Transformative Materiality of Meaning-Making

AvDavid Parkin

Häftad, Engelska, 2021

Del 19 i serien Encounters

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Beskrivning

This book explores verbal and non-verbal communication from a social anthropological viewpoint, drawing on ethnographic data from fieldwork in East Africa. It gives an overview of developments since the 1960s in the anthropology of language use and how these have influenced the author’s thinking. The volume makes the argument that language and other forms of communication involve semiotic transactions between interlocuters; that such communicative exchanges do more than convey information; and that they give identity to the recipients of such transactions who reciprocate by defining speakers. The density and situational totality of such semiotic exchange can moreover be regarded as a kind of materiality, both in terms of their impact on social interaction and in how interlocuters interact bodily as well as verbally among themselves.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum:2021-08-18
Mått:148 x 210 x 21 mm
Vikt:509 g
Format:Häftad
Språk:Engelska
Serie:Encounters
Antal sidor:378
Förlag:Multilingual Matters
ISBN:9781800411463

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Mer om författaren

David Parkin is an Emeritus Fellow of All Souls College, University of Oxford, UK, where he was a Professor of Social Anthropology. His research focuses on the coordination of multimodal communication.

Recensioner i media

This important book brings acute observation to central sociolinguistic themes like multilingualism, linguistic change, standardisation, power and creativity, and situates them with great subtlety and depth in the political, cultural and historical processes in which they play a part. More than that, it provides vivid insight into key developments in social scientific thought over the last five decades, and richly illustrates the power and scope for a social anthropology of language.

Innehållsförteckning

AcknowledgementsIntroductionPart 1: Communication as Transaction and Becoming 1. From Multilingual Classification to Translingual Ontology: A Turning Point2. Emergent and Stabilised Multilingualism: Polyethnic Peer Groups in Urban Kenya3. Language Choice in Two Kampala Housing Estates 4. Language Switching in Nairobi5. The Creativity of Abuse6. Exchanging WordsPart 2: Political and Formulaic Communication7. Political Language8. Language, Government and the Play on Purity and Impurity: Arabic, Swahili and the Vernaculars in Kenya9. Being and Selfhood among Intermediary Swahili10. Controlling the U-turn of Knowledge11. The Politics of Naming Among the GiriamaPart 3: The Materiality of Language and Communication12. Unpacking Anthropology13. Revisiting: Keywords, Transforming Phrases, and Cultural Concepts14. Loud Ethics and Quiet Morality among Muslim Healers in Eastern Africa15. Reason, Emotion, and the Embodiment of Power16. The Power of Incompleteness: Innuendo in Swahili Women’s Dress17. Simultaneity and Sequencing in the Oracular Speech of Kenyan DivinersReferencesIndex