**Apologies for Cross-posting**
Dear All,
We are very pleased to invite you to send contributions to our panel
"*Imagining
Language: Ethnographic Approaches" *at the 2018 ASA conference.
What is language in the human imagination? In the Western intellectual
tradition, language emerged as autonomous, representational system of
denotational code, a foundational pillar of the modern constitution. It
mediated the ontological separation of nature and society/culture (Latour
1991; Descola 2005), and became a tool for describing linguistic variation,
while at the same time serving as yardstick for its evaluation
(Bauman&Briggs 2003). Ethnographies from across the world have provided
evidence of alternative ontologies (Viveiros de Castro 1998), as well as
documented language practices that defy the privileging of symbolic,
denotational, or referential aspects of language (e.g., Feld 1982; Kohn
2013). They challenge its separation from the realms of practice, the body,
the nonhuman, and the material, as well as the universality of an
all-encompassing "nature of language" underlying variation. If the latter
is an artifact of the Western imaginary, then how do other intellectual
traditions make sense of language and compare or translate between
linguistic forms? To address this conference theme's call for "new
comparative approaches for the study of radical variation," we invite
contributions to mobilize local imaginings of language from anywhere in the
world, whether explicitly articulated or embedded in practices. Papers may
discuss daily conversations, speech, play, verbal art, mythology, music,
and non-verbal or material forms of communication. Instead of looking at
cultural representations of a unified, pre-conceived notion of language we
are interested in empirically exploring the ontological variation of
language, multiplying the possibilities of what language(s) could be.
The deadline for proposals is April 20th 2018.
To send a submission, please go here
<https://nomadit.co.uk/asa/asa2018/conferencesuite.php/panels/6862>.
Please circulate widely.
Many thanks,
Guilherme Orlandini Heurich (UCL) and Jan David Hauck (UCLA)
--
British Academy Newton International Fellow
Department of Anthropology
University College London
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