Greg Urban

The Semiotics of Two Speech Styles in Shokleng

Publisher Summary This chapter highlights that speech style is a complex linguistic sign vehicle composed of numerous types of signals that manifests considerable functional richness. The multifunctionality of speech styles is apparent in the fact that it is perfectly conceivable for two linguistic utterances to be functionally equivalent in propositional or semantico-referential terms and yet to form parts of distinct speech styles, and in the fact that a given linguistic sign vehicle can be put to multiple social ends. The hypotheses seem to follow naturally from the general conception of speech style as indexical signal. Ritual wailing is characterized at the sound level by the following features–a sing-song intonation pattern, creaky voice throughout, and broken voice, that is, rapid-fire glottal stops coupled with intonational modulation used intermittently on certain protracted vowels. The formal characteristics of Shokleng ritual wailing and origin-myth telling can be grouped into two general classes, according as they seem to fall under the principle of expressive restriction, or formal amplification.

Metasemiosis and Metapragmatics

Long confined to mathematical and logical investigation of metalanguage–object language relations, metasemiosis (the process by which signs come to represent other signs) has become, in recent decades, the focus of a growing body of empirical research. The key development has been the recognition by Michael Silverstein of a distinction between metasemantics and metapragmatics. Whereas metasemantics deals with the reflective use of metasigns (in particular, metalanguage) to represent language understood in the Saussurean sense, metapragmatics deals with the reflective use of signs to represent the uses of language and other object signs. Metapragmatic semiosis turns out empirically to be a widespread and important feature of language use around the globe. Metasemiotic research has also brought into clearer focus the nature of reflective processes themselves. Explicit awareness or consciousness of signs (such as words) appears to be a metasemiotic phenomenon created by the deployment of semantic metasigns. Pragmatic metasigns, however, where the metasign–object sign relationship is based upon icons and indices, are relatively less accessible to explicit consciousness, although research suggests that humans are able to acquire implicit understandings, attitudes, and skills through such pragmatically reflective processes. The study of metasemiosis promises new insights into the nature of knowledge and consciousness, as well as a more adequate conceptualization of reflection and its agentive role in human conduct.

The Semiotic Corporation: An Introduction to the Supplement Issue

The business corporation is explored as a reflexive cultural form shaped through complex and ongoing sign processes. The concern specifically is with the dynamic whereby external representations become internal to the corporation, shaping its form and operations, and, correspondingly, internally produced representations get projected outward into the world, mingling with other representations to influence how the corporation is construed. Seven contributions to this Signs and Society supplement are organized along a continuum—from the point of what is metaphorically conceptualized as the origo to the terminus, that is, from those studying the corporation as shaped through external representations, on the one end, to those presenting a view of how the corporation emerges through representations it projects outward on the other end.

Symbolic Force: A Corporate Revitalization Video and Its Effects

A condensation symbol is a complex and relatively discrete bundle of icons, indices, and symbols, in the Peircean sense, that calls up affect and directs that affect toward social ends. This article analyzes a corporate motivational video produced by Harley-Davidson, Inc., an American motorcycle manufacturing company, as a condensation symbol. In addition to analyzing the formal features of the video, the article furnishes evidence, in the form of interview data, that the symbol is capable of influencing the orientations of individuals who view it. The “symbolic force” of the video is the force of interest that causes the orientation to the company carried by the symbol to be transmitted to its viewers. In this sense, the video resembles the dominant ritual symbols described by Turner. The present research also suggests, however, that the video summons distinct kinds of affect in different individuals, exerting a differentiating effect within social space.

The Role of Metaforces in Cultural Motion

Exploring interactions among the forces (inertia, entropy, interest, and metaculture) that affect the motion of culture generally, this article focuses on metapragmatic indexicals as well as denotationally explicit metapragmatic signs, whose effects Silverstein dubbed “metaforce.” Pitch raising, as a metapragmatic indexical employed in narration, builds excitement in relationship to an unfolding stretch of mythic discourse, thereby contributing to the interest in that discourse that also impels its future replication. The interest in learning something new that drives the processes of replication underlying ordinary conversation can be aided by questions, as explicit metapragmatic formulations projecting the discourse shape of the desired response, just as explicit metapragmatic statements can be used to block expected replication processes in the flow of conversation, exerting a resistance. Interest can also be channeled from one discursive arena (such as wine talk) to another (such as coffee talk) through the process Silverstein calls “emanation,” based on similarities in the discourse form and content, a kind of metapragmatic iconicity. The article concludes by suggesting that similar processes are at work in disciplinary arenas, where Silverstein’s term “metapragmatics” itself has come to shape the entire field of linguistic anthropology and to be widely replicated elsewhere.

The Enchantment Effect: A Semiotics of Boundary and Profit

Central to market transactions and capitalism more generally is an orientation to boundary—mine/not-yours. What is the nature of that boundary? This chapter proposes that, while dependent upon lower-level semiotic processes, the boundary is ultimately a matter of enchantment, in which accepted patterns of discourse make mine/not-yours distinctions appear to be part of the natural order of things. More than simply naturalizing property distinctions in a static manner, however, discursive enchantment renders some types of property both desirable and acquirable under the right circumstances. Moreover, change is introduced as new patterns of discourse take shape, spreading out in waves that modify older patterns of enchantment.

A Sentence That Shaped the Modern World

Tracking a single sentence as it moved around the globe, through space and across time, this essay examines the transformations it underwent, seeking to understand the motive force behind that movement and those transformations. The sentence in its various incarnations forms part of the constitutions of the majority of recognized nations on the planet. It encodes a key idea about the nature of the modern nation as a distinctive type of polity. At the same time, the motive force behind the movement may not be the power of that idea alone. Instead, the words in which it is encoded take on a thing-like quality, undergoing replication as they travel but also modification, such that the words become in effect emblems of a distinctive nation. The essay proposes that a “totemic force” impels this kind of motion, with the interest in being on a par with other nations stimulating recognizable similarities in wording, and the desire for distinctiveness vis-à-vis other nations simultaneously inspiring differences in wording.

The magic of making money: A cultural flow perspective on profit

Conceptualized in terms of rational calculation and market logic, entrepreneurship appears as a straightforward matter of reckoning risks and rewards, assessing the prospects for profit. When viewed through an ethnographic lens, however, more mysterious – even ‘magical’ – aspects come into focus. This article explores the magical aspects through three case studies, each revealing a distinct process: symbolic efficacy, the conversion of words into things, and the ability to peer into the future. While exposing these otherwise hidden aspects, the article simultaneously explores a view of profit as arising from the capture – in different ways – of freely flowing, non-commoditized culture. The entrepreneur taps into cultural flows that are propelled by the force of interest, and, by capturing the flows, turns the culture into commodities capable of yielding profit. In these cases we glimpse the truth of Marcel Mausss claim many years ago: ‘Though we may feel ourselves to be very far removed from magic, we are still very much bound up with it’ (Mauss 1972: 178).