language and power
Paper downloaded from www.wcaanet.org/events/webinar as part of the
EASA / ABA / AAA / CASCA webinar 2013
Political Economies of Language: Power, Epistemology and the
Representation of Research by Alexandra Jaffe
Both sets of questions raised in this virtual seminar make the important point that the political economy involved in how we conduct, and then represent our ethnographic practice has both linguistic and epistemological dimensions. With this in mind, I take a critical look at linguistic and discursive practices involved in both the conduct and the representation of ethnographic work on Corsican that I have produced both alone, and in concert with actors on the ground. In discuss some of the conditions in which anthropological frameworks and accounts of practice may be coordinated with the explanatory frames and discourses mobilized by local social actors and scholars. This is no easy task, and it involves careful, reflexive assessment of audience(s) and venues, as well as a delicate balancing of different forms of expertise and knowledge frameworks. In short, it involves the creation of a new community of practice, defined by concertation around a set of shared goals and at least partially shared "savoirs-faire" and "être" [knowing how to do and to be]. It also points to the different--and competing--circuits of knowledge production and circulation that are linked to research on a minority language. That is, communities of practice are not necessarily internally unified. Nor is a harmonious coordination of discourses across disparate communities of practice always possible; the activity is often fraught with tension.
Language is implicated in numerous ways in this activity: as expertise/competence and their attendant social consequences and values, as a research focus and as medium of action and discourse. Let me begin with the question of my own language learning, use and competence in the focal language: Corsican.
On a most basic
EASA / ABA / AAA / CASCA webinar 2013
Political Economies of Language: Power, Epistemology and the
Representation of Research by Alexandra Jaffe
Both sets of questions raised in this virtual seminar make the important point that the political economy involved in how we conduct, and then represent our ethnographic practice has both linguistic and epistemological dimensions. With this in mind, I take a critical look at linguistic and discursive practices involved in both the conduct and the representation of ethnographic work on Corsican that I have produced both alone, and in concert with actors on the ground. In discuss some of the conditions in which anthropological frameworks and accounts of practice may be coordinated with the explanatory frames and discourses mobilized by local social actors and scholars. This is no easy task, and it involves careful, reflexive assessment of audience(s) and venues, as well as a delicate balancing of different forms of expertise and knowledge frameworks. In short, it involves the creation of a new community of practice, defined by concertation around a set of shared goals and at least partially shared "savoirs-faire" and "être" [knowing how to do and to be]. It also points to the different--and competing--circuits of knowledge production and circulation that are linked to research on a minority language. That is, communities of practice are not necessarily internally unified. Nor is a harmonious coordination of discourses across disparate communities of practice always possible; the activity is often fraught with tension.
Language is implicated in numerous ways in this activity: as expertise/competence and their attendant social consequences and values, as a research focus and as medium of action and discourse. Let me begin with the question of my own language learning, use and competence in the focal language: Corsican.
On a most basic