Language in strange and familiar places: A short introduction

Abstract

Liminality can be made productive for linguistics in two ways: on the one hand, we aim to explore liminal uses of language by explicitly turning the gaze to the familiar, the seemingly banal, and the average, demonstrating that liminality in language practice is common and usual. On the other hand, we intend to highlight the importance of previously marginalized language concepts and theories, focusing on the aspects of linguistics, and specifically, anthropological linguistics, as a science of liminality. By bringing together contributions on language in strange and familiar places, a collection of articles emerges in this volume that will be of interest to a wide audience, reaching beyond linguistics.

At the intersection of language and place there is much to overlook. Found too trivial in its everyday contexts to be of any import for further explorations, and being half forgotten in the dusty corners of our existences, language located at mundane, banal, and sometimes almost invisible places often gets ignored in the ways we study its social and cultural roles. And thus in a vibrant field such as anthropological linguistics, the impact of path-breaking work such as Augé's (1992) introduction to supermodernity with its plea for an anthropology of proximity remained relatively modest. Rather than turning to our own immediate environments, to the banal and trivial of everyday life, where we could critically examine our assumptions about what "language" (other than its named, fixated, and normed representations) might actually be, we rather tended to focus on other projects. Yet, we can learn from research on the traces language leaves behind in the strange and familiar places everywhere around us that these places are the locations of amazement, play, liminality. They are the sites where language is contingent and magical, and where we can thrive in the liminal realm in-between. In this volume, we set out to explore language in strange and familiar places from a perspective in anthropological linguistics in order to illustrate the close relationship between what we deem to be "under control" and what is surprising and alive. We thereby also create approaches to an integrated study of the interrelationship between language and culture - the subject matter of anthropological linguistics, with regard to those lively places that remain in and around the non-places of supermodernity (Augé 1992), the industrialized sites of a dystopian present (Lowenhaupt Tsing 2015) and throughout the colonized, terraformed world (Ghosh 2021).

Our volume is therefore also a critique of some trends in linguistics as well as an invitation to others. It is a truism that language and place are intimately connected: depending on where we are, what the context is, and what our aims are, we will adjust our language accordingly. Yet linguistics defines itself by a rigid framework that determines what kind of language is worth investigating. Within that framework, linguistics constructs both language and place in multiple ways: language as a sequestered thing and structure belongs to the field site, the classroom, the archive, etc.; language as fluid practice is associated with the street, markets, and other such potentially chaotic places; language as reconstruction belongs to migration corridors and religious sites. And so on. But what about the places that tend to fall between the cracks? What about language in liminal places, in places that are central yet tend to get overlooked by science? For example: the varieties spoken in the kitchen, the heart of the home (or the cooking area, the heart of the dwelling place), where for thousands of generations we have congregated and which for thousands of generations has been one of our safest places. The place where stories are told, important information is shared, confidences are given. The place where food is prepared, but also where utensils congregate: utensils for food preparation, but also utensils that are being worked on, tools that get repaired in the evenings or winter nights, utensils that get made, textiles that get made, fibres that get prepared, etc. What about language and variation in those intimate, informal settings, where knowledge is transmitted in ways which defy ethnographic description and objectification? In what ways might the sciences of linguistics expand if they direct their attention also to those kinds of places, places that have been deemed worthless as sources of knowledge, yet that are so fundamentally human that they are familiar to us all?

What might linguistics discover in those places that have seemed so banal, so trivial, that they tend to be overlooked - that are, quite simply, so familiar that they have become invisible? What about the language in spaces of waiting, or indefinable limbos, which can allow us peeks into the interplay between place, time, silence, and language? Or the language on building materials, which, albeit often lasting in invisible places, can afford us glimpses of early language concepts and language use? Or the language of urban waste dumps, big or small. And so on. What about three-dimensional language in liminal spaces?

This volume seeks to explore what we can gain from paying attention to all those liminal spaces, the things that tend to fall between the cracks. We take a broad view of what language is and consequently of what linguistics, the science of language, is. We are thus consciously challenging the boundaries of the framework that our discipline has set in place and experimenting with potential new discoveries.

This volume is intended to make liminality, the space-in-between, that which happens outside the given orders and norms, special for an integrated study of relations between language and culture embodied in anthropological linguistics in two ways: on the one hand, we aim to explore liminal uses of language by explicitly turning the gaze to the familiar, the seemingly banal, and the average, demonstrating that liminality in language practice is common and usual. On the other hand, we intend to highlight the importance of previously marginalized language concepts and theories, focusing on linguistics as a science of liminality. Thus, one of the ways in which the familiar and yet strange language that has fallen through the cracks of disciplinary constructs are explored here is by changing the perspective and in that way becoming a stranger to oneself, to one's language and its sites. This involves not only the question of communicative practices in the zones of everyday liminality, but also in a spiritual context, in the languages of ritual and conversation with the ancestors. These, like language in more mundane liminal spaces, such as kitchen tables and restaurant washrooms, suggest that, in what we call modern linguistics, we often pursue practices and projects that remove us from our own origins, from our shared heritage and personal lives. We tend to construct language as a language of others, avoiding the pronouns "I" and "me" and hiding behind a proofread form of English (or German, or French) that does not differ from that in other articles, volumes, and talks. This may be seen as a strategy to present one's research as being universally meaningful, or to maintain certain power regimes in a postcolonial world. Yet the possibility of listening to voices that sound through the cracks and of exploring language in strange yet familiar contexts always remains. Our manifold relationships with others, who have invited us into their homes and offered us insights into their languages, allow us to think about how well-being is part of these experiences, how healing practices have benefitted these encounters, and how desires about linguistic futures are shared. These experiences offer deep insights into what language becomes to us, beyond the descriptions, documentations, and analyses we produce as linguists.

At the same time, even our own homes can always turn into fields of linguistic enquiry. The built environments we live in are all semiotic landscapes, palimpsests rich in meaning, both of signs that we can read and of opaque language addressing other people, spirits, and beings. Signs and messages appear before our eyes as we walk around cities and towns, on large billboards and in bright colors, or written on the surfaces of bricks and stones that are now hidden inside the walls that surround us. Yet, as the contributions in this collection claim, all of them continue to be meaningful, to express something, to have forms of agency. Therefore, while the rich interdisciplinary research of the last decades has largely focused on contemporary signs and language practices, this collection is intended to concentrate on those semiotic artefacts and practices that are less visible - and yet deeply relevant.

By doing so, the contributions in this collection will connect to pre-existing approaches to liminality and language, for example as offered in studies on ritual communication (e.g., Senft and Basso 2009), secret language practices (e.g., Storch 2011), language...