More than hello: Reconstituting sociolinguistic subjectivities in introductions among American Stuttering English speakers

Dumas, Nathaniel W.

doi:10.1016/j.langcom.2012.04.005

Cited by 3 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 26 publications

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“…Similarly, Danilyn Rutherford (2021) has shown how stretching ideas about communication has created the conditions to care for her disabled daughter, relying on carers’ accepting full‐body communication as a collaborative process. In Nathaniel Dumas's (2012) research on stuttering communities, he shows how impediments to typical forms of speech inspire community members to create the conditions for communication, which requires attention to the needs of communicators, such as additional time for speech acts and patience in their audiences. Across this work, it becomes evident that language as self‐expression is only part of the dynamics of interpretation; the ways that community and kin collaborate in making interactions meaningful encompass far more communicative competence than “just” spoken language.…”

Section: A Capacity‐based Anthropologymentioning

confidence: 99%

Becoming malleable

Friedner,

Wolf‐Meyer

2023

American Ethnologist

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Drawing on anthropological scholarship on the senses, embodiment, and communication, we argue for a capacity‐based anthropology that takes account of human variation in all domains of everyday life, including “the field” and “the anthropology seminar.” Such an approach allows us to consider the ways that humans are differently malleable, and we stress that enacting malleability, when possible, is a kind of ethical engagement. Attending to malleability—and its limits—allows us to imagine and produce a more sensitive anthropology. A more sensitive anthropology would expand the discipline's understanding of who counts as an anthropologist and what counts as anthropological praxis.

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Section: A Capacity‐based Anthropologymentioning

confidence: 99%

Becoming malleable

Friedner,

Wolf‐Meyer

2023

American Ethnologist

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“…ASE is defined in Dumas (2012:217) as a variety of English that uses multiple partial reduplication (Ghomeshi, Jackendoff, Rosen, & Russell 2004) in plain versus expressive morphology (Zwicky & Pullum 1987), a process known in vernacular discourse as ‘stuttering’ 1 . I assume Landar's (1961) position of stuttering as normal sociolinguistic variation and distinct from self-initiated self-repair (Schegloff, Jefferson, & Sacks 1977) in everyday conversation (see Dumas 2011).…”

Section: The Varieties Under Comedic Examination: American Stutteringmentioning

confidence: 99%

“This guy says I should talk like that all the time”: Challenging intersecting ideologies of language and gender in an American Stuttering English comedienne's stand-up routine

Dumas

2016

Lang. Soc.

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American Stuttering English (ASE) speakers (or ‘persons who stutter’ in pathological perspectives) have historically had tense relationships with comedic representations of their speech. Mainstream representations pathologize and ridicule stuttering, rather than appreciate it as a legitimate language variety. These depictions also increase non-ASE speakers' ‘possessive investment’ (Lipsitz 1995) in Standard American Fluent English as the dominant language variety. Recently, some ASE speakers have reinterpreted ASE and comedic portrayals of their speech using stand-up comedy. This article analyzes the comedic work of Rona B, an ASE comedienne. Using data on her YouTube channel, I argue that Rona B draws on her intersectional experiences as a female ASE speaker to construct a voice that critiques both the political agendas of anti-linguistic discrimination, which downplays gender, and of antisexism, which minimizes sociolinguistic differences. This study expands on contemporary calls in sociolinguistics that position intracategorical intersectionality as key for analyzing performances on language variation. (Gender, variation, American Stuttering English, performance, stand-up comedy, language ideologies)*

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“…In other work, Hilary Dick's () review of “language and migration to the United States” discusses how people (including migrants) are categorized and ranked through linguistic practices and ideologies. In addition, Nathaniel Dumas's () study of introductions in a community of stutterers reinterprets conversational openings as embodied encounters between language ideologies. Such a standpoint allows him to understand the ways that pathology can be constructed or challenged through the minute details of everyday interactions, thus depathologizing stuttering.…”

Section: Expansions and Refinementsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Linguistic Anthropology in 2012: Language Matter(s)

Black¹

2013

American Anthropologist

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In this article, I discuss the accomplishments of scholars of language and culture in 2012 and the questions raised by those accomplishments. I review matters of language—expansions and refinements of existing research topics, including linguistic relativity, language socialization, sociolinguistic variation, and language ideologies. I then consider a trend of research on topics of embodiment, materiality, and the senses, discussing the matter (in the physics sense) of language. I then use the term engagement to comment on developments in research on language endangerment, language circulation and shift, language and health, language and education, and language and social justice. This is rooted in the notion that language makes a difference (or matters) in cultural practice. I conclude with a brief discussion of the ontology of language, the epistemology of linguistic anthropology, and the roles of scholars of language and culture in anthropology as a whole.

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More than hello: Reconstituting sociolinguistic subjectivities in introductions among American Stuttering English speakers

Cited by 3 publications

References 26 publications

Becoming malleable

Becoming malleable

“This guy says I should talk like that all the time”: Challenging intersecting ideologies of language and gender in an American Stuttering English comedienne's stand-up routine

Linguistic Anthropology in 2012: Language Matter(s)

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