Overview

A multimodal ethnography of language as living process, this book demonstrates methods for the integrated analysis of talk, gesture, and material culture, developing a fresh way to understand human language through a focus on jointly achieved social actions to which it is part. Based on findings from a participatory, multimedia language documentation project in a highland Zapotec community of Oaxaca, Mexico, Mark A. Sicoli brings together goals of documentary linguistics and anthropological concern with the everyday means and ends of human social life with theoretical consequences for the analysis of linguistic and cultural reproduction and change. This book argues that resonances emergent in the whole of multiparticipant, multimodal interaction, are organizational of human social-cognitive process important for understanding both the shape linguistic utterances take in interaction (dialogic resonance) and the relationships built between distinct sign modes (intermodal resonance). In this way, Saying and Doing in Zapotec develops a new theory, characterizing the logic of resonance in human interaction as semiotic process that connects and juxtaposes interactional moves into assemblages of relations, resonances and collaborations that build an emergent lifeworld for a language.

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9781350204119

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Reviews

This sparkling book sets new standards in the analysis of human sociality as enacted in and through language and culture. Mark Sicoli's ethnographically rich analysis of joint action in Lachixio Zapotec social life gives us access to both the realization of universal human imperatives of sociality and the cultural elaboration of local values through linguistic and interpersonal practice. A must-read for field-working linguists, sociolinguists, and anthropologists. * Nick J. Enfield, Professor of Linguistics, The University of Sydney, Australia * In the spirit of the best linguistic anthropology, Sicoli's careful attention to the intricacies of everyday interaction in a highland Zapotec community is a means of getting at matters of far-reaching importance-namely, to show how speech and bodily motion interweave to produce coordinated human action, and ultimately to build the social and physical worlds we inhabit. * James Slotta, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, The University of Texas at Austin, USA * This book is a tour de force. Through video-recorded examples from a Zapotec community, Sicoli shows beautifully how joint social action emerges in face-to-face interaction. Linguistic forms, gestures, positionings, and objects come together in multimodal assemblages that build on one another. Clearly, ethnographic studies of language in conversational interaction are enriched by his multimodal approach. * Judith T. Irvine, Edward Sapir Distinguished University Professor of Linguistic Anthropology, Emerita, University of Michigan, USA *

[Saying and Doing in Zapotec] ought to be read widely by anthropologists and linguists: both readerships will find important insights ... This book will inspire new generations of linguists to take a thoroughly multimodal perspective on language, and it will push future ethnographers to consider whether their work might be enhanced by adopting video-based methodologies. * Journal of Linguistic Anthropology * Sicoli’s holistic and participant-centered Zapotec ethnography not only provides important analytic and theoretical insights into the multimodal complexity of human sociality, but also constitutes a vital resource for language documentation and, hopefully, revitalization. * Language in Society * Saying and Doing in Zapotec: Multimodality, Resonance, and the Language of Joint Actions, brings [conversation analysis] ideas into dialogue with current anthropological theory. While each volume has a unique perspective, all three include ethnographic information about the society in question and about the languages spoken there, and do not simply look at conversational sequences alone. In this sense they are following Moerman’s (1988, 1996) model for ethnographic [conversation analysis], and the monograph format allows for more extended rich descriptions of interaction illustrated by many more conversational excerpts than are possible to include in an article format. * Annual Review of Anthropology * This sparkling book sets new standards in the analysis of human sociality as enacted in and through language and culture. Mark Sicoli’s ethnographically rich analysis of joint action in Lachixío Zapotec social life gives us access to both the realization of universal human imperatives of sociality and the cultural elaboration of local values through linguistic and interpersonal practice. A must-read for field-working linguists, sociolinguists, and anthropologists. * Nick J. Enfield, Professor of Linguistics, The University of Sydney, Australia * In the spirit of the best linguistic anthropology, Sicoli’s careful attention to the intricacies of everyday interaction in a highland Zapotec community is a means of getting at matters of far-reaching importance—namely, to show how speech and bodily motion interweave to produce coordinated human action, and ultimately to build the social and physical worlds we inhabit. * James Slotta, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, The University of Texas at Austin, USA * This book is a tour de force. Through video-recorded examples from a Zapotec community, Sicoli shows beautifully how joint social action emerges in face-to-face interaction. Linguistic forms, gestures, positionings, and objects come together in multimodal assemblages that build on one another. Clearly, ethnographic studies of language in conversational interaction are enriched by his multimodal approach. * Judith T. Irvine, Edward Sapir Distinguished University Professor of Linguistic Anthropology, Emerita, University of Michigan, USA *

Author Information

Mark A. Sicoli is Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Linguistics at the University of Virginia, USA.

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