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
- Christopher Ball, University of Notre Dame
- Judith Irvine, University of Michigan
- Robert Moore, University of Pennsylvania
- Maria Polinsky, University of Maryland, College Park
- Stanton Wortham, Boston College
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)
CONTACT
Nicholas Harkness
Modern Korean Economy and Society Professor of Anthropology
harkness@fas.harvard.edu