Laura M. Ahearn - Living Language

Having introduced readers to linguistic anthropologists’ approach to language as a form of social action, we discuss in this chapter how language is much more than just talk or words. As Jakobson’s concept of multifunctionality emphasizes, linguistic interactions are always operating on multiple levels and through multiple channels. Scholars call this multimodality , and those who study multimodal discourse seek to understand more deeply how participants in an interaction can co-construct meanings through multiple modes (which can also be called modalities or channels) in addition to face-to-face speech, such as nonverbal gestures, gazes, facial expressions, body movements, written texts, computers, material objects, or other semiotic forms.

Consider the following example. In a classic comedy skit that appeared on “The Tonight Show” in 2013, entitled, “#Hashtag,” Jimmy Fallon and Justin Timberlake proceed to have a face-to-face conversation that mimics an online exchange. 1Throughout the interaction they liberally intersperse the word “hashtag,” accompanying it with a hand gesture – two fingers of each hand overlapping each other to look like the number sign on a keyboard – whenever an online user might insert a hashtag in a post on social media. Their rapid-fire references to American popular culture are very generation- and culture-specific, so many of the jokes might be unintelligible to some audiences, but for our purposes the interesting point is that the comedy routine derives much of its humor from the central idea of the skit: the displacement of a linguistic feature (the hashtag) from one mode of communication (social media), where it is ordinarily used, to another (face-to-face conversation). Different modes of communication often involve different socially and culturally specific conventions of language use, and individuals who transgress those conventions may generate laughter, anger, or confusion. 2The humor in this skit derives, at least partially, from this sort of transgression.

The “#Hashtag” skit is also a useful example in several other respects because it demonstrates how meanings can be co-constructed by participants not just through speech but through various other semiotic modes, or channels. Hearkening back to Jakobson’s model representing the multifunctionality of language (see Figure 1.4 from Chapter 1), we might recall that one of the prime constituents of a speech event is the “channel,” or mode, through which the interaction takes place. If we broaden our analysis beyond interactions that involve face-to-face conversation, it soon becomes clear that semiosis – or meaning making – can occur through many modes, including, for example, the following (among others):

Speech

Gestures and other forms of embodied communication

Sign languages

Whistles

Song

Illustrations and images

Writing

Often, particular uses of language will involve more than one of these modes. Instances involving what linguistic anthropologists call multimodal discourse are more common than you might imagine; any time a person’s speech is accompanied by gestures or body movements, for example, the interaction is multimodal. Before focusing in on some of these nonverbal modes of meaning-making, however, it will be helpful to present the work of two scholars, Erving Goffman and Mikhail Bakhtin, each of whom mainly worked on verbal interactions, but their theories are still quite applicable to understanding the multimodality inherent in human communication.

Mikhail Bakhtin was a Russian literary critic whose wisdom about the “socially charged life of language” formed the epigraph of the first chapter of this book. Bakhtin is well known for his concept of heteroglossia , which refers to the multiplicity of socially tinged ways of speaking in any given society – some of high status, some low. We will return to this concept in a later chapter. For our purposes here, Bakhtin suggested another helpful term: double-voiced discourse . Such discourse involves the embedding of others’ voices into one’s own voice, either through direct or indirect quotation, or more subtly through mimicry or tone. Because he was a literary critic and not a social scientist, Bakhtin analyzed this phenomenon in the context of the novel, but it is easy to see its relevance and utility for everyday linguistic interactions. About double-voiced discourse, Bakhtin wrote,

there are two voices, two meanings and two expressions … Double-voiced discourse is always internally dialogized. Examples of this would be comic, ironic or parodic discourse, the refracting discourse of a narrator, refracting discourse in the language of a character and finally the discourse of a whole incorporated genre – all these discourses are double-voiced and internally dialogized. A potential dialogue is embedded in them, one as yet unfolded, a concentrated dialogue of two voices, two world views, two languages.

(Bakhtin 1981a:324–325)

Returning to the “#Hashtag” skit for a moment, it is clear that the humor in it depends not only on the use (or overuse) of the word and gesture “hashtag” but also relies heavily on the participants’ allusions to, or direct quoting of, snippets from songs, slogans, and other popular culture sources. These are all examples of Bakhtin’s double-voiced discourse and are extremely common in everyday speech. Whenever this sort of discourse takes place, echoes, associations, and even moral connotations stemming from the source of the quotation are taken up by the speaker and then presented, but usually in a refracted way. The “internally dialogized” aspect that Bakhtin mentions allows the speaker to comment upon the words being borrowed – and yet usually say nothing explicitly. In this way, entire genres can be incorporated or commented upon, much as Jimmy Fallon and Justin Timberlake were presenting in “#Hashtag” a commentary on social media users (or at least on those who overuse hashtags).

Some linguistic anthropologists who analyze conversations draw on the theories of Erving Goffman, a sociologist who rejected many of the most common preconceived notions – or language ideologies – regarding the ways in which conversations allegedly take place between speakers and hearers. Like Dell Hymes before him, Goffman rejected approaches that focused on isolated speakers or even isolated speaker-hearer dyads. Instead, Goffman emphasized the importance of foregrounding participation in general as an analytical concept (Goodwin 2001). Goffman recognized that there were many potential interactional roles people can inhabit, so he suggested applying a sophisticated participation framework and production format even to the simplest of conversations. He argued, for example, that we should distinguish between ratified and unratified hearers. Some hearers are addressees (those to whom the speaker addresses an utterance), but others are bystanders, overhearers, or even eavesdroppers.

Similarly, Goffman realized that the seemingly unified role of speaker in any interaction can also be separated into different roles (Goffman 1981:144):

Animator . The person who serves as the voice box; the person who animates the words being spoken, whether they are the speaker’s own words or not.

Author . The person who composed the words, whether or not this person is the one who voices them.

Principal . The person who stands behind what is said; the person whose opinions are expressed, whether or not this person composed or voiced these opinions.