunicative repertoires, or on the analysis of communicative blunders," in Learning How to Ask: A Sociolinguistic Appraisal of the role of the Interview in Social Science Research. Cambridge University Press. (bookstore and book reserve)

Tues Dec 7 The Risks of Ethnographic Performance

Silverstein, Michael. 1977. "The Limits of Awareness, " in Duranti, ed., Linguistic Anthropology: A Reader, Blackwell, 2001. (book reserve)

 

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Youtube:

Cranston News Interview (2009): interviewee refuses interview frame

Today show interview fail (2008): TV-mediated time lag obstructs possibility for referential content at all

Kermit Interviews the Koosbanian Phoob (1970s): interviewee refuses proper respondent role

Sarah Palin Katie Couric Interview (CBS, 2008): Palin's responses referentially obscure.

SNL's Sarah Palin Katie Couric Interview (NBC, 2008)

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Final paper due Fri. Dec. 17, 5 pm, my office.


©2003 Charlene Makley. Made by Charlene Makley and David Clark and the FML
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