Symbiotic modeling: Linguistic anthropology and the promise of chiasmus

Abstract

Reflexive observations and observations of reflexivity: such agendas are by now standard practice in anthropology. Dynamic feedback loops between self and other, cause and effect, represented and representamen may no longer seem surprising; but, in spite of our enhanced awareness, little deliberate attention is devoted to modeling or grounding such phenomena. Attending to both linguistic and extra-linguistic modalities of chiasmus (the X figure), a group of anthropologists has recently embraced this challenge. Applied to contemporary problems in linguistic anthropology, chiasmus functions to highlight and enhance relationships of interdependence or symbiosis between contraries, including anthropology's four fields, the nature of human being and facets of being human.

Craft fields and the temporal structures of quilting

“…Cell-biologists adapt chiasm to describe how, during cell reproduction, chromosomes ‘productively recombine’, indicating a moment of ‘volatility, change, and, with luck, evolution’ (Fortun, 2008: 15). For cultural analysis, chiasm is ‘a parallel, or (a)symmetrical inversion of two or more terms framed as antithetical pairs, being held in something of a mirror image relation in order to suggest processes of tension, reversal or exchange’ (Pelkey, 2016: 23). As Wiseman and Paul (2014: 1, 4–5) elaborate, chiasm can also be a ‘matrix of social interaction’ and a ‘powerful explanatory principle’ for understanding socio-cultural phenomena.…”

Testing Symmetrical Knot Tracing for Cognitive Priming Effects Rules out Analytic Analogy

“…In fact, uniquely human thought processes involving creative, analogical pattern solving are often discussed in terms that evoke interlacing symmetries. Discussions of symmetrical reasoning and bidirectional inference in human thought and language acquisition bear this out [2,[13][14][15][16][17], as do observations of chiastic patterning in culture and thought [7,[18][19][20][21] and discussions that posit "conceptual blending" as the core of human cognition [22,23]. Indeed, theoretical descriptions such as these are grounded in abstract patterns that share many basic similarities with ritual knot designs.…”

“…These shortcuts are pervasive in human cognition, and they are crucial for the production of creative analogies or conceptual blends [17,22]. These bi-directional or symmetrical reasoning processes can be identified everywhere from lexical/conceptual and syntactic levels to pragmatic and systems-oriented levels of myth and worldview [13,17,19,20,23].…”