Roman Jakobson Symposium 2023

THE TOTAL LINGUISTIC FACT: STRUCTURE, PRACTICE, IDEOLOGY

Papers celebrating the work and memory of Michael Silverstein

The Total Linguistic Fact will be the first of three linked conferences across three universities celebrating the work and memory of Michael Silverstein. The Harvard conference will focus on Silverstein’s pioneering early work from the late 1960s until the mid-1980s, when he began to develop his signature ideas about indexicality and to integrate linguistic structure, practice, and ideology into a comprehensive theory of language-in-culture. It was during this formative period that Silverstein trained in linguistics at Harvard with Roman Jakobson, Einar Haugen, Calvert Watkins, and Jerzy Kuryłowicz; immersed himself the linguistic and anthropological materials of Whitney, Boas, Sapir, and Whorf; carried out research among the speakers of Wasco-Wishram Chinookan (known natively as Kiksht) and Worora; and began his professional career as an anthropologist. From this mix, Silverstein made field-changing contributions to syntax, historical linguistics, and sociolinguistics/linguistic anthropology and introduced the now-foundational concepts of metapragmatics and linguistic ideology.

Papers by:

· Asif Agha, University of Pennsylvania 

· Christopher Ball, University of Notre Dame 

· Erin Debenport, University of California, Los Angeles 

· Penelope Eckert, Stanford University 

· Luke Fleming, University of Montreal 

· Susan Gal, The University of Chicago 

· John Haviland, University of California, San Diego

· Judith Irvine, University of Michigan 

· John Lucy, The University of Chicago

· Hannah McElgunn, Queen’s University

· Robert Moore, The University of Pennsylvania 

· Maria Polinsky, The University of Maryland, College Park