CLIC Speaker Abstracts

Judith Irvine (University of Michigan): "Discourse at a Distance: Colonial Regimes of African Linguistic Demography," February 6, 2004 at 10AM.

Among the many kinds of groupings, networks, and modes of affiliation that set some people apart from others, what kinds become salient in identifying those groupings sometimes called "ethnolinguistic"? What discursive practices are involved in producing "ethnolinguistic" identities, and whose practices are they? The processes that produce such identities are complex; this paper considers some of their topolobical and historical dimensions. Case materials drawn from African linguistic history, concern how certain named African languages came to be identified, institutionally recognized, and putatively correlated with populations of speakers, within scientific and political regimes that produced knowledge of a global linguistic demography. I pay particular attention to distance -- geographical and social -- as an important aspect of the process of linguistic stereotyping and the selection of diacritica that are deemed salient for identifying linguistic communities.