[Xmca-l] Re: A supplement to David's reflection on Translatability

[Greg Thompson]

Yes, I see the contradiction there. I had the same reaction when I first
heard MS say it in his Language in Culture seminar (MS is not afraid to
repeat himself, indeed, in his short manuscript on Abe Lincoln, he notes
that the Gettysburg address had a long history in Abe's mouth and among his
friends prior to being said in its canonical version).

If I may give the sympathetic reading, one might make the anthropological
argument that one must fully inhabit an oppressive regime in order to
understand it. Thus, using his Wizard of Oz metaphor, we might say that the
position that MS is inhabiting is simultaneously Toto and the Wizard.

I think that this can provide the seeds of revolutionary action by exposing
the workings of power to critique by others who can see those
inner-workings but without having to fully participate in them.

[and perhaps this goes back to an older question I have about understanding
a system from the "inside" as opposed to from the "outside" - or perhaps in
a more Gadamerian sense we might just speak about these as two different
horizons of understanding the system?].

-greg

On Sat, Jan 2, 2016 at 9:34 AM, Martin John Packer <mpacker@uniandes.edu.co>
wrote:

> No, my point was that one the one hand we have a call to be
> "citizen-scientists" in the face of oppression, while on the other hand we
> have a confession that although the university is "at the highest pinnacle
> of what you might call the oppressive regime" grading will continue as
> usual.
>
> If we can't change the very institution we work in, what kind of
> citizen-scientists are we?
>
> Martin
>
> On Jan 2, 2016, at 11:10 AM, Greg Thompson <greg.a.thompson@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > Martin,
> > I'm not clear on what the expectation was that the speakers were setting
> up?
> > To pull back the curtain to reveal the role that language plays in social
> > stratification?
> > You don't suppose that this can be found elsewhere in their work?
> ("their"
> > in the generic sense of "linguistic anthropologists' work").
> > Seems a tall order to fill in a single conversation between just two
> people.
> > -greg
> >
> >
> > On Sat, Jan 2, 2016 at 6:52 AM, Martin John Packer <
> mpacker@uniandes.edu.co>
> > wrote:
> >
> >>> Its only disappointing if you thought that anything else could come out
> >> of
> >>> it.   Note that this was uttered in the context of ethics.
> >>>
> >>> Best, Huw
> >>
> >> But the speakers themselves set up this expectation! Here are the
> >> remaining remarks:
> >>
> >> MS: Yes, exactly. Indeed there are norms even of these other components,
> >> these non-denotational components as we were saying. They're understood
> in
> >> terms of a folk system of enrigisterment, but there's lots of other
> >> variation as well that people are actually behaving in terms of and
> working
> >> in terms of. But this one particular, massively complex system - to
> which
> >> indeed the aspiration of working under the umbrella of superdiversity
> >> responds - is indeed a complex one in which people confuse standard
> >> register with normativity in the first place, and they confuse language
> >> with denotational structure. So all of these sorts of things that we've
> >> taken decades and decades to pull apart, at least so that they become
> >> visible to us as students of languaging, as it were get collapsed into
> one.
> >> And most importantly and - as you pointed out - most tellingly, they
> become
> >> instruments of oppression and stratification.
> >>
> >> JB: At the individual level.
> >>
> >> MS: At the individual level, through various kinds of institutionalized
> >> forms so that you are summoned as a citizen-scientist to say: 'Where do
> I
> >> stand on using my knowledge to, as it were, maybe illuminate people,
> maybe
> >> reveal what's going on.'
> >>
> >> JB: At least show what's going on. That's the least we can do.
> >>
> >> MS: That's the least we can do. There is a wonderful scene in the 1939
> >> Hollywood movie 'The Wizard of Oz' in which...
> >>
> >> JB: 'The witch is dead'
> >>
> >> MS: no no it's not that the witch is dead
> >>
> >> JB: ...a hit a few weeks ago when Margaret Thatcher died
> >>
> >> MS: that's a different story! Leave the Baroness out of this... there
> is a
> >> wonderful scene in which Toto - the little dog of Dorothy - pulls back a
> >> curtain when you see the mountebank, the snake-oil salesman, working the
> >> levers of the machine that's running this thing which supports
> [purports?]
> >> to be Oz. And we can certainly try to be that little Toto.
> >>
> >> JB: So on that note thank you very very much, Michael.
> >>
> >> MS: Well it's always a pleasure to talk to you guys!
> >>
> >> On Jan 1, 2016, at 11:38 PM, Huw Lloyd <huw.softdesigns@gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> On 2 January 2016 at 03:04, Martin John Packer <
> mpacker@uniandes.edu.co>
> >>> wrote:
> >>>
> >>>> It's a little disappointing that they oppressed their own conversation
> >> at
> >>>> the following point, no?
> >>>>
> >>>> Martin
> >>>>
> >>>> MS [Michael Silverstein]:  I say to my students all the time: 'now
> that
> >>>> I've revealed to you the entire massive machinery of socio-linguistic
> >>>> oppression, of stratification around the standard and so on, that will
> >> not
> >>>> stop me from correcting your papers because my institution is at the
> >>>> highest pinnacle of what you might call the oppressive regime'.
> >>>>
> >>>> JB [Jan Blommaert]: Absolutely. And at the same time - maybe this
> could
> >> be
> >>>> a useful conclusion of this conversation - at the same time it proves
> >> also
> >>>> that there is no absence of norms, there is no shortage of norms even
> >> in a
> >>>> sociocultural organization of language. Normativity is everywhere.
> >>>>
> >>>> On Jan 1, 2016, at 9:16 PM, Larry Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com> wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>>> I decided to start a new thread because I did not want to shift the
> >>>> focus that David’s thread opened up on myth busting.
> >>>>> However, I do want to share a paper on the topic of translatability
> and
> >>>> the uses of standardization that does overlap somewhat with the other
> >>>> thread.
> >>>>> The format is a conversation between Michael Silverstein, Jef Van de
> >> Aa,
> >>>> and Jan Blommaert.
> >>>>> Entering this conversation exploring the notion of translatability
> as a
> >>>> culturally bound philosophical construct may have some relevance for
> the
> >>>> other thread ongoing.
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Sent from Mail for Windows 10
> >>>>>
> >>>>> <NOVEMBER 4 2014 390 BLOMMAERT and
> Silverstein_in_conversation.pdf>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >
> >
> > --
> > Gregory A. Thompson, Ph.D.
> > Assistant Professor
> > Department of Anthropology
> > 880 Spencer W. Kimball Tower
> > Brigham Young University
> > Provo, UT 84602
> > http://byu.academia.edu/GregoryThompson
>
>
>


-- 
Gregory A. Thompson, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Department of Anthropology
880 Spencer W. Kimball Tower
Brigham Young University
Provo, UT 84602
http://byu.academia.edu/GregoryThompson