Feedback Paper #3

A key theme of the past three weeks has been the idea that the literal semantic content of a language act and the cultural meaning/social work produced by the act may have a very indirect relationship. Another way of saying this is that people use linguistic resources -- whether large-scale ones like language ideologies or discourses of gender and sexuality, or very small-scale ones, like demonstratives, verb aspect, or elevated vocal tone -- to accomplish things or talk about things that may have little to do with the direct, semantic content of the resources. In terms of large-scale, Ortner gives good examples of the way people talk about class through a discourse of gender and sexuality, while in terms of small-scale, Badequano-Lopez shows how diminutives and imperfective aspect on verbs can be manipulated to create affiliation and community around the concept of race.

I suggested in class on thursday that this kind of use of linguistic resources can be seen at least in some cases as a form of resistance to cultural tendencies to "erase the subject." In your feedback paper, briefly discuss Ortner's idea of the "subject" and "subjectivity," and give some (2-3) examples from the readings or class examples of how the linguistic indirectness mentioned above may be key to an understanding of the subject as having agency and intentionality partially separate from his/her culture -- in other words, for understanding both the possibility and mechanisms of "resistance" of individual subjects to cultural determinism.