Aim

The aim of this conference is to hone the dialogue between iterations of linguistic anthropology that are often labeled “American” (Agha, 2007; Carr & Lempert, 2016 ; Duranti, 2003 ; Fleming, 2014, 2018; Gal & Irvine, 2019 ; Hanks, 1990; Lee, 1997 ; Nakassis, 2016; Schieffelin et al., 1998 ; Silverstein, 2023) and “French” (Bornand & Leguy, 2013; Boutet, 2016; Calame-Griaule, 1970, 1977; Canut, 2021 ; Costa, 2013 ; Masquelier & Siran, 2000; Monod-Becquelin & Eriksson, 2000; Monod-Becquelin et Vapnarsky, 2001; Vapnarsky, Monod-Becquelin & de Fornel, 2013 ). The dialogue will focus on ethnography, and will explore the “different research spaces and … paradigms, at local and global scales of the academic community, [aiming] thereby to break down institutional and disciplinary territorialities” (Masquelier, 2021: 56)[1]. The conference will offer perspectives on the total linguistic fact (Silverstein 1985), a concept that derives from the total social fact (Mauss 2021), and which indexically iconizes the historically and intellectually profound relationship of linguistic anthropologies on either side of the Atlantic (see Breton 1999 ; Him-Acquilli & Telep 2021). In particular, the conference will explore several cryptotypic aspects of the total linguistic fact: first, through a focus on silences, the implicit, and the ethics that fashion interlocution in the field; and second, through an exploration of epistemologies subtending interlocution on the field, via presentations on theoretical and methodological currents that have underlain field research in France.

Theme

“… an elusive, hidden, but functionally important meaning … a CRYPTOTYPE”
(Benjamin Lee Whorf, 1956 [1937]: 105)

Whorf proposed the term cryptotype to describe grammatical categories that are not uniformly, overtly marked in surface linguistic form, the gender classes of English nouns being an example (Whorf 1956[1945/1937]: 90-92). The dichotomy of overt or phenotypic, versus covert or cryptotypic linguistic categories was taken up by Michael Silverstein and made one of the bases of the study of “the total linguistic fact” (1985: 220). 

This conference will explore cryptotypes, in the above sense and in more metaphoric senses. Extending the notion from linguistic to cultural categories more broadly, the papers will consider hidden or covert aspects of “the total cultural fact of language” that confronts ethnographers in the field (Silverstein, 1998: 139). Such aspects may take the form of erasures and elisions, of secrets and silences, of the unspoken and of undercurrents. Lurking within surface semiosis, these aspects shape people’s awareness and understanding, their uptakes and interactions.

The conference will reflect on cryptotypic semiosis along two axes: the epistemological and the ethical. Anthropology’s imperative is to render explicit, to bring to the surface that which is implicit or hidden. In the first instance, the notion of cryptotypes allows us to consider how the analytic gaze alters its own focus: that which was once hidden ceases to be so. Articulating the unspoken and the undercurrents reshape the phenomena under study, from quotidian silences (Basso, 1970; Bauman, 1983) to esoteric ritual (Gutierrez-Choquevilca, 2021). On the other hand, if the analytic focus on cryptotypes is to hold steady, it is the analyst’s gaze that must be altered. For instance, ethnographies of secrecy and silence must sometimes reproduce the very cryptotypes they study, both towards respecting informants’ realities, and towards reflexively representing the limits of anthropological awareness (Debenport, 2015). Studying cryptotypes then calls for critical reflection on the analytic gaze itself. For anthropology does not simply reveal that which is concealed; it involves processes of concealment itself (Clifford & Marcus, 1986; Nair, 2023). Erasures and elisions involved in fieldwork, writing, theorizing are cases in point. What then can we say of the epistemologies involved in cryptotypes, which alter as they alteration induce? How do cryptotypes shape the contours of ethical stances? What relations may cryptotypes themselves conceal between native and analytic epistemologies? And what might the ethical stakes then be of such relations? 

The conference will mark the end of this year’s Jeux de Langage seminar series (Lacito, organized by Leblic, Masquelier and Nair 2023-2024), continuing the dialogue across different linguistic anthropological traditions that was pursued through the year during the monthly seminar and reading group. The conference’s presenters belong to traditions that emerged in France, while the discussants belong to those that evolved in North America. The morning’s panel will focus on ethnography and ethics, and will examine the themes of silence, rumor, and the implicit. The afternoon’s panel will focus on the epistemology of linguistic anthropology and linguistics in France, with presentations on Benveniste, Calame-Griaule, and contemporary computational approaches to language. The conference will end with a round table aimed at deepening the transatlantic dialogue through a discussion of the influences that subtend it. 

Cette journée précède la journée du 5 juin 2024 « Terrains de l’interlocution, interlocutions de terrain » (voir le programme interlocutions.sciencesconf.org).

References cited

Registration open from April 19 to June 03, 2024
Registration is free but compulsory to enable us to organize coffee breaks and lunch.
You can register via the dedicated page (see menu on the left).
Many thanks for your cooperation!