Language and Culture

Fieldworkers look to both verbal and nonverbal language to understand rules and meanings at their fieldsite



Why study verbal language?

  • verbal language brings nonverbal thoughts and ideas to the surface
  • language can become the focal point of your research
  • informants "voices" are most clearly transmitted through their verbal communication
What do systems of communication reveal?
  • solidarity and exclusion markers
  • aspects unique to culture (jargon)
  • symbolic systems within a culture
  • the relationship between language and culture
Nonverbal Communication: Body Language and Culture
  • proxemics-use of and meaning of space
  • kinesics-meaning of body movement and gesture
  • microsignals-gaze (etc.) -unconsciouss small signals
  • touch-meaning and use
  • dress and adornments-meaning of chosen displayed symbols of identity
    • tatoos
    • dress
    • hair
    • piercings
    • teeth
    • makeup
    • plastic surgery or other bodily "mutilations"
Linking Words and Culture
  • look for key words, phrases and ideas that serve as clues into informant's culture
  • think of every "artifact" of a culture like a" sponge" and ask what you can squeeze out of a concept.
  • remember that language changes over time and even within a specific context
  • where we find cultural differences, we will find language differences
    • example: meditation on the word "cheek" (19th century)
    • creating a "glossary" of terms or words with specific meanings
Using Insider Language in Your Writing
  • integrating the language of the subculture into your account in your descriptions
  • using significant terms to theme your ethnographic research and analysis
    • words as cultural artifacts
      • emphasis on terms means the "thing" they are describing is important in culture and demands further investigation
        • different words for "silk" in China, or "snow" in the Arctic
    • context in which words are used (rules for performance)
      • example: the word "whore"
During the 2018 Miss’d America Pageant dress rehearsal, as each contestant was introduced and came to the microphone out of drag to say something about themselves, HRH Mortimer yelled from the seats, “Whore!!!” When asked later about the purpose of this “reading,” HRH Mortimer explained:
“I say “whore” because I want to throw them off their game…like someone in the audience is like, “Ohhh…you whore!” And they find out later it’s me, saying, “I see you.” I make sure to say it with every one that came out. To me “whore” is not an insult, it’s a compliment. It’s like recognizing you exist…hey, I see you up there on that runway…I’m here with you. It’s real.”
      • example the word "read"
Language ideologies in gay and drag communication and ways of speaking are important products and practices developed and shared in the drag community in Atlantic City. Local queens learned how to perform drag together as they all worked the same vibrant bar scene; to make costumes, put on productions, and paint their faces. They developed a particular way of communicating with each other, sharing a vocabulary and style of communication, a camp style of speaking that signaled their identity as local drag queens. Communication was based on competition, and humor was based on a kind of reading of those performances. Reading can be described as a sometimes-scathing critique of someone’s appearance, lack of talent, intelligence, hygiene, or most of all, sexual behavior. Reading is one of the many aspects of communicative interaction that indexes gayness, and as Rusty Barrett beautifully illustrates in his research, “gay male subcultures are crucially constituted through language.” Reading is a communicative strategy that is learned as part of the evolution of one’s identity as a gay man. Miss’d America 2015, Fifi Dubois, talks about how she sees “drag language”:
“It’s fun…its campy…Its gay culture. I think it gives us our own dialect, our own language that people can use. It’s a way to identify other gay people. Or other drag queens…through how we talk.”
 Gay Language (e.g. sentimental voice, emphatic stress, diminutive affix, marked vocabulary), and stylistic forms like reading and camp in general, serve to index gay identity and gay culture. Indexicality is critical to understanding forms of camp, (discussed further in the section below), and is “central to monitoring questions of sexual identity such as “gaydar.” Much of gay language establishes identity through forms of indexical disjuncture. Indexical disjuncture uses indexical signs (aspects of communication) that are marked. That is, they are counter to normative expectations of the relationship between form and context. Drag queening is an obvious form of disjuncture, and so are the mocking and insulting characteristics of reading, since their intention is to be properly read as neither mocking nor insulting. This is one reason why drag queens often find it curious that feminists critique their presentations as misogynistic. The disjuncture, although referencing normativity, has little to do in their minds with its uncritical acceptance. As Josh Rivers noted “drag queens all over the world are engaged in the quotidian negotiation of boundaries between what Michael Lambek terms the “continuous person,” their “boy selves,” and the “discontinuous act of performing” their drag personas.” Reading is a recognition of this negotiation, which is how drag identity is properly werked. It is a recognition of the fluid (rather than distinct) boundaries between their boy and drag selves. As Evelyn Syde described:
“…[I]t’s not just insulting someone. A good read is well thought out, educated, creative and clever, but in person… well, reading does come from the AIDS crisis and the terror that everyone was going through, and it was a way for people to find humor in a desperate situation, so… reading and shade are friendly reminders to not take this so seriously, ourselves. At the end of the day we are men in dresses. This is not necessarily a living; we are doing it out of love for the most part. [It] is a reminder to humble yourself, and to remember that at the end of the day you are going to go home to your cats.”
The sentiment that reading acts as recognition of fallibility is meant to remind queens not to take themselves too seriously, but it is not meant to be hurtful. One reads themselves and people they care about.
      • example of the word "camp"
Although camp is not exclusive to gay communication and presentation, interpretations of camp are, according to Barrett, deeply dependent on the normative citations within LGBT communities, comprising a folk wisdom in gay male culture. From this perspective, gay men learn a set of “essential aesthetic judgments for the evaluation of camp” that play an important role in the “social construction of (gay male) identity.” Drag, unlike transvestism, is premised on theatrical structure and style. “There is no drag without an actor and his audience, and there is no drag without drama (or theatricality).” Men who become drag queens have come out in and been socialized in the homosexual community first. He is already a gay man and must come out again as a drag queen. The drag queen, like camp, flaunts her homosexuality on stage, without any apology. As Newton notes in her classic study of drag queens in New York City, drag is inherently expressive of gayness:
“…drag symbolizes gayness. The drag queen symbolizes an open declaration, even celebration, of homosexual. The drag queen says for his gay audience, who cannot say it, “I’m gay, I don’t care who knows it, the straight world be damned.”
As Morgan Wells, Miss’d America 1999 and owner of Morgan Wells’ Drag Closet explains:
“Yaaaas it’s campy! And girl you know it should be. You got to have something to laugh about. And why not? When your friends are all sick and dying and then people are saying it’s your fault. When what you supposed to act like is really the drag. The world is already ironic, funny, ridiculous. It’s just that some of us can see it, you know…and some of us can’t. You ain’t a drag queen, NO, you probably ain’t GAY unless you can!”
The ability to see the ironic, funny, and ridiculous nature of the world at any moment is illustrative of this folk wisdom and gay ideological perspective that also includes assumptions about gay male superiority in areas of taste and style. Shared as well, are values about self-presentation, like the necessity for passing in certain contexts, and the ironic, sometimes parodical nature of these quotidian public presentations of self. Gay men must become versed in this folk wisdom and the language ideologies underlying gay camp communicative interaction in order to be successful in gay culture, since fluency in these gains access to gay subculture and protection from the often hostile heterosexual world.

  • Ethnopoetic notation: allows you to preserve the diction, pacing and emphasis of language
    • rhythms
    • repetitions, 
    • tensions
    • insights
    • cultural meanings
  • Insider Language: How to Do the Research
    • goal is to analyze language from the perspective of your informants
    • occupational language
    • cursing
    • other special genres of talk (like reading, above).
    • jokes,joking behavior
    • proverbial speech
    • spiritual/other performance
    • urban legends
      • contain within them important cultural values, beliefs and ideals
    • lack of talk
SUMMARY: Language and Culture are Intimately Linked

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