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)

 

 

CONTACT

Nicholas Harkness
Modern Korean Economy and Society Professor of Anthropology
harkness@fas.harvard.edu