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Full-Text Articles in Linguistic Anthropology
Toward A New Theory Of Waste: From "Matter Out Of Place" To Signs Of Life , Joshua Reno
Toward A New Theory Of Waste: From "Matter Out Of Place" To Signs Of Life , Joshua Reno
Anthropology Faculty Scholarship
This paper offers a counterpoint to the prevailing account of waste in the human sciences. This account identifies waste, firstly, as the anomalous product of arbitrary social categorizations, or ‘matter out of place’, and, secondly, as a distinctly human way of leaving behind and interpreting traces, or a mirror of culture. Together, these positions reflect a more or less constructivist and anthropocentric approach. Most commonly, waste is placed within a framework that privileges considerations of meaning over materiality and the threat of death over the perpetuity of life processes. For an alternative I turn to bio-semiotics and cross-species scholarship around …
Technically Speaking: On Equipping And Evaluating “Unnatural” Language Learners , Joshua Reno
Technically Speaking: On Equipping And Evaluating “Unnatural” Language Learners , Joshua Reno
Anthropology Faculty Scholarship
This article compares different communicative trials for apes in captivity and children with autism in order to investigate how ideological assumptions about linguistic agency and impairment are constructed and challenged in practice. To the extent that Euro-American techniques of “unnatural” language instruction developed during the Cold War era have been successful, it is because communicative interactions are broken down into basic components, and would-be language learners are equipped with materials, devices, and habits that make up for their distinct bio/social deficits. Such linguistic equipment can present a challenge to the ideological presumption of a subject inherently gifted with the rudiments …