Accounting for language performance: Irrational production, objective world.
Item
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Title
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Accounting for language performance: Irrational production, objective world.
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Identifier
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AAI9808025
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identifier
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9808025
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Creator
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Yanow, Theodore Alexander.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Lindsay Churchill
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Date
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1997
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Sociology, Theory and Methods | Language, Modern | Anthropology, Cultural
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Abstract
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This thesis views language as constitutionally tied to social context and social practice and their material constraints. In normal theory language is received pattern, constituted on a neurological basis and/or through some process of privatization, rather than through continuing social practice in an objective sense. In this thesis what is examined are structures actively constructed against resistances, the evidence for which is found in falsification or irrational use. I develop tools for indicating real intention and activity on the part of concretely and objectively constrained social actors who are deemed to be in some kind of "error", their performances not being in conformity to standards of truth or logic or regularity, including the grammatical. Explanatory frameworks and models for language that is produced, faulty or not, are developed. I attempt the construction of and utilization of a model which is predictive of performance, if only in a weak sense, at the same time dealing with language which is idiosyncratic as well as ordinary. What is presented as explanation are the resistances which make it unlikely that certain products will appear unscathed. We model members' work with shifter, indexical and deitic functions, which overlap theoretically. The data examined closely are from response protocols to the Three Mile Island incident and Field Research protocols from North Central Florida in the form of notes and recorded interviews. (Different relevant data include historical sources and voting behavior.) On the basis of the above I suggest a new anatomy for language treatment.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
