Colloquium: Edwin Everhart, UMass Amherst Anthropology
Guest Lecture
Anthropology Colloquium:
Edwin Everhart, UMass Amherst
Friday, November 1, 2024
2:30-4:00pm EST in Machmer E24 or Zoom:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85148661908?pwd=b3B4UIKrSIL6biALLmKdVhkdlqfzde.1
Meeting ID: 851 4866 1908
Passcode: 501
“Language Standardization and its Opposite”
Standardization, i.e. the imposition of uniformity on a class of objects, is a central feature of modernity. State bureaucracy pursues standardization to create simplified and institutionally legible representations of the world; capital pursues standardization to make all parts of (and participants in) the labor process replaceable. This presentation discusses the history, mechanisms, and ideology of language standardization. Special attention is given to the quality of standardization as an ongoing process, and to the harm that it produces. The presentation will discuss alternatives to "standard language culture," including ethnographic examples from "unstandardized" societies as well as everyday moments where the logic of language standardization is not applied. Considering these examples, as well as an interactional and intersubjective concept of "intelligibility," a new, broadly applicable moral and intellectual paradigm will be proposed as "the opposite" of language standardization.
Image description and caption:
The image is a black and white photograph of elementary school students in a classroom, with a close up view of one student who is standing up and wearing a dark shirt. This student is also wearing a paper sign hanging loosely around the neck and shoulders by a cord. The text on this sign reads 私は方言を使いました。A romanized version: 'Watasi ha hougen wo tukaimasita.' A translation: "I used dialect." This is a mid-1960s photo from a classroom in Okinawa, where paper signs like this were used to identify and punish students who did not use standard Japanese. Signs (cards, tags, etc) serving a similar purpose have also been used to enforce standard language elsewhere, including other parts of the Japanese archipelago, as well as in Wales and provincial France.