Description:

Ontologies of the sign: Positioning signs, speakers, and ideologies in research on language and race 
 
The question of how to grapple with participants’ understandings of the world is one that is at issue in many corners of anthropology these days. Work on the ontological turn, materiality, and decolonializing epistemologies, for example, has explored how to reconcile various standpoints on beliefs, facts, and objects. In this presentation, I examine how the fields of linguistic anthropology and sociolinguistics have dealt with these issues. Drawing upon research in race and language in the US, I argue that our metasemiotic models are predicated on liberal notions of the sovereign speaking subject and the empirical sign, as separated and separable entities. I conclude with an exploration of some potential alternatives to these models, and discuss their implications for the study of language and social life.