Kira Hall | University of Colorado, Boulder (original) (raw)
Papers by Kira Hall
Annual Review of Anthropology, 2024
This review of research on sexuality discourses directs attention to the patterns of indexical di... more This review of research on sexuality discourses directs attention to the patterns of indexical disalignment that have facilitated the global rise of transphobic, homophobic, and misogynist discourses. Over the last two decades, scholarship in the area of language and sexuality has focused primarily on patterns of alignment in the community-based indexical production of social personae, a necessary move for establishing the discursive agency, and indeed humanity, of LGBTQ+ groups. The focus of this review, however, is not alignment but disalignment, for it is in the clash of indexical systems that sexual ideologies take root. Specifically, the article focuses on acts of misrecognition that arise at the boundaries of indexical meaning, identifying practices such as indexical inoculation, indexical presumption, and indexical denial. The review is designed to provoke future research on misrecognition as contextualized social practice, a turn we believe imperative for uncovering the power-laden infrastructure of sexuality discourses.
Lifelong Search for Home: Collected English Poems of Ved Prakash Vatuk, 2023
Linguistics Out of the Closet, 2023
In this chapter we describe various types of closet-enforcing discourse prevalent in the field of... more In this chapter we describe various types of closet-enforcing discourse prevalent in the field of linguistics by narrating our personal experiences moving in and out of closets in US academic contexts. The behaviors we experienced in relation to our work on language and sexuality still persist, now revitalized by a broad-scale nostalgic return to the biological essentialism that preceded the birth of queer linguistics in the 1990s. Driven by an unlikely partnership between rightwing “anti-gender” politicians and “gender-critical” feminists, the discourses arising from this nostalgia find common ground in calling for the marginalization and erasure of transgender identity. Prejudice against trans people has become central to contemporary forms of naysaying, gatekeeping, and bullying, both in linguistics and in gender studies. Our analysis of this disturbing development highlights the importance of forging an intersectional sensibility across lines of abjection in order to confront the discourses that sequester queer and trans perspectives.
HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 2021
This article reviews accounts of "hugging" across evolutionary paradigms to expose how understand... more This article reviews accounts of "hugging" across evolutionary paradigms to expose how understandings of gesture are shaped by scientific theorizations of the ways humans and animals differ. The divergent roles assigned to gesture in human communication by Vygotskian and Chomskyan researchers can be traced to research on human exceptionalism during key historical periods in the Soviet Union and United States. When Vygotsky introduced his sociocultural theory of cognitive development during the early Soviet period, human exceptionalism was tested through reproductive crossbreeding. When Chomsky hypothesized a language acquisition device for the human brain during the Civil Rights era, human exceptionalism was tested through interspecies communication. These scientific histories inspired critically different approaches to gestural meaning. Taking a fresh look at the great ape language debates of the 1970s, the article attributes the dismissal of ethnography in late twentieth century human language study to a developing experimental protocol that required gesture's eviction.
HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 2021
This article reviews accounts of "hugging" across evolutionary paradigms to expose how understand... more This article reviews accounts of "hugging" across evolutionary paradigms to expose how understandings of gesture are shaped by scientific theorizations of the ways humans and animals differ. The divergent roles assigned to gesture in human communication by Vygotskian and Chomskyan researchers can be traced to research on human exceptionalism during key historical periods in the Soviet Union and United States. When Vygotsky introduced his sociocultural theory of cognitive development during the early Soviet period, human exceptionalism was tested through reproductive crossbreeding. When Chomsky hypothesized a language acquisition device for the human brain during the Civil Rights era, human exceptionalism was tested through interspecies communication. These scientific histories inspired critically different approaches to gestural meaning. Taking a fresh look at the great ape language debates of the 1970s, the article attributes the dismissal of ethnography in late twentieth century human language study to a developing experimental protocol that required gesture's eviction. Access at: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/715754
Journal of Sociolinguistics, 2021
This article draws from ethnographic research among youth in Delhi's expanding middle classes to ... more This article draws from ethnographic research among youth in Delhi's expanding middle classes to call for more sociolinguistic attention to the role played by sexuality discourse in the reproduction of class relations. The discussion highlights the centrality of the middle classes to sustaining as well as shifting sexual normativity, suggesting that sexual norms are in part constituted through everyday discourses that situate middle class subjectivity between two class extremes. Specifically, the article tracks how Hinglish, as a mixed-language alternative to a class system polarized by English and Hindi, came to rival English as the preferred language of sexuality, challenging the elite censorship of “vernacular” languages that began in nineteenth-century colonialism. However, as demonstrated by two case studies of queer speakers at different ends of the Hinglish continuum, speakers of this internally diverse hybrid variety are not equally able to master the sexuality discourse that has become indexical of upward mobility.
Gender and Language, 2021
This editorial introduces issue 15(1) of the journal Gender and Language by reflecting on the the... more This editorial introduces issue 15(1) of the journal Gender and Language by reflecting on the theorization of power in language, gender, and sexuality research over the last thirty years. Drawing on the recent work of Argentine theoretician and activist Verónica Gago, the editorial calls for more attention to the role of feminist "potencia" in challenging the interrelated practices of misogyny, homophobia, and transphobia. The issue features papers by Joyhanna Yoo Garza on gender and racialized appropriations in K-pop, Stephen Turton on deadnaming practices at Urban Dictionary, and Maeve Eberhardt on “raucous feminisms" in Broad City. The issue also includes the first installment of its "Thirty-year Retrospective on Language, Gender and Sexuality Research,” with essays by Robin Tolmach Lakoff, Susan Gal, Alice F. Freed, Sally McConnell-Ginet, and Norma Mendoza-Denton. In addition, Amy Kyratzis pays homage to the groundbreaking work of Susan Ervin-Tripp (1927-2018).
Gender and Language, 2020
This editorial introduces the 14(4) issue of Gender and Language with a reflection on crisis, ref... more This editorial introduces the 14(4) issue of Gender and Language with a reflection on crisis, refusal, collective action, and hope in the time of COVID-19, focusing on challenges faced by women as well as queer, transgender, and nonbinary people of all genders. Defining hope as the affective infrastructure of refusal, the discussion describes how collective action surrounding a series of sexual assault cases at the National University of Singapore led to substantive policy changes. The issue features articles by Adrienne Ronee Washington, Hadar Netz & Ron Kuzar, Eliana Regina Crestani Tortola & Larissa Michelle Lara, and Jeremy Calder.
Discursos transviados: por uma linguística queer, Nov 24, 2020
Brazilian Portuguese translation of Hall (2005), "Intertextual Sexuality: Parodies of Class, Iden... more Brazilian Portuguese translation of Hall (2005), "Intertextual Sexuality: Parodies of Class, Identity, and Desire in Liminal Delhi." Translated by Pedro Rieger and Rodrigo Borba and published in Rodrigo Borba (ed.), Discursos transviados: por uma linguística queer.
The Routledge Handbook of Language, Gender, and Sexuality, 2021
This chapter focuses on ethnography as a multi-method research approach in the study of language,... more This chapter focuses on ethnography as a multi-method research approach in the study of language, gender, and sexuality. The approach is especially appropriate to the field's understanding of gender and sexuality as intertwined social systems that are brought into being through situated discursive practice. Yet the dynamism of gender and sexuality is difficult to capture in published work: How can researchers write about a particular time and place in a way that acknowledges the ongoing processual nature of that particularity? The chapter illustrates how ethnography answers this question through its attention to the conceptual triad of practice, ideology, and theory. Drawing from fieldwork among groups in the United States and India associated with systems of gender outside colonial cisnormativity and heteropatriarchy, the discussion demonstrates the advantages of ethnography for assessing how gender and sexuality come to matter in the semiotic exchange of everyday life.
The International Encyclopedia of Linguistic Anthropology, online version, 2020
The field of language and gender is methodologically diverse, encompassing approaches that includ... more The field of language and gender is methodologically diverse, encompassing approaches that include conversation analysis, corpus linguistics, critical discourse analysis, discursive psychology, linguistic anthropology, and variationist sociolinguistics. Within this diversity, ethnography has long been a key method for interrogating the social semiotic complexities of gender, securing the field's close partnership with linguistic anthropology. This historical review outlines the prominent role played by linguistic anthropology in the theorization of gender by highlighting its enduring methodological and conceptual contributions, while also outlining the ways that interdisciplinary scholarship in language and gender has shaped the course of linguistic anthropology.
The International Encyclopedia of Linguistic Anthropology, online version, 2020
This chapter reviews the concept of agency in linguistic anthropology, defined as the capacity fo... more This chapter reviews the concept of agency in linguistic anthropology, defined as the capacity for socially meaningful action. Under this definition, the construal of agency is an indexical process whereby people recognize actors and their identities through the interpretation of locally salient actions. The ideologies behind these interpretations directly relate to the range of possible agency and the identities any entity may be recognized to have within a particular community or situated interaction. Power, then, arises as certain semiotic ideologies become privileged over others on the basis of race, gender, sexuality, social class, ability, and other structural inequalities. Finally, academic attention to agency has opened up the term to include distributed and nonhuman forms of agency, shedding new light on how social meanings rely on and intertwine with materiality and embodiment.
![Research paper thumbnail of कवि का न्याय [kavi kaa nyaaya]](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/64515352/thumbnails/1.jpg)
](In Shribhagwan Dixit (ed.) सात्विक आक्रोश के जन-कवि वेद प्रकाश 'वटुक' [saatvik aakrosh ke jan-kavi ved prakaash ‘vatuk’]. Meerut: Nirupama Prakashan, 2020
Hindi translation of Hall 2009 ("A Poet's Justice"), which discusses the life and work of Dr. Ved... more Hindi translation of Hall 2009 ("A Poet's Justice"), which discusses the life and work of Dr. Ved Prakash 'Vatuk', Indian folklorist, essayist, linguist, and author of over 30 internationally recognized volumes of political poetry. Translated by Ved Prakash Vatuk and published in सात्विक आक्रोश के जन-कवि वेद प्रकाश 'वटुक', edited by Shribhagwan Dixit.
Language in the Trump Era, 2020
Adapted from Hall, Goldstein, and Ingram (2016) for a volume on language in the Trump era, this c... more Adapted from Hall, Goldstein, and Ingram (2016) for a volume on language in the Trump era, this chapter attributes the success of Trump's candidacy in the 2016 Republican primary to its value as comedic entertainment. The chapter builds on Mikhail Bakhtin's (1984) notion of the "grotesque body" to examine the ways that Trump's unconventional political style, particularly his use of humor and gesture to critique the political system and caricature his opponents, brought momentum to his campaign by creating spectacle. By reducing a target perceived as an opponent to an essentialized action of the body, Trump's bodily parodies and pantomimes deliver the message that he rejects progressive social expectations regarding how minority groups should be represented. Five highly mediatized caricatures are analyzed in detail (two of which did not appear in the original publication): the Wrist-Flailing Reporter, the Food-Shoveling Governor, the Border-Crossing Mexican, the Choking Presidential Candidate, and the Wobbling Democratic Nominee. Across these depictions, Trump displays his antagonism to political correctness (and hence to the political establishment) by embodying discourses of disability, class, immigration, race, and gender.
Gender and Language, 2020
This essay, authored by the co-editors of the journal Gender and Language for their 2020 debut is... more This essay, authored by the co-editors of the journal Gender and Language for their 2020 debut issue 14.1, analyzes the transnational uptake of the Chilean feminist protest "Un violator en tu camino" ('A Rapist In Your Path') as a response to neo-nationalist discourses framing "gender" as the enemy. Introducing articles by Deborah Chirrey, Deyanira Rojas-Sosa, Grace Diabah, and Emma Putland, the essay considers how research on language, gender, and sexuality continues to matter in our current age of mediatized 21st century politics.
Hacia una sociolingüística crítica: desarrollos y debates, 2020
Spanish translation of Bucholtz and Hall's (2008) "All of the Above: New Coalitions in Sociocultu... more Spanish translation of Bucholtz and Hall's (2008) "All of the Above: New Coalitions in Sociocultural Linguistics." Translated by Mayelo Zambrano and published in Mercedes Niño-Murcia, Virginia Zavala, and Susana de los Heros (eds.), Hacia una sociolingüística crítica: desarrollos y debates.
![Research paper thumbnail of سب سے مقدم: سماجی و ثقافتی لسانیات میں نئے میلانات [Sab se Muqaddam: Samaji o Saqafati Lisaniaat men nae Melanaat]](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/61977104/thumbnails/1.jpg)
](Mayar 22: 39-78, 2020
Urdu translation of Bucholtz and Hall's (2008) "All of the Above: New Coalitions in Sociolinguist... more Urdu translation of Bucholtz and Hall's (2008) "All of the Above: New Coalitions in Sociolinguistics." Published in the IIUI journal Mayar and translated by Muhammad Numan and Fahim Javed.
IGALA Blog: Language, Gender, and Sexuality, 2020
Published on the International Gender and Language Association Blog, this essay analyzes the tran... more Published on the International Gender and Language Association Blog, this essay analyzes the transnational uptake of the Chilean feminist protest "Un violator en tu camino" ('A Rapist In Your Path') as a response to neo-nationalist discourses framing "gender" as the enemy. Authored by the new co-editors of the journal Gender and Language, the essay considers how research on language, gender, and sexuality continues to matter in our current age of mediatized 21st century politics. A fuller version of the essay was published in Gender and Language 14.1 (2020) under the title "Feminist Refusal Meets Enmity."
Language in Society, 2019
The rise of India’s global economy has reinforced a perception of English as a language of sexual... more The rise of India’s global economy has reinforced a perception of English as a language of sexual modernity within the expanding middle classes. This article explores this perception in the multilingual humor of Hindi-speaking Delhi youth marginalized for sexual and gender difference. Their joking routines feature the Sikh Sardarji, a longstanding ethnic figure often caricatured as circulating in modernity but lacking the English competence to understand modernity’s semiotics. Reflective of the economic restructuring that ushered in the millennium, the humor supports a normative progress narrative that prioritizes an ethnically unmarked urban middle class. At the same time, the lesbian, bisexual, and transgender youth who tell these jokes—still criminalized under Section 377 when this fieldwork was conducted—shift this narrative by positioning sexual knowledge at modernity’s forefront. The analysis reveals how sexual modernity—here viewed as constituted in everyday interaction through competing configurations of place, time, and personhood—relies on normativity even while defining itself against it. (Chronotope, ethnic humor, formulaic jokes, globalization, Hindi-English, Hinglish, media, middle class, normativity, sexual modernity, temporality)
Language in Society, 2019
This article introduces a special journal issue on the topic of language and normativity, publish... more This article introduces a special journal issue on the topic of language and normativity, published August 2019 in Language in Society. Born from a panel at the ninth biannual meeting of the International Gender and Language Association in Hong Kong, the special issue seeks to stimulate academic discussion on the role of normativity and antinormativity in language, gender, and sexuality research in response to a series of critical interventions in cultural studies regarding some of the tenets underpinning queer theory (see Wiegman 2012; Penney 2014; Wiegman & Wilson 2015). The introduction suggests that sociolinguistics—with its focus on situated interpretations of social practice—has much to contribute, both theoretically and empirically, to these debates within cultural studies.
Annual Review of Anthropology, 2024
This review of research on sexuality discourses directs attention to the patterns of indexical di... more This review of research on sexuality discourses directs attention to the patterns of indexical disalignment that have facilitated the global rise of transphobic, homophobic, and misogynist discourses. Over the last two decades, scholarship in the area of language and sexuality has focused primarily on patterns of alignment in the community-based indexical production of social personae, a necessary move for establishing the discursive agency, and indeed humanity, of LGBTQ+ groups. The focus of this review, however, is not alignment but disalignment, for it is in the clash of indexical systems that sexual ideologies take root. Specifically, the article focuses on acts of misrecognition that arise at the boundaries of indexical meaning, identifying practices such as indexical inoculation, indexical presumption, and indexical denial. The review is designed to provoke future research on misrecognition as contextualized social practice, a turn we believe imperative for uncovering the power-laden infrastructure of sexuality discourses.
Lifelong Search for Home: Collected English Poems of Ved Prakash Vatuk, 2023
Linguistics Out of the Closet, 2023
In this chapter we describe various types of closet-enforcing discourse prevalent in the field of... more In this chapter we describe various types of closet-enforcing discourse prevalent in the field of linguistics by narrating our personal experiences moving in and out of closets in US academic contexts. The behaviors we experienced in relation to our work on language and sexuality still persist, now revitalized by a broad-scale nostalgic return to the biological essentialism that preceded the birth of queer linguistics in the 1990s. Driven by an unlikely partnership between rightwing “anti-gender” politicians and “gender-critical” feminists, the discourses arising from this nostalgia find common ground in calling for the marginalization and erasure of transgender identity. Prejudice against trans people has become central to contemporary forms of naysaying, gatekeeping, and bullying, both in linguistics and in gender studies. Our analysis of this disturbing development highlights the importance of forging an intersectional sensibility across lines of abjection in order to confront the discourses that sequester queer and trans perspectives.
HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 2021
This article reviews accounts of "hugging" across evolutionary paradigms to expose how understand... more This article reviews accounts of "hugging" across evolutionary paradigms to expose how understandings of gesture are shaped by scientific theorizations of the ways humans and animals differ. The divergent roles assigned to gesture in human communication by Vygotskian and Chomskyan researchers can be traced to research on human exceptionalism during key historical periods in the Soviet Union and United States. When Vygotsky introduced his sociocultural theory of cognitive development during the early Soviet period, human exceptionalism was tested through reproductive crossbreeding. When Chomsky hypothesized a language acquisition device for the human brain during the Civil Rights era, human exceptionalism was tested through interspecies communication. These scientific histories inspired critically different approaches to gestural meaning. Taking a fresh look at the great ape language debates of the 1970s, the article attributes the dismissal of ethnography in late twentieth century human language study to a developing experimental protocol that required gesture's eviction.
HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 2021
This article reviews accounts of "hugging" across evolutionary paradigms to expose how understand... more This article reviews accounts of "hugging" across evolutionary paradigms to expose how understandings of gesture are shaped by scientific theorizations of the ways humans and animals differ. The divergent roles assigned to gesture in human communication by Vygotskian and Chomskyan researchers can be traced to research on human exceptionalism during key historical periods in the Soviet Union and United States. When Vygotsky introduced his sociocultural theory of cognitive development during the early Soviet period, human exceptionalism was tested through reproductive crossbreeding. When Chomsky hypothesized a language acquisition device for the human brain during the Civil Rights era, human exceptionalism was tested through interspecies communication. These scientific histories inspired critically different approaches to gestural meaning. Taking a fresh look at the great ape language debates of the 1970s, the article attributes the dismissal of ethnography in late twentieth century human language study to a developing experimental protocol that required gesture's eviction. Access at: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/715754
Journal of Sociolinguistics, 2021
This article draws from ethnographic research among youth in Delhi's expanding middle classes to ... more This article draws from ethnographic research among youth in Delhi's expanding middle classes to call for more sociolinguistic attention to the role played by sexuality discourse in the reproduction of class relations. The discussion highlights the centrality of the middle classes to sustaining as well as shifting sexual normativity, suggesting that sexual norms are in part constituted through everyday discourses that situate middle class subjectivity between two class extremes. Specifically, the article tracks how Hinglish, as a mixed-language alternative to a class system polarized by English and Hindi, came to rival English as the preferred language of sexuality, challenging the elite censorship of “vernacular” languages that began in nineteenth-century colonialism. However, as demonstrated by two case studies of queer speakers at different ends of the Hinglish continuum, speakers of this internally diverse hybrid variety are not equally able to master the sexuality discourse that has become indexical of upward mobility.
Gender and Language, 2021
This editorial introduces issue 15(1) of the journal Gender and Language by reflecting on the the... more This editorial introduces issue 15(1) of the journal Gender and Language by reflecting on the theorization of power in language, gender, and sexuality research over the last thirty years. Drawing on the recent work of Argentine theoretician and activist Verónica Gago, the editorial calls for more attention to the role of feminist "potencia" in challenging the interrelated practices of misogyny, homophobia, and transphobia. The issue features papers by Joyhanna Yoo Garza on gender and racialized appropriations in K-pop, Stephen Turton on deadnaming practices at Urban Dictionary, and Maeve Eberhardt on “raucous feminisms" in Broad City. The issue also includes the first installment of its "Thirty-year Retrospective on Language, Gender and Sexuality Research,” with essays by Robin Tolmach Lakoff, Susan Gal, Alice F. Freed, Sally McConnell-Ginet, and Norma Mendoza-Denton. In addition, Amy Kyratzis pays homage to the groundbreaking work of Susan Ervin-Tripp (1927-2018).
Gender and Language, 2020
This editorial introduces the 14(4) issue of Gender and Language with a reflection on crisis, ref... more This editorial introduces the 14(4) issue of Gender and Language with a reflection on crisis, refusal, collective action, and hope in the time of COVID-19, focusing on challenges faced by women as well as queer, transgender, and nonbinary people of all genders. Defining hope as the affective infrastructure of refusal, the discussion describes how collective action surrounding a series of sexual assault cases at the National University of Singapore led to substantive policy changes. The issue features articles by Adrienne Ronee Washington, Hadar Netz & Ron Kuzar, Eliana Regina Crestani Tortola & Larissa Michelle Lara, and Jeremy Calder.
Discursos transviados: por uma linguística queer, Nov 24, 2020
Brazilian Portuguese translation of Hall (2005), "Intertextual Sexuality: Parodies of Class, Iden... more Brazilian Portuguese translation of Hall (2005), "Intertextual Sexuality: Parodies of Class, Identity, and Desire in Liminal Delhi." Translated by Pedro Rieger and Rodrigo Borba and published in Rodrigo Borba (ed.), Discursos transviados: por uma linguística queer.
The Routledge Handbook of Language, Gender, and Sexuality, 2021
This chapter focuses on ethnography as a multi-method research approach in the study of language,... more This chapter focuses on ethnography as a multi-method research approach in the study of language, gender, and sexuality. The approach is especially appropriate to the field's understanding of gender and sexuality as intertwined social systems that are brought into being through situated discursive practice. Yet the dynamism of gender and sexuality is difficult to capture in published work: How can researchers write about a particular time and place in a way that acknowledges the ongoing processual nature of that particularity? The chapter illustrates how ethnography answers this question through its attention to the conceptual triad of practice, ideology, and theory. Drawing from fieldwork among groups in the United States and India associated with systems of gender outside colonial cisnormativity and heteropatriarchy, the discussion demonstrates the advantages of ethnography for assessing how gender and sexuality come to matter in the semiotic exchange of everyday life.
The International Encyclopedia of Linguistic Anthropology, online version, 2020
The field of language and gender is methodologically diverse, encompassing approaches that includ... more The field of language and gender is methodologically diverse, encompassing approaches that include conversation analysis, corpus linguistics, critical discourse analysis, discursive psychology, linguistic anthropology, and variationist sociolinguistics. Within this diversity, ethnography has long been a key method for interrogating the social semiotic complexities of gender, securing the field's close partnership with linguistic anthropology. This historical review outlines the prominent role played by linguistic anthropology in the theorization of gender by highlighting its enduring methodological and conceptual contributions, while also outlining the ways that interdisciplinary scholarship in language and gender has shaped the course of linguistic anthropology.
The International Encyclopedia of Linguistic Anthropology, online version, 2020
This chapter reviews the concept of agency in linguistic anthropology, defined as the capacity fo... more This chapter reviews the concept of agency in linguistic anthropology, defined as the capacity for socially meaningful action. Under this definition, the construal of agency is an indexical process whereby people recognize actors and their identities through the interpretation of locally salient actions. The ideologies behind these interpretations directly relate to the range of possible agency and the identities any entity may be recognized to have within a particular community or situated interaction. Power, then, arises as certain semiotic ideologies become privileged over others on the basis of race, gender, sexuality, social class, ability, and other structural inequalities. Finally, academic attention to agency has opened up the term to include distributed and nonhuman forms of agency, shedding new light on how social meanings rely on and intertwine with materiality and embodiment.
In Shribhagwan Dixit (ed.) सात्विक आक्रोश के जन-कवि वेद प्रकाश 'वटुक' [saatvik aakrosh ke jan-kavi ved prakaash ‘vatuk’]. Meerut: Nirupama Prakashan, 2020
Hindi translation of Hall 2009 ("A Poet's Justice"), which discusses the life and work of Dr. Ved... more Hindi translation of Hall 2009 ("A Poet's Justice"), which discusses the life and work of Dr. Ved Prakash 'Vatuk', Indian folklorist, essayist, linguist, and author of over 30 internationally recognized volumes of political poetry. Translated by Ved Prakash Vatuk and published in सात्विक आक्रोश के जन-कवि वेद प्रकाश 'वटुक', edited by Shribhagwan Dixit.
Language in the Trump Era, 2020
Adapted from Hall, Goldstein, and Ingram (2016) for a volume on language in the Trump era, this c... more Adapted from Hall, Goldstein, and Ingram (2016) for a volume on language in the Trump era, this chapter attributes the success of Trump's candidacy in the 2016 Republican primary to its value as comedic entertainment. The chapter builds on Mikhail Bakhtin's (1984) notion of the "grotesque body" to examine the ways that Trump's unconventional political style, particularly his use of humor and gesture to critique the political system and caricature his opponents, brought momentum to his campaign by creating spectacle. By reducing a target perceived as an opponent to an essentialized action of the body, Trump's bodily parodies and pantomimes deliver the message that he rejects progressive social expectations regarding how minority groups should be represented. Five highly mediatized caricatures are analyzed in detail (two of which did not appear in the original publication): the Wrist-Flailing Reporter, the Food-Shoveling Governor, the Border-Crossing Mexican, the Choking Presidential Candidate, and the Wobbling Democratic Nominee. Across these depictions, Trump displays his antagonism to political correctness (and hence to the political establishment) by embodying discourses of disability, class, immigration, race, and gender.
Gender and Language, 2020
This essay, authored by the co-editors of the journal Gender and Language for their 2020 debut is... more This essay, authored by the co-editors of the journal Gender and Language for their 2020 debut issue 14.1, analyzes the transnational uptake of the Chilean feminist protest "Un violator en tu camino" ('A Rapist In Your Path') as a response to neo-nationalist discourses framing "gender" as the enemy. Introducing articles by Deborah Chirrey, Deyanira Rojas-Sosa, Grace Diabah, and Emma Putland, the essay considers how research on language, gender, and sexuality continues to matter in our current age of mediatized 21st century politics.
Hacia una sociolingüística crítica: desarrollos y debates, 2020
Spanish translation of Bucholtz and Hall's (2008) "All of the Above: New Coalitions in Sociocultu... more Spanish translation of Bucholtz and Hall's (2008) "All of the Above: New Coalitions in Sociocultural Linguistics." Translated by Mayelo Zambrano and published in Mercedes Niño-Murcia, Virginia Zavala, and Susana de los Heros (eds.), Hacia una sociolingüística crítica: desarrollos y debates.
Mayar 22: 39-78, 2020
Urdu translation of Bucholtz and Hall's (2008) "All of the Above: New Coalitions in Sociolinguist... more Urdu translation of Bucholtz and Hall's (2008) "All of the Above: New Coalitions in Sociolinguistics." Published in the IIUI journal Mayar and translated by Muhammad Numan and Fahim Javed.
IGALA Blog: Language, Gender, and Sexuality, 2020
Published on the International Gender and Language Association Blog, this essay analyzes the tran... more Published on the International Gender and Language Association Blog, this essay analyzes the transnational uptake of the Chilean feminist protest "Un violator en tu camino" ('A Rapist In Your Path') as a response to neo-nationalist discourses framing "gender" as the enemy. Authored by the new co-editors of the journal Gender and Language, the essay considers how research on language, gender, and sexuality continues to matter in our current age of mediatized 21st century politics. A fuller version of the essay was published in Gender and Language 14.1 (2020) under the title "Feminist Refusal Meets Enmity."
Language in Society, 2019
The rise of India’s global economy has reinforced a perception of English as a language of sexual... more The rise of India’s global economy has reinforced a perception of English as a language of sexual modernity within the expanding middle classes. This article explores this perception in the multilingual humor of Hindi-speaking Delhi youth marginalized for sexual and gender difference. Their joking routines feature the Sikh Sardarji, a longstanding ethnic figure often caricatured as circulating in modernity but lacking the English competence to understand modernity’s semiotics. Reflective of the economic restructuring that ushered in the millennium, the humor supports a normative progress narrative that prioritizes an ethnically unmarked urban middle class. At the same time, the lesbian, bisexual, and transgender youth who tell these jokes—still criminalized under Section 377 when this fieldwork was conducted—shift this narrative by positioning sexual knowledge at modernity’s forefront. The analysis reveals how sexual modernity—here viewed as constituted in everyday interaction through competing configurations of place, time, and personhood—relies on normativity even while defining itself against it. (Chronotope, ethnic humor, formulaic jokes, globalization, Hindi-English, Hinglish, media, middle class, normativity, sexual modernity, temporality)
Language in Society, 2019
This article introduces a special journal issue on the topic of language and normativity, publish... more This article introduces a special journal issue on the topic of language and normativity, published August 2019 in Language in Society. Born from a panel at the ninth biannual meeting of the International Gender and Language Association in Hong Kong, the special issue seeks to stimulate academic discussion on the role of normativity and antinormativity in language, gender, and sexuality research in response to a series of critical interventions in cultural studies regarding some of the tenets underpinning queer theory (see Wiegman 2012; Penney 2014; Wiegman & Wilson 2015). The introduction suggests that sociolinguistics—with its focus on situated interpretations of social practice—has much to contribute, both theoretically and empirically, to these debates within cultural studies.
New World Publication, Delhi, 2023
Ved Prakash Vatuk is a bilingual protest poet whose publications in Hindi and English draw from h... more Ved Prakash Vatuk is a bilingual protest poet whose publications in Hindi and English draw from his experiences moving between India and the United States. Lifelong Search for Home is the first anthology focused exclusively on the poems Vatuk has written in English, bringing together seven now out-of-print volumes of poetry published by Indian and US publishers between 1969 and 2005. For English readers, the poetry republished in this anthology gives a glimpse into the mind and work of one of the most respected Hindi poets in contemporary India. For readers interested in Vatuk’s Hindi poetry, the anthology is essential reading for understanding the sociopolitical critique that lies behind his broader oeuvre. Poetry and politics are not normally encountered together, but for Vatuk, a people’s poet in search of belonging, they are inseparable.
Oxford University Press, 2021
The Oxford Handbook of Language and Sexuality, with a hard-copy publication date of 2025, is the ... more The Oxford Handbook of Language and Sexuality, with a hard-copy publication date of 2025, is the first handbook exclusively devoted to research in language and sexuality. The commissioned chapters included in the Table of Contents, available here, together put forth a broad understanding of sexuality, offering detailed discussions of the place of language in the mutually constituted ideologies, desires, practices, and identities that make up sexual systems. 62 chapters are now available for viewing at Oxford Handbooks Online: https://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190212926.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780190212926
Archana Prakashan, 2009
This volume, published in honor of the Indian poet, folklorist, essayist, and linguist Ved Prakas... more This volume, published in honor of the Indian poet, folklorist, essayist, and linguist Ved Prakash Vatuk, showcases the work of prominent scholars who have been influenced by Vatuk’s writings on inequality and social justice in India and across the Indian diaspora. The volume brings together anthropologists, economists, literary critics, political scientists, and sociologists to interrogate systems of social hierarchy within diverse global contexts. The essays confront the silencing of politically vulnerable populations by national and international organizations, the dislocations suffered by migrating peoples, the exclusions of religion, class, caste, and gender, discriminatory employment practices, and the intensification of social inequities through new forms of global capital. Contributors include Janet Lippman Abu-Lughod, Imtiaz Ahmad, Ashok Bardhan, Susham Bedi, Gerald Berreman, James Freeman, Donna Goldstein, Kira Hall, Deana Heath, Nguyen Dinh Huu, Maharaj Kaul, Surinder Kumar, Sharat G. Lin, Chandana Mathur, Indu Prakash Pandey, Vijay Prashad, Harish Puri, Raka Ray, Jagdish Sharma, Nitasha Sharma, and Sohan Sharma.
Archana Prakashan, 2007
This volume brings together eighteen academic essays authored by the Indian scholar Dr. Ved Praka... more This volume brings together eighteen academic essays authored by the Indian scholar Dr. Ved Prakash Vatuk—folklorist, linguist, essayist, and author of over thirty internationally recognized volumes of political poetry. The essays extend Vatuk's understanding of the intimate relationship between folklore studies, linguistics, and political activism, covering topics such as metrical patterning in Hindi folk songs, the place of riddles in the development of folklore studies, the social coordinates of social customs such as gift exchange, and the interrelationship between language and community.
Oxford University Press, 1997
From back cover: "This pioneering collection of previously unpublished articles on lesbian, gay, ... more From back cover: "This pioneering collection of previously unpublished articles on lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender language combines queer theory and feminist theory with the latest thinking on language and gender. The book expands the field well beyond the study of "gay slang" to consider gay dialects (such as Polari in England), early modern discourse on gay practices, and late twentieth-century descriptions of homosexuality. These essays examine the conversational patterns of queer speakers in a wide variety of settings, from women's friendship groups to university rap groups and electronic mail postings.Taking a global--rather than regional--approach, the contributors herein study the language usage of sexually liminal communities in a variety of linguistic and cultural contexts, such as lesbian speakers of American Sign Language, Japanese gay male couples, Hindi-speaking hijras (eunuchs) in North India, Hausa-speaking 'yan daudu (feminine men) in Nigeria, and French and Yiddish gay groups. The most accessible and diverse collection of its kind, Queerly Phrased: Language, Gender, and Sexuality sets a new standard in the study of language's impact on the construction of sexuality."
Routledge, 1995
From back cover: "Gender Articulated is a groundbreaking work of sociolinguistics that forges new... more From back cover: "Gender Articulated is a groundbreaking work of sociolinguistics that forges new connections between language-related fields and feminist theory. Refuting apolitical, essentialist perspectives on language and gender, the essays presented here examine a range of cultures, languages and settings. They explicitly connect feminist theory to language research. Some of the most distinguished scholars working in the field of language and gender today discuss such topics as Japanese women's appropriation of "men's language," the literary representation of lesbian discourse, the silencing of women on the Internet, cultural mediation and Spanish use at New Mexican weddings and the uses of silence in the Anita Hill-Clarence Thomas hearings."
Berkeley Women and Language Group, UC Berkeley, 1992
This is Volume 1 of the Proceedings of the Second Berkeley Women and Language Conference (edited ... more This is Volume 1 of the Proceedings of the Second Berkeley Women and Language Conference (edited by Hall, Bucholtz, and Moonwomon), which took place at UC Berkeley during the Spring of 1992. Many of the articles that appear in these Proceedings were later developed into what are now considered classics in the field of language, gender, and sexuality. Volume 1 features articles by Jenny Cook-Gumperz, Penny Eckert and Sally McConnell-Ginet, Susan Ehrlich and Ruth King, Susan Ervin-Tripp, Michele Foster, Alice Freed, Susan Gal, D. Letticia Galindo and Maria Dolores Gonzales Velasquez, Marjorie Harness Goodwin, Kira Hall, Heidi Hamilton, Susan Herring, Leanne Hinton, and Deborah James and Sandra Clarke, among many others. Volume 1 also includes a short preface by Mary Bucholtz.
Berkeley Women and Language Group, UC Berkeley, 1992
This is Volume 2 of the Proceedings of the Second Berkeley Women and Language Conference (edited ... more This is Volume 2 of the Proceedings of the Second Berkeley Women and Language Conference (edited by Hall, Bucholtz, and Moonwomon), which took place at UC Berkeley during the Spring of 1992. Many of the articles that appear in these Proceedings were later developed into what are now considered classics in the field of language, gender, and sexuality. Volume 2 features articles by Marianne LaFrance, Robin Tolmach Lakoff, Bonnie McElhinny, Norma Mendoza-Denton, Miriam Meyerhof, Elinor Ochs and Carolyn Taylor, Shigeko Okamoto, Deborah Schiffrin, Amy Sheldon, Janet Smith, Dale Spender, Mary Talbot, and Senta Troemel-Ploetz, among many others.
Gender and Language
This thirty-year retrospective on language, gender and sexuality research, launched in anticipati... more This thirty-year retrospective on language, gender and sexuality research, launched in anticipation of the thirtieth anniversary of the 1992 Berkeley Women and Language Conference, showcases essays by luminaries who presented papers at the conference as well as allied scholars who have taken the field in new directions. Revitalising a tradition set out by the First Berkeley Women and Language Conference in 1985, the four biennial Berkeley conferences held in the 1990s led to the establishment of the International Gender and Language Association and subsequently of the journal Gender and Language, contributing to the field’s institutionalisation and its current panglobal character. Retrospective essays addressing the themes of Politics, Practice, Intersectionality and Place will be published across four issues of the journal in 2021. In this third issue on the theme of intersectionality, Mel Y. Chen revisits the melancholy they experienced in their training as a linguist pursuing tra...
Gender and Language, 2021
This fourth and final issue of the 2021 four-part Theme Series "Thirty-year Retrospective on Lang... more This fourth and final issue of the 2021 four-part Theme Series "Thirty-year Retrospective on Language, Gender and Sexuality Research" shows how studies of language, gender and sexuality may be enlivened by seriously engaging with the notion of place – understood as one’s geographical location, locus of enunciation and/or position within the field. Bonnie S. McElhinny and María Amelia Viteri scrutinise lingering effects of colonialism and advocate for hope as a central affective dimension of decolonial practice. Drawing upon Black feminisms, Busi Makoni discusses the embodiment of refusal to racialised forms of patriarchy and Sonja L. Lanehart underlines the importance of bringing African American Women’s Language more centrally into the field’s remit. The next three essays move their foci to specific regions: Pia Pichler reflects on the entanglement of place, race and intersectionality in the UK; Janet S. Shibamoto-Smith warns against the dangers of reifying essentialised categories in Japanese language and gender research; Fatima Sadiqi criticises the underrepresentation of North Africa in the field by reviewing the emergence and resilience of feminist linguistics in the region. The two final essays highlight the importance of sociolinguistic activism and the urgent need of moving beyond the field’s Global North emphasis. Amiena Peck discusses the power of digital activism and the way it has reignited her passion for engaged scholarship. Ana Cristina Ostermann advocates for micro-interactional analysis as a method for illuminating Southern epistemologies of gender and sexuality. The theme series also pays tribute to significant scholars present at the 1992 Berkeley Women and Language Conference who are no longer with us; in this issue, Rusty Barrett and Robin Queen offer a lively account of the life and work of linguist and novelist Anna Livia. Read the entire issue at https://journal.equinoxpub.com/GL
Gender and Language, 2021
This third issue of the 2021 four-part Theme Series "Thirty-year Retrospective on Language, Gende... more This third issue of the 2021 four-part Theme Series "Thirty-year Retrospective on Language, Gender and Sexuality Research" features seven essays focused on the theme of intersectionality by prominent scholars in the field. Mel Y. Chen revisits the melancholy they experienced in their training as a linguist pursuing transdisciplinarity in the 1990s to highlight the broader role played by affective politics in scholarship, while Michèle Foster narrates key incidents in her life that shaped her work giving voice to Black women’s linguistic knowledge and practices. Mary Bucholtz and deandre miles-hercules, Lal Zimman and Susan Ehrlich offer incisive critiques of the field’s limits, drawing on their own positionalities to move the study of language, gender and sexuality beyond its whiteness and cis-centredness. Tommaso M. Milani thinks through the affective loading of the term ‘queer’ to set out the importance of anger and discomfort in building broader, intersectional alliances in the struggle for social justice. The theme series also pays tribute to significant scholars present at the 1992 Berkeley conference who are no longer with us; in this issue, María Dolores Gonzales offers a moving personal account of the life, work and activism of Chicana sociolinguist D. Letticia Galindo.
Gender and Language, 2021
This second issue of the 2021 four-part Theme Series "Thirty-year Retrospective on Language, Gend... more This second issue of the 2021 four-part Theme Series "Thirty-year Retrospective on Language, Gender and Sexuality Research" features seven essays focused on the theme of practice by prominent scholars in the field. Deborah Tannen, Penelope Eckert, Marjorie Harness Goodwin, and Elinor Ochs & Tamar Kremer-Sadlik show how the field’s attention to the micro-details of situated, highly contextualised interaction offers a privileged vantage point for seeing how gender, power and other dimensions of social life emerge as mundane daily actions unfold. Shigeko Okamoto and Marcyliena H. Morgan respectively review how research on the language practices of Japanese women and African American women have been formative to the field while also describing the critical necessity of more attention to these areas moving forward. The theme series also pays tribute to significant scholars present at the 1992 Berkeley conference who are no longer with us; in this issue, Heidi E. Hamilton pays homage to the groundbreaking work of Deborah Schiffrin.
Gender and Language, 2021
The thirty-year retrospective on language, gender and sexuality research, launched in anticipatio... more The thirty-year retrospective on language, gender and sexuality research, launched in anticipation of the thirtieth anniversary of the 1992 Berkeley Women and Language Conference, showcases essays by luminaries who presented papers at the conference as well as allied scholars who have taken the field in new directions. Revitalising a tradition set out by the First Berkeley Women and Language Conference in 1985, the four biennial Berkeley conferences held in the 1990s led to the establishment of the International Gender and Language Association and subsequently of the journal Gender and Language, contributing to the field’s institutionalisation and its current pan-global character. Retrospective essays addressing the themes of Politics, Practice, Intersectionality and Place will be published across four issues of the journal in 2021. In this inaugural issue on politics, Robin Lakoff, Susan Gal and Alice Freed analyse the current political scenario from their feminist linguistic lenses, while Sally McConnell-Ginet and Norma Mendoza-Denton share more personal views of the politics involved in doing research on language, gender and sexuality. The theme series also pays tribute to significant scholars present at the 1992 Berkeley conference who are no longer with us; in this issue, Amy Kyratzis pays homage to the groundbreaking work of Susan Ervin-Tripp.
Language in Society, 2019
This special issue was born out of a conversation initiated at a panel organized by two of us at ... more This special issue was born out of a conversation initiated at a panel organized by two of us at the ninth biannual meeting of the International Gender and Language Association (IGALA), held at City University of Hong Kong in May 2016. The principal goal of the panel was to stimulate an academic discussion on the role of normativity and antinormativity in language, gender, and sexuality research in response to a series of critical interventions in cultural studies regarding some of the tenets underpinning queer theory (see Wiegman 2012; Penney 2014; Wiegman & Wilson 2015). It was our belief that sociolinguistics—with its focus on situated interpretations of social practice—has much to contribute, both theoretically and empirically, to these debates within cultural studies. This special issue is an initial attempt at articulating what such a contribution would be.
Journal of Sociolinguistics, 2008
This special issue in Journal of Sociolinguistics on the broad interdisciplinary coalition of soc... more This special issue in Journal of Sociolinguistics on the broad interdisciplinary coalition of sociocultural linguistics includes essays by Mary Bucholtz and Kira Hall, Kathryn Woolard, Penelope Eckert, Jack Sidnell, and Monica Heller, followed by commentaries by Ben Rampton and John J. Gumperz & Jenny Cook-Gumperz.
The contributors to this special colloquium, building on Hall, Goldstein, and Ingram (2016), exam... more The contributors to this special colloquium, building on Hall, Goldstein, and Ingram (2016), examine the ways that Trump’s semiotic displays on the campaign trail inform the material policies of the early Trump administration. Taken together, the articles trace the intensification of white racism as Trump’s rhetoric of patriotic nationalism becomes government. The 7 colloquium articles are authored by Donna M. Goldstein and Kira Hall, Michael Silverstein, Stefka Hristova, Norma Mendoza-Denton, Jeff Maskovsky, L. Kaifa Roland, and Nancy Scheper-Hughes.
Paper presented at Signification, Circulation, Emanations Conference, Chicago , 2024
"Masking" refers to the linguistic and other semiotic practices enacted by autistic individuals i... more "Masking" refers to the linguistic and other semiotic practices enacted by autistic individuals in order to hide their autistic traits and "pass" as neurotypical. Such practices, which may include the deliberate study of body language or the use of memorized scripted language, demonstrate a keen metapragmatic awareness of the indexical, cultural, and identity-linked meanings behind behaviors commonly understood to be purely cognitive reflex and a meaningless display of symptomology. This paper revisits Silverstein's (2004, 2014, 2023) engagement with Goffman's interaction order (1967, 1983) in order to understand the indexical complexity of autistic masking. We examine the specific phenomenon of the autistic adoption of "foreign" accents, or language varieties typically associated with chronotopes other than the individual's place of origin. Autistic individuals who see themselves as having adopted foreign accents, interviewed as part of a broader ongoing study at the University of Colorado Boulder on accents in autism, articulate a complex and sometimes strained relationship with the indexical linkages that neurotypical speakers often experience as "natural" and "self-evident." By importing widely circulating semiotic bundles, whether practiced interaction rituals or appropriated foreign accents, autistic individuals come to successfully navigate conversations where they might otherwise struggle with the turn-by-turn interaction order. This thereby constitutes autistic masking as a higher indexical order (Silverstein 2003) -- one in which ideologically driven indexical connections are taken up as interactional resources to mask an autistic neurotype.
Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 2004
We are pleased to announce the Full Program for SLA 2022. Thrice-postponed since its originally s... more We are pleased to announce the Full Program for SLA 2022. Thrice-postponed since its originally scheduled date in 2020, the Society for Linguistic Anthropology Spring Conference will be held at the Embassy Suites in Boulder, Colorado and on the virtual platform Gather.town during April 7-9, 2022, with pre-conference plenaries occurring in both locations on Wednesday, April 6. The conference will feature 500+ presentations from leading and emerging scholars of language in social life, including 6 keynotes and 80+ panels, roundtables, workshops, and poster sessions. The Full Program can be found at our official SLA 2022 Trello link: https://trello.com/b/XePCVlsK. You may register for the conference at this link: https://bit.ly/SLA2022Registrations. Late-breaking session proposals and poster proposals accepted until March 14. Please see the associated pdf file for additional information. Questions and concerns about the conference can be sent to SLABoulder@gmail.com.
Society for Linguistic Anthropology, 2022
We are now within the one-week countdown to the SLA 2022 Updates and New Submissions deadline of ... more We are now within the one-week countdown to the SLA 2022 Updates and New Submissions deadline of Monday, February 14. Please join our keynotes Letícia Cesarino, Michel DeGraff, Angela Reyes, and Virginia Zavala in Boulder on April 7-9 and/or in our virtual space on Gather to participate in an exciting line-up of 450+ panels, roundtables, workshops, papers, and posters. Full details about the in-person and virtual tracks of the conference can be accessed at our Society for Linguistic Anthropology website: http://linguisticanthropology.org/blog/meetings/2022-spring-conference-society-linguistic-anthropology/. Please contact the conference organizers SLABoulder@gmail.com if you have any questions. We hope to see you on April 7!
Society for Linguistic Anthropology
Due to ongoing Covid-19 concerns, the Society for Linguistic Anthropology Executive Board has ann... more Due to ongoing Covid-19 concerns, the Society for Linguistic Anthropology Executive Board has announced another shift in the date of the SLA conference to April 7-9, 2022. The conference will be held in Boulder, Colorado for all those able to attend in person and will also offer a virtual component, sponsored by the SLA Language & Social Justice Committee, for those wanting to participate from other locations. Please see attached letter for full details, as well as our Trello site at https://trello.com/b/WDRouMFF. In October 2021, the SLA conference committee will be inviting contributors to update their panels and papers and also accepting new submissions for both the in-person and virtual components, so watch this space.
The Society for Linguistic Anthropology (SLA), in partnership with CU Boulder’s program for Cultu... more The Society for Linguistic Anthropology (SLA), in partnership with CU Boulder’s program for Culture, Language, and Social Practice (CLASP), will host the SLA 2022 Spring Conference at the Hiltons on Canyon in Boulder, Colorado. Because of Covid-19, this conference was postponed from the original date of April 2-5, 2020. Keynote speakers are Leticia Cesarino, Michel DeGraff, Angela Reyes, and Virginia Zavala. The conference theme is "Future Imperfect: Language in Times of Crisis and Hope." We expect to send out a Call for Papers for new and revised panels, papers, roundtables, and posters in November 2021. Please see updated news about conference at this link: https://www.academia.edu/44975492/2021_SLA_Meeting_Moved_to_April_7_9_2022