Michael Silverstein

27100. Culture History of American English (=Ling 268, Eng 143). This course will consider such topics as the emergence of the American English linguistic community within the context of North American and more global English-centered speech communities; American culture and American culture of language; Dynamic intersections of institutional forces that have shaped, and are currently shaping, American English discursive practices and thence linguistic structure.

27130. America: Society, Polity, Speech Community (=LING 27130). We explore the place of languages and of discourses about languages in the history and present condition of how American mass society stands in relation to the political structures of the North American (nation-)states and to American speech communities. We address plurilingualisms of several different origins (indigenous; immigrant) that have bee incorporated into the contemporary American speech community; the social stratification of English in a regime of standardization that draws speakers up into a system of linguistic "register"; and how language itself has become an issue-focus of American political struggles In the past and contemporaneously.

27200. Language in Culture and Society (=Ling 212). This course takes a social scientific look at language, which always comes to us as a phenomenon through discourse, the use of language in interaction. Interaction brings together people with distinct subjective orientations to the various contexts of their social life; discourse mediates their social relations in the immediate and in the wider context. Studying the ways in which this happens reveals to us the cultural beliefs and values of the various social groups in which people arrange themselves. We start from what we might term an “ethological” perspective on social interaction, for which verbally centered interpersonal communication is the basic means. We get to see human communication as a “dialectical” process involving reflexive (self-focused and interested) agentivity, instanced patterns of textuality of both types, and linguistic structure in the more traditional linguist’s sense. Inquiring about “concepts,” and in particular what can be termed “cultural concepts,” in relation to language structure (grammar) and lexicon, in relation to discursively centered interaction, and in relation to social groups and categories implied by patterns of such interaction., we make precise what is sometimes termed “linguistic relativity” or “the Whorfian hypothesis.” Finally, moving out from our focus on the “microsociological” context of instances of communication to the “macrosociological” context of social structure and larger-scale social process over whole populations, we develop concepts of sociolinguistic normativity and sociolinguistic institutionalization. We look at the cultural politics of language in this light as an instance of culture.

27300. Language, Voice, and Gender (=Psych 27300, Ling 28900, GenSt 27500). This course explores how we “voice” ourselves as “gendered” persons by, in essence, performing gender in discursive interaction, that is, in language-mediated and semiosis-saturated interpersonal events. The several analytic orders and interacting semiotic planes of framing gender will be emphasized, as also the inherently “dialectic” character of social categories of identity such as gender, which exist emergently as “culture” between essential[ized] individual “nature” and interested intuitions we have and formulate about the micro- and macrosocial orders in which we participate. No prior linguistics or sociocultural anthropology is presupposed, but serious attention to conceptual and theoretical issues in the sociocultural analysis of language in relation to identity will be nurtured in the course of the discussion. We start with a review of some key ideas that have shaped the recent study of language and gender, then cycle back to consider several problematic areas, and finally look at some discursively rich ethnographic treatments of gendering.

27500/47500. Semiotics of Culture. This course will begin with overview materials that give a contemporary approach to understanding ‘culture’ as inherently semiotic, i.e., mediated by sign phenomena in all modalities of experience. We want to examine the two moments of analysis of such sign phenomena, the “semantically” influenced via concepts of meaning-as-representation, and the “pragmatically” influenced via concepts of meaning-as-use. Though influenced in many ways by the analysis of verbal language, the generalization to other “codes and modes” is, in principle, different from such analysis. We examine various proposals for such nonlinguistic analyses in a sampling of recent literature.

27800. Culture and Cognition: Linguistic Relativity (=Ling 270, Psych 249). PQ: Knowledge of linguistics or cognitive studies helpful. Understand-ing language both as a systematic representation of the thinkable and as a systematic way of inhabiting a universe of social action, we review the ways in which modern social and cognitive scientists have dealt with the implica-tions of the formal variability of language. We consider both cross-linguis-tic, cross-societal implications and the significance of register-based social variability of language within linguistic communities.

37201,-02. Language in Culture I, II (=Ling 311-312, Psych 470-471). PQ: Consent of instructor. Must be taken in sequence. This two-quarter course presents the major issues in linguistics of contemporary anthropological interest, including, in the first half, the formal structure of semiotic systems, the incorporation of linguistic forms into sociocultural life via systems of indexicality and (con)textuality, and the methods for empirical investigation of cultural conceptualization in relation to “functional” semiotic structure. The second half of the sequence takes up basic concepts in socio-linguistics and their critique; linguistic analysis of publics; performance and ritual; and language ideologies, among other topics. M. Silverstein, Autumn; S. Gal, Winter. Offered annually.

37201. Language in Culture I (-Ling 311, Psych 470). This is a two-quarter sequence to introduce some of the central theoretical issues involved in the social scientific and cognitive study of language “use.” The first quarter concentrates on two major problems. The first is, by developing and using semiotic concepts to understand how interpersonal communication, carried on in-and-by the medium of language, can be studied both as an orderly, or ‘coherent’ unfolding of information and as organized and consequential social action. The second is, by reworking the problem of language as a medium of and factor in so-called ‘conceptual’ representation, to provide a framework for understanding mental “knowledge,” its various sources and modes of coding in language, and in particular, the dialectical nature of what we term “cultural knowledge.”

37201. Language in Culture I (GS Hum 354-355, Ling 311-312, Psych 47001-47002). Must be taken in sequence. This is a two-quarter sequence to introduce some of the central theoretical issues involved in the semiotic, cognitive and sociopolitical study of language in its contexts of communicative “use.” By developing and using semiotic concepts, the first quarter concentrates on two major problems that organize a vast literature and diverse theoretical approaches. The first problem is to understand interpersonal communication is carried on in-and-by the medium of language. Such communication manifests itself both in an orderly, or at least ‘(non-in)coherent’ unfolding of information and in the structured and culturally consequential social action that is accomplished in-and-by that unfolding. The second problem is to understand how language is a medium of and factor in so-called ‘conceptual’ representations or mental “knowledge.” There are various sources of such knowledge ‘coded’ in the forms of language, and this diversity reveals the modes of semiosis of which language is composed at its various planes. We concentrate in particular on the semiotic characterization of dialectially emergent “cultural knowledge” or “cultural conceptualization,” the nature of which is a current research frontier between social and cognitive sciences, between modernist and post-modernist humanities.

577. Linguistic Anthropology Seminar on Current Research Topics. PQ: Consent of instructor. Examination of particular problem areas through a discussion of recent relevant work both published and by participants. Recent topics have included: Interaction Analysis (Spring 1992), Sociolinguistic Problems of the Nation State (Spring 1989, Spring 1995), Substantiality of Language (Spring 1988), Contemporary Transformations of Local Linguistic Communities (Spring 1996), Native American Autobiographical Texts (Autumn 1996), Ethnography of Speech forms (Autumn 1997), Language and Discourse of Mensuration (Winter 1998) Evidentials, Evidence & Authority (Winter 1999), Publications, Publics, and Polities (Autumn 1999), Theory, Practice and Culture in Translation (Autumn 2000), Text and Context (Winter 2001), Cultural Analysis of Institutionally Situated Discourse (Spring 2003),Computation and the Analysis of Natural Conversation (Winter 2005), Grammaticosemantic and -pragmatic Gradience and Categories (Spring 2005), Linguistic Anthropology of Qualia: Iconicity, Indexicality, Iconic Indexicality (Spring 2006), Linguistic Anthropology in the Macro-Social and Political Realm (Autumn 2006), Ethnographic Lexicography (Autumn 2007).  M. Silverstein. Annually

57702. Ling Anth Seminar: Seminar in Ethnography of Speech Forms: Cultural Analysis of Institutionally Situated Discourse. The aim of the seminar is to examine carefully the analytic and conceptual steps between transcripted, grammatically construable material of discursive interaction and its incorporation into an interpretative account about manifestations of immanent 'culture'. How do we "prospect" for 'culture' in interaction; how do we argue for one as opposed to another 'culture' -- or other kind of -- interpretation of interactional events? How is interactional 'genre' [cf. Bakhtin] central to accomplishing a grounded argument about a particular discursive interaction? How is a social organization of genre central to making a grounded argument about how the 'cultural' becomes visible in relation to social groups? M. Silverstein. Arr. Spring 2003