The Total Linguistic Fact

 

The Total Linguistic Fact

THE TOTAL LINGUISTIC FACT: STRUCTURE, PRACTICE, IDEOLOGY

 

Reflections on the Work of Michael Silverstein
 

March 31 - April 1, 2023
 

The Total Linguistic Fact  is the first of three linked conferences across three universities celebrating the work and memory of Michael Silverstein (1945-2020).  The Harvard conference will focus on Silverstein’s pioneering early work from the late 1960s until the mid-1980s, when he began to develop his signature ideas about indexicality and to integrate linguistic structure, practice, and ideology into a comprehensive theory of language in culture. It was during this formative period that Silverstein trained in linguistics at Harvard with Roman Jakobson, Einar Haugen, Calvert Watkins, and Jerzy Kuryłowicz; immersed himself the linguistic and anthropological materials of Whitney, Boas, Sapir, and Whorf; carried out research among the speakers of Wasco-Wishram Chinookan (known natively as Kiksht) and Worora; and began his professional career as an anthropologist. From this mix, Silverstein made field-changing contributions to syntax, historical linguistics, and sociolinguistics/linguistic anthropology and introduced the now-foundational concepts of metapragmatics and linguistic ideology.
 

Friday, March 31

9:00 – 9:30
OPENING REMARKS
Nicholas Harkness, Harvard University & Constantine Nakassis, University of Chicago

9:30 – 12:00
LINGUISTIC ANTHROPOLOGICAL LEGACIES IN INDIGENOUS COMMUNITIES
Chair: Joyhanna Yoo, Harvard University
 

    Chinookan: A Community of Practice and a “Reference Language” for North America
     Robert Moore, University of Pennsylvania

     On Revelation and Its Limits in Hopi: A Discursive Approach to Indigenous Knowledge
     Hannah McElgunn, Queens University

    Enduring Languages and the Languages of Endurance: Ensuring Indigenous Continuance in the U.S.-Mexico         Borderlands
    Erin Debenport, University of California, Los Angeles

1:30 – 4:00
CATEGORIES, COGNITION, CODE
Chair: Stanton Wortham, Boston College
 

    Antipassive: The Golden Jubilee
    Maria Polinsky, University of Maryland, College Park

    Shifters, Linguistic Categories, and Cognitive Development
    John Lucy, University of Chicago

    Nonreferential Indexes, the Referentialist Bias, and Ideological Mediation: On the “Exceptional Case” of Honorific     Pronouns
    Luke Fleming, University of Montreal
 

Saturday, April 1

9:00 – 11:30
INSTITUTIONS, IDEOLOGIES, INDEXICALITIES
Chair: Graham Jones, Massachusetts Institute of Technology


   Exploring Silverstein’s “Culture of Standardization,” with a Glance at IsiZulu
   Judith Irvine, University of Michigan

   Two (and ½) Exercises in Indexical Transduction: Tzotzil Interpreting in Gringolandia
   John Haviland, University of California, San Diego

   Sociolinguistic Variation, Creative Indexicality, and Social Change 
   Penelope Eckert, Stanford University
 

12:30 – 3:00
SPEECH, SEMIOSIS, SOCIAL THEORY
Chair: Janet McIntosh, Brandeis University
 

   Language and the Culture of Anti-Gender: The Intersection of Structure, Usage, and Ideology
   Susan Gal, University of Chicago

   Relativism and Relativity in Late Structuralism: Semiotics of an Ontic Politics of Difference
   Christopher Ball, University of Notre Dame

   From Perception to Morality
   Asif Agha, University of Pennsylvania

3:15-4:45
ROUNDTABLE
Chair: Steve Caton, Harvard University

Future Conferences in the Series

   Dynamic Figurations: Context and Culture 
   University of Montreal, September 8-9, 2023 (organized by Luke Fleming)

   Signification, Circulation, Emanations
   University of Chicago, Spring 2024 (organized by Constantine Nakassis)