The Transformative Materiality of Meaning-Making

By: David Parkin

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Hardcover | 18 August 2021

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Hardcover
398 Pages

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15.4 x 21.6 x 2.7

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This book explores verbal and non-verbal communication from a social anthropological viewpoint, drawing on ethnographic data from fieldwork in East Africa. It gives an overview of developments since the 1960s in the anthropology of language use and how these have influenced the author's thinking. The volume makes the argument that language and other forms of communication involve semiotic transactions between interlocuters; that such communicative exchanges do more than convey information; and that they give identity to the recipients of such transactions who reciprocate by defining speakers. The density and situational totality of such semiotic exchange can moreover be regarded as a kind of materiality, both in terms of their impact on social interaction and in how interlocuters interact bodily as well as verbally among themselves.

Industry Reviews

This important book brings acute observation to central sociolinguistic themes like multilingualism, linguistic change, standardisation, power and creativity, and situates them with great subtlety and depth in the political, cultural and historical processes in which they play a part. More than that, it provides vivid insight into key developments in social scientific thought over the last five decades, and richly illustrates the power and scope for a social anthropology of language.

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