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Anthropology and Linguistics 1.1 Anthropology and Linguistics Alessandro Duranti Over the last few decades, the anthropological clarify how the details of linguistic structure par- study of linguistic structures, genres, and activi- ticipate in the constitution of particular aspects of ties in private and public settings has redefined the social context, including events, acts, stances, the goals and boundaries of what ‘linguistics’ and identities. Throughout the chapter, I show that means for the social sciences and anthropology the attention to linguistic structure and linguistic in particular. The ‘linguists’ in today’s anthropol- performance can provide us with important ana- ogy departments – or ‘linguistic anthropologists’ lytical tools for understanding how acts, persons, as they are known in the United States and and activities are connected. This connection is Canada – are not only different from most of their crucial for the fabric of social life and for the colleagues in linguistics or language departments managing of social action. but also they are different from the linguistic anthropologists of two or three generations ago. One of the main differences is the theoretical and methodological shift from the study of linguistic PERFORMANCE structures as manifestations of a common code (or grammar) to the study of language as a socio-his- Noam Chomsky introduced performance in his torically defined resource for the constitution of ground-breaking monograph Aspects of the Theory society and the reproduction of cultural meanings of Syntax (Chomsky 1965), but only to dismiss it and practices. The current trend, then, could be as theoretically less important than competence, seen as a continuation of what a little over two the knowledge of language. Chomsky’s arguments decades ago I called ‘a linguistics of the human in favour of the study of what ideal speaker- praxis’ (Duranti 1988a). The term ‘praxis’ in this hearers know (competence) as opposed to what case was meant to recognize the interest within they say in a given situation (performance) echoed the Ethnography of Communication (Hymes Ferdinand de Saussure’s distinction between 1964; Gumperz and Hymes 1972) for the use of langue and parole and influenced theoretical lin- language in the conduct of social life: that is, for guists. Indirectly, it contributed to the develop- what language does for, to, and through speakers. ment of the separate field of sociolinguistics in the This focus has not changed and it is safe to say 1970s and the rebirth of linguistic anthropology in that an anthropologically informed linguistics is a the 1980s (Duranti 2003). As linguistics became linguistics that starts from the assumption that more and more focused on formal models based language plays a key role in how society is organ- on native speakers’ intuitions about what consti- ized and reproduced. What has changed over the tute well-formed sentences in their language,1 last few decades is that linguistic anthropologists a number of scholars advocated the importance have rendered more nuanced their use of some key of the study of language use across speech notions taken from linguistics, philosophy, and styles (e.g. Labov 1966, 1972) and social situa- social theory. In this chapter I will focus on three tions (e.g. Hymes 1964, 1972). such notions: namely, performance, indexicality, During the 1950s, performance had also been and agency. I will show that their use in the analy- evoked in John Austin’s Harvard lectures on how sis of speaking allows linguistic anthropologists to utterances manage to do things. The publication of 55709-Fardon-Vol-I_Part01.indd709-Fardon-Vol-I_Part01.indd 1122 11/27/2012/27/2012 55:20:42:20:42 PPMM ANTHROPOLOGY AND LINGUISTICS 13 these lectures (Austin 1962, 1975) not only gave More recently, Richard Bauman’s (1975) origi- birth to what was later called Speech Act Theory nal definition of performance as responsibility for (Searle 1969, but also helped establish the field of the ways in which a given message is delivered pragmatics, understood as the study of the rela- has been enriched by a number of studies that look tionship between language and the contexts of its at what performers actually do, think, and feel use (Gazdar 1979; Levinson 1983). An important while performing. For example, Harris Berger and part of Austin’s model was the notion of perfor- Giovanna Del Negro (2002), drawing from mative verbs. These are verbs like declare, Berger’s (1999) phenomenologically informed command, request, etc. Used in the present tense ethnography of musicians in three traditions (rock, and with a first-person singular subject – as in metal, and jazz), argued that performers not only I request that you leave the room – they make have different ways of organizing their own and explicit what a given utterance – e.g., leave the their audience’s attention but also different levels room! – is meant to accomplish (as we know, of awareness, which are activated by the specific speakers very rarely make use of performative historically defined cultural organization of the verbs in the first-person present tense form). event in which they perform. Musicians can at Performance for Austin was thus identified with times get lost in the flow of sound they (and some- action or, in his terms, with the force that a given times their audience) produce, and other times − utterance has (see also Duranti 2009). In the in order to solve a problem on stage − they 1970s, linguistic anthropologists adopted the term become very attentive to their own and others’ performance for examining genres like poetry, actions, achieving a high degree of reflexivity. oratory, storytelling, or singing not only as texts Based on Del Negro’s fieldwork in a small but also as the products of interactions between Italian town, they also suggested that there are speakers (or singers) and audiences. This shift of appropriate and inappropriate ways of performing focus came with an appreciation of the creativity being self-conscious in public. During the that is always at work in speaking and of the passeggiata, those who choose to dress up and responsibility that speakers assume for the ways walk in the middle of the main road show in which they deliver a given message (Bauman their will to be subject to public evaluation, but 1975; Hymes 1975). they must also do it with disinvoltura: that is, with Several years later, Judith Butler also adopted ease − a quality of being that must be displayed the notion of performance, renaming it performa- through posture, movements, and graceful recog- tivity and changing its basic meaning from what nition of the attention that their dresses and a speaker does with language to the process actions attract. whereby the speaker (or others) are constituted (in These studies bring out aspects of verbal per- the phenomenological sense of the term) through formance that had been previously overlooked. language and other symbolic acts. More specifi- One of them is the recurring presence of improvi- cally, Butler argued that gender is not just the sation in a number of speech genres (Caton 1990; cultural interpretation or embodiment of a pre- Duranti 2008a; Pagliai 2002, 2010; Sawyer established or pre-formed sex, but ‘a performative 2001; Tiezzi 2009) and in children’s verbal play accomplishment compelled by social sanction and (Sawyer 1996; Duranti and Black 2011). Another taboo. In its very character as performative resides aspect is the tension between creativity and social the possibility of contesting its reified status’ control. If speaking is a form of action – as (1988: 520). As she made clear in the preface of emphasized by speech act theorists − and of inter- the new edition of her 1990 book Gender Trouble, action – as argued by conversation analysts − then Butler was seeking to undo what she saw as nor- speech performance cannot but be regulated – or mative presuppositions and interpretive practices ‘regimented’ (Kroskrity 1998, 2000) – while in the feminism of the time: ‘Gender Trouble being both the target and the instrument of sought to uncover the ways in which the very ideological assessment (Woolard and Schieffelin thinking of what is possible in gendered life is 1994; Schieffelin, Woolard and Kroskrity 1998). foreclosed by certain habitual and violent pre- These and other studies show that through the sumptions’ (Butler 1999: viii). Since such pre- study of verbal performance linguistic anthro- sumptions are contained, or, rather, indexed by pologists have returned in new ways to the earlier language use (Butler 1993), it is not surprising connections between linguistics and aesthetics that Butler’s notion of performativity and some of established by scholars like Edward Sapir its theoretical implications to rethink the role of and Roman Jakobson but later forgotten in the language in the construction of social identity midst of the so-called ‘Chomskian Revolution’ became part of the discussion of social identity (Newmeyer 1986). and social identification among linguistic anthro- The study of performance has also become pologists (Bucholtz and Hall 2004; Hall 1999; associated with the role of the human body, tools, Kulick 2000, 2009). and the built environment in the constitution of 55709-Fardon-Vol-I_Part01.indd709-Fardon-Vol-I_Part01.indd 1133 11/27/2012/27/2012 55:20:42:20:42 PPMM 14 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY meaningful actions, speaking included. From the and those that are context-creating. To the first point of view of data collection, this confluence of type belong deictic terms like ‘there’ in the utter- interests was made possible by the adoption of ance the letter is there, where the interpretation of audio-visual technologies for the documentation the deictic adverb ‘there’ presupposes the possi- of human interaction. From a theoretical point bility of identifying some location within the per- of view, the body and its material surroundings ceptually and/or conceptually available space to became particularly important for social theorists which ‘there’ would be applicable.
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