COML 6072 - Using Texts: Literature and Linguistic Anthropology

(crosslisted) ANTHR 6072

Spring. 4 credits.

T. McEnaney.

What does it mean to “use” a text or literary artifact? What happens to a novel when we examine it as “interactive text” produced in a shared “real time”? How does the use of a particular term help construct a context of publics and counterpublics? In this course we will study the linguistic anthropologist Michael Silverstein and his “pragmatic” linguistics in relation to free indirect discourse, Bakhtinian register, and Foucauldian author functions to consider how texts work in the world. Examining books from Manuel Puig, David Foster Wallace, Miguel Barnet, Andy Warhol, Lydia Davis and others that take the form of an interview, we will study the maneuvers of spoken conversation in print. Theorists include Jakobson, Bourdieu, V. Jackson, Latour, Banfield, Warner, Agha, and Lucey.