Language, desire, and the ontogenesis of intersubjectivity

Rumsey, Alan

doi:10.1016/s0271-5309(02)00042-3

Cited by 39 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 5 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…This is typical of speech addressed to Josephine across the entire 27 minute transcript from which this segment is taken. It is also consistent with an argument I have made in an earlier publication (Rumsey 2003), based on the overall results of my Ku Waru research and comparative data from other language socialization studies, that the grammatical categories of mood and modality, and especially the imperative, figure more centrally in the ontogenesis of intersubjectivity than do the personal pronouns or any other form of explicit person reference. Though they obviously do not refer to participants in the speech situation (as personal pronouns do), imperatives are also indexical or 'pointing words' in that they presuppose distinct positions associated with speaker and addressee; and, like pronouns, a reversibility of perspectives, in that the use of the imperative conventionally entails that the speaker wants something to happen and wants the addressee to do something to bring it about, so that if that same addressee uses an imperative to the erstwhile speaker, their roles are thereby reversed.…”

Section: The Verbal and Non-verbal In Interactions With A Toddlersupporting

confidence: 90%

Language, affect and the inculcation of social norms in the New Guinea Highlands and beyond

Rumsey

2015

Australian J of Anthropology

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Culturalist accounts of emotion and morality have focused on how they are constructed and inculcated through particular, more or less culturally specific ways of talking about them. Both Bourdieu and recent affect theorists have opposed what they see as an overemphasis on language in such accounts. Here I argue that the dichotomy between the ‘verbal’ and the ‘non‐verbal’ that is common to both is misconceived. A more useful distinction is between the level of referentially explicit talk about emotions and moral precepts, and the ways in which they are implicitly conveyed, both through non‐referential aspects of discourse and through other, non‐discursive aspects of social interaction. Ethnographic evidence for my argument is drawn from study of children's language socialization in Highland Papua New Guinea.

show abstract

Section: The Verbal and Non-verbal In Interactions With A Toddlersupporting

confidence: 90%

Language, affect and the inculcation of social norms in the New Guinea Highlands and beyond

Rumsey

2015

Australian J of Anthropology

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…First: Does interaction as affordance also imply interaction as limit? On the one hand, the multiple semiotic modalities of interaction afford first-, second-, and third-person perspectives, which appear predenotationally in children's "proto-conversations" and then denotationally as person deictics (e.g., I and you) in speech (Rumsey 2003). On the other hand, the complex mediation of interaction by speech suggests that the same semiotic processes that afford ethical order might also constrain it.…”

Section: Book Symposiummentioning

confidence: 99%

A bottleneck in the plenum

Harkness

2016

HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

“…Stop! (e.g., Ervin‐Tripp 1976; Ervin‐Tripp and Gordon 1986; Clancy 1985; Rumsey 2003; Wootton 1997: chapter 3). In these transcripts, parents and children are shown to be involved in “request sequences” of varying length and complexity.…”

Section: The “Theoretical Attitude” In Talk To and By Childrenmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Relevance of Husserl's Theory to Language Socialization

Duranti¹

2009

J Linguistic Anthropol

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This article suggests that the theory of language socialization could benefit from adopting some key concepts originally introduced by the philosopher Edmund Husserl in the first part of the twentieth century. In particular, it focuses on Husserl's notion of “(phenomenological) modification,” to be understood as a change in “the natural attitude” that humans have toward the phenomenal world, their own actions included. After providing examples of different kinds of modifications in interpreting language and listening to music, Husserl's notion of “theoretical attitude” (a modification of “the natural attitude”) is introduced and shown to be common in adult conversations as well as in interactions between adults and young children. A reanalysis of an exchange previously examined by Platt (1986) between a Samoan mother and her son is provided to show the benefits of an integration of phenomenological and interactional perspectives on adult‐child discourse. Finally, it is suggested that the failure sometimes experienced by children and adults to adopt new ways of being may be due to the accumulated effects of modifications experienced earlier in life which make it difficult if not impossible to retrieve earlier, premodificational ways of being. [language socialization, phenomenology, jazz aesthetics, Samoan child language]

show abstract

Language, desire, and the ontogenesis of intersubjectivity

Cited by 39 publications

References 5 publications

Language, affect and the inculcation of social norms in the New Guinea Highlands and beyond

Language, affect and the inculcation of social norms in the New Guinea Highlands and beyond

A bottleneck in the plenum

The Relevance of Husserl's Theory to Language Socialization

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About