Forum 58: Linguistic Anthropology

Abstract

Linguistic anthropology taken as a union of linguistics and anthropology in the study of language and culture was established more than a century ago. In recent decades, one can observe signs both of its gradual integration into the Western anthropological project, and of a its certain esotericization and marginalization. In Russian academia, a stricter division of labor is normal: ethnographers deal with culture, philologists and linguists deal with language and communication. But can one say that Russian ethnographers and social anthropologists completely ignore communicative phenomena in their research? The “Linguistic Anthropology forum” is dedicated to the current state of language and culture research in Russia. What place do language and communication occupy in the work of Russian researchers of culture? What is the current relationship between linguistics and social anthropology (ethnography)? How do Russian researchers solve specific problems at the intersection of these disciplines (as examples, the “unspoken” and problems related to translation — as a metaphor and as an analytical tool — are chosen)? How does the correlation between Western and Russian theoretical schools look like at this interdisciplinary borderline? What could be the future of language and cultural studies in Russia? To discuss these and other issues, we invited representatives of a wide range of scholarship about language and culture: social anthropology and ethnography, linguistics and sociolinguistics, folklore, history, and sociology.