Semiotic Anthropology Reading 3v5k65

SEMIOTIC ANTHROPOLOGY • According to Mertz (2007), ―Linguistic and semiotic anthropologists study how language and other systems of human communication contribute to the reproduction, transmission, and transformation of culture…[including] such aspects of society as power relations, ideology, subcultural expression, as well as class, gender, and ethnic identity,‖ (340). How is this different from the projects of symbolic and interpretive anthropologies? In what ways are semiotic anthropology, symbolic anthropology, and interpretive anthropology related? On what points do they converge? Conflict? Discuss these fields, giving explicit examples of their related and un related –ness. * Despite their never meeting, Saussure and Peirce’s theories of signs are seemingly cotangential. Semiotics and Semiology, attributed to Peirce and Saussure respectively, offer complex definitions of signs and language that for the notion of meaning. Discuss the relationship between these theories, and how they are used by anthropologists. Are they compatible? Is one more practical for the study of anthropology than another? Who are key figures in both traditions within anthropology? Be sure to site specific sources.

Semiotic Anthropology ∂ Agha, A. 2005. Voice, footing, enment. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 15:38-59. ß Agha, A. 2006. Language and Social Relations. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press. ∂ Bakhtin, M.M. DATE. The Problem of the Text in Linguistics, Philogy, and the Human Sciences: An Experiment in Philosophical Analysis. In Speech Genres and Other Late Essays. PUB ß Baudrillard, Jean. 1981. For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign. St. Louis: Telos Press. ß Boon, James A. 1982. Other Tribes, Other Scribes: Symbolic Anthropology in the Comparative Study of Cultures, Histories, Religions, and Texts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ∂ Briggs, C. and R. Bauman. 1992. Genre, intertexuality, and social power. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 2:131-72. ∂ Briggs, Charles. 1993. Metadiscursive Practices and Scholarly Authority in Folkloristics. The Journal of American Folklore 106:387-434. ß Broms, Henry and Rebecca Kaufmann, eds. Semiotics of Culture. Helsinki: Arator ∂ Caton, Steven C. 1987. ―Contributions of Roman Jakobson.‖ Annual Review of Anthropology 16:223-260. ∂ Colby, Ben et al. 1981. Toward a Convergence of Cognitive and Symbolic Anthropology. American Ethnologist 8(3):422-50. ∂ Comaroff, John. 1975. Talking Politics: Oratory and Authority in Tswana Chiefdom. In Political Language and Oratory in Traditional Society, ed. Bloch. London: Academic Press. ∂ Crapanzano, Vincent. 1993. Text, transference, and indexicality. In Reflexive Language: Reported Speech and Metapragmatics, ed Lucy. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press. ∂ Crossland, Zoe. 2009. Of Clues and Signs: The Dead Body and its Evidential Traces. American Anthropologist 111(1):69-80.

∂ Culler, Jonathan. In Pursuit of Signs. In The Pursuit of Signs. DATE PUB ∂ Daniel, E. Valentine. DATE. Kunams Divined. In Fluid Signs. PUB ∂ de Man, Paul. 1973. Semiology and Rhetoric. Diacrictics 3(3):27-33. ß Deely, John. 2000. The Beginning of Postmodern Times, Or Charles Sanders Peirce and the Recovery of Signum. Helsinki: Metaphysical Club Red Book Series. ß Dolgin, J. et al. 1977. Symbolic Anthropology: A Reader in the Study of Symbols and Meanings. New York: Columbia University Press. ∂ Drummond, Lee. 1981. The Serpent’s Children: Semiotics of Cultural Genesis in Arawak and Trobriand Myth. American Ethnologist 8(3):633-660. ∂ Eco, Umberto. DATE. Semiotics: A Discipline or an Interdisciplinary Method?‖ In Sight, Sound, and Sense, ed. Thomas Sebeok. PUB ß Eco Umberto. 1999. Serendipities: Language and Lunacy. New York: Harvest Books ß Fernandez, James W. 1986. Persuasions and Performances: The Play of Tropes in Culture. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. -∂ Foster, Robert J. 1989. Thick Beyond Description: Ethnography and Culture as Trope. Oceania 45:148-56. ß Greenhouse, C. 1996. A Moment’s Notice: Time Politics Across Cultures. Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press. ß Hanks, W. 1990. Referential Practice: Language and Lived Space among the Maya. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press. ∂ Haidu, Peter. 1990. The Semiotics of Alterity: A Comparison with Hermeneutics. New Literary History 21(3):671-91. REQ. -∂ Haviland, JB. 2000. Pointing, gesture spaces, and mental maps. In Language and Gesture: window into Thought and Action, ed. McNeill. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press. ß Herzfeld, Michael. 1985. The Poetics of Manhood: Contest and Identity in a Cretan Mountain Village. Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press. REQ. -∂ Herzfeld, Michael. 1986. Meta-Anthropology: Semiotics In and Out of Culture. In Semiotics and International Scholarship: Towards a Language of Theory, ed. Evans and Helb. Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff. ∂ Herzfeld, Michael. DATE. Metapatterns: Archaeology and the Uses of Evidential Scarcity. In Representations in Archaeology, ed. Gardin and Peebles. ß Hodge, Robert and Gunther Kress. 1988. Social Semiotics. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. REQ ∂ Jakobson, Roman. DATE. A Glance at the Development of Semiotics. In Language in Literature. PUB ∂ Jakobson, Roman. 1980. Sign and System of Language.‖ Poetics Today 2:33-38. ß Jameson, Fredric. 1975. The Prison-House of Language. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ß Jules-Rosette, B. 1984. The Messages of Tourist Art: An African Semiotic System in Comparative Perspective. New York: Plenum. ∂ Keane, Webb. 2003. ―Semiotics and the Social Analysis of Material Things.‖ Language and Communication 23:409-425. ß Lee, Benjamin and Greg Urban, eds. 1989. Semiotics, Self, and Society. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter

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