Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-gtxcr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-16T04:59:06.568Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

16 - Posthumanism and Its Implications for Discourse Studies

from Part III - Discourse Materialities and Embodiment

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 September 2020

By
Gavin Lamb  and
Christina Higgins
Edited by
Anna De Fina  and
Alexandra Georgakopoulou
Anna De Fina
Affiliation:
Georgetown University, Washington DC
Alexandra Georgakopoulou
Affiliation:
King's College London
Get access

Summary

This chapter maps the emerging conceptual terrain of posthumanism and its relevance for discourse studies, with a particular focus on sociolinguistics and applied linguistics work. Posthumanism is a label applied to a range of theoretical and methodological approaches across the humanities and social sciences that are calling into question dominant assumptions generated by Western Enlightenment thinking about the human by giving greater consideration to the role of material objects, animals and the environment in understanding the social world. Posthumanism thus considers the implications of the central role of materialism in our understandings of human agency, language, cognition and society. For discourse studies, a turn to posthumanism requires us to examine the role of discourse in how humans become entangled with the material world through their everyday embodied interactions with objects, artifacts, technologies, plants, animals, and the built and natural environment. Through embracing an activity-oriented perspective toward these human–nonhuman entanglements, the implications are that we must rethink modernist categorical boundaries between subject/object, human/nonhuman and society/nature, both within metadiscourses about these dichotomies and through a more microanalytic lens in the analysis of text and talk.

Keywords

Posthumanismnew materialismnexus analysisassemblageActor-Network-Theoryspatialityanimals (and communication)ontologyembodiment
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Handbook of Discourse Studies , pp. 350 - 370
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Further Reading

This article offers a reframing of “competence” by examining how multilingual STEM scholars engage in their work through linguistic, embodied and material resources. Building on conceptual insights from new materialism and Actor-Network theory, it explores some of the methodological implications of posthumanist thinking for discourse analysts.

In dialogue with emerging posthumanist multispecies studies, this ethnography investigates the semiotic entanglements of Ecuadorian Quichua-speaking Runa with the plants, animals and ecosystems they interact with in the Amazon. In challenging anthropocentric thinking about language, discourse and representation, the book offers an innovative understanding of semiosis as not only human but an emergent property of all living beings or “selves.”

This book offers an in-depth introduction to Actor-Network theory from one of the key figures in its development. Divided into two parts, it first provides an overview of the theoretical influences motivating ANT’s call for a shift from a “sociology of the social” to a “sociology of associations.” The second part guides readers through the methodological principles underpinning ANT.

This book introduces posthumanism to the field of applied linguistics by arguing against the popular conception that language is the key to human exceptionalism. Pennycook dismantles this logic by drawing attention to the embodied, material and distributed nature of language.

This book offers an introduction to nexus analysis and remains a cutting-edge example of a posthumanist orientation to ethnographic discourse analysis. The method is illustrated through an investigation of how early internet communication mediated Alaska Natives’ access to various institutional assemblages in the 1980s. The appendix of the book further summarizes the key principles of nexus analysis in a highly useful “field guide” for examining posthumanist actor-networks and assemblages.

Canagarajah, S. (2018). Materializing “Competence”: Perspectives from International STEM Scholars. Modern Language Journal 102(2): 268–91.Google Scholar
Kohn, E. (2013). How Forests Think: Toward an Anthropology beyond the Human. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Latour, B. (2005). Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Pennycook, A. (2017). Posthumanist Applied Linguistics. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Scollon, S. W. (2004). Nexus Analysis: Discourse and the Emerging Internet. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar

References

Alexander, R. and Stibbe, A. (2014). From the Analysis of Ecological Discourse to the Ecological Analysis of Discourse. Language Sciences 41: 104–10.Google Scholar
Appadurai, A. (2015). Mediants, Materiality, Normativity. Public Culture 27(276): 221–37.Google Scholar
Barad, K. (2003). Posthumanist Performativity: Toward an Understanding of How Matter Comes to Matter. Signs 28(3): 801–31.Google Scholar
Bennett, J. (2009). Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Bennett, J. (2010). A Vitalist Stopover on the Way to a New Materialism. In Coole, D. and Frost, S. (eds.) New Materialisms: Ontology, Agency, and Politics. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Bonilla, Y. and Rosa, J. (2015). #Ferguson: Digital Protest, Hashtag Ethnography, and the Racial Politics of Social Media in the United States. American Ethnologist 42(1): 4–17.Google Scholar
Bucholtz, M. and Hall, K. (2016). Embodied Sociolinguistics. In Coupland, N. (ed.) Sociolinguistics: Theoretical Debates. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 173–97.Google Scholar
Callon, M. (1984). Some Elements of a Sociology of Translation: Domestication of the Scallops and the Fishermen of St Brieuc Bay. Sociological Review 32: 196–233.Google Scholar
Canagarajah, A. S. (2018). Materializing “Competence”: Perspectives from International STEM Scholars. Modern Language Journal 102(2): 1–24.Google Scholar
Chakrabarty, D. (2000). Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Coole, D. and Frost, S. (2010). New Materialisms: Ontology, Agency, and Politics. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F. (1987). A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Minneapolis/St Paul: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Fairclough, N. (1989). Language and Power. London/New York: Longman.Google Scholar
Foucault, M. ([1966] 1970). The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences, trans. by Smith, A. M. S.. New York: Vintage Books.Google Scholar
Gee, J. P. (2015). Discourse, Small d, Big D. In Tracy, K., Ilie, C. and Sandel, T. L. (eds.) The International Encyclopedia of Language and Social Interaction. Boston, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. 418–22.Google Scholar
Giddens, A. (1976). New Rules of Sociological Method. London: Hutchinson.Google Scholar
Goodwin, C. (2000). Action and Embodiment within Situated Human Interaction. Journal of Pragmatics 32: 1489–522.Google Scholar
Gumperz, J. J. (1982). Discourse Strategies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Higgins, C. and Ikeda, M. (2019). The Materialization of Language in Tourism Networks. Applied Linguistics Review. https://doi.org/10.1515/applirev-2019-0100Google Scholar
Iedema, R. (2001). Resemiotization. Semiotica 137(1/4): 23–39.Google Scholar
Jaworski, A. and Thurlow, C. (eds.) (2010). Semiotic Landscapes: Language, Image, Space. London: Continuum.Google Scholar
Jones, R. H. (2009). Dancing, Skating, and Sex: Action and Text in the Digital Age. Journal of Applied Linguistics 6(3): 283–302.Google Scholar
Jones, R. H. (2017). Surveillant Landscapes. Linguistic Landscape 3(2): 149–86.Google Scholar
Jones, R. H. (2018). Messy Creativity. Language Sciences 65: 82–6.Google Scholar
Kell, C. (2015). “Making People Happen”: Materiality and Movement in Meaning-Making Trajectories. Social Semiotics 25(4): 423–45.Google Scholar
Kirksey, S. E. and Helmreich, S. (2010). The Emergence of Multispecies Ethnography. Cultural Anthropology 25(4): 545–76.Google Scholar
Kohn, E. (2007). How Dogs Dream: Amazonian Natures and the Politics of Transspecies Engagement. American Ethnologist 34(1): 3–24.Google Scholar
Lamb, G. (2019). Towards a Green Applied Linguistics in the Anthropocene: Human–Sea Turtle Semiotic Assemblages in Hawai’i. Applied Linguistics. https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/amz046Google Scholar
Latour, B. (1987). Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers through Society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Latour, B. (1990). Technology Is Society Made Durable. Sociological Review 38 (supplement): 103–31.Google Scholar
Latour, B. (1993/2012). We Have Never Been Modern. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Latour, B. (2005). Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network Theory. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Law, J. (2004). After Method: Mess in Social Science Research. New York: Psychology Press.Google Scholar
Law, J. and Mol, A. (2008). The Actor-Enacted: Cumbrian Sheep in 2001. In Knappett, C. and Malafouris, L. (eds.) Material Agency. Dusseldorf: Springer. 57–77.Google Scholar
Lou, J. (2016). The Linguistic Landscape of Chinatown: A Sociolinguistic Ethnography. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.Google Scholar
Mondada, L. (2018). The Multimodal Interactional Organization of Tasting: Practices of Tasting Cheese in Gourmet Shops. Discourse Studies 20(6): 743–69.Google Scholar
Norris, S. (2004). Analyzing Multimodal Interaction: A Methodological Framework. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Norris, S. (2012). Teaching Touch/Response-Feel: A First Step to an Analysis of Touch from an (Inter)active Perspective. In Norris, S. (ed.) Multimodality in Practice: Investigating Theory-in-Practice-through-Methodology. New York: Routledge. 7–19.Google Scholar
Norris, S. and Jones, R. (2005). Discourse in Action: Introducing Mediated Discourse Analysis. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Pennycook, A. (2018). Posthumanist Applied Linguistics. Applied Linguistics 39(4): 445–61.Google Scholar
Pennycook, A. and Otsuji, E. (2015). Metrolingualism: Language in the City. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Pietikäinen, S. (2015). Multilingual Dynamics in Sámiland: Rhizomatic Discourses on Changing Language. International Journal of Bilingualism 19(2): 206–25.Google Scholar
Ramanathan, V. (2006). Of Texts AND Translations AND Rhizomes: Postcolonial Anxieties AND Deracinations AND Knowledge Constructions. Critical Inquiry in Language Studies 3(4): 223–44.Google Scholar
Ren, C. (2011). Non-human Agency, Radical Ontology and Tourism Realities. Annals of Tourism Research 38(3): 858–81.Google Scholar
Scollon, R. (2002). Mediated Discourse: The Nexus of Practice. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Scollon, R. (2008). Discourse Itineraries: Nine Processes of Resemiotization. In Bhatia, V., Flowerdew, J. and Jones, R. (eds.) Advances in Discourse Studies. London: Routledge. 233–44.Google Scholar
Scollon, R. and Scollon, S. W. (2003). Discourses in Place: Language in the Material World. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Shiri, S. (2015). Co-constructing Dissent in the Transient Linguistic Landscape: Multilingual Protest Signs of the Tunisian Revolution. In Rubdy, R. and Said, S. B. (eds.) Conflict, Exclusion and Dissent in the Linguistic Landscape: Language and Globalization. London: Palgrave Macmillan. 239–59.Google Scholar
Thrift, N. (2008). Non-representational Theory: Space, Politics, Affect. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Thurlow, C. (2016). Queering Critical Discourse Studies or/and Performing “Post-Class” Ideologies. Critical Discourse Studies 13(5): 485–514.Google Scholar
Thurlow, C. and Jaworski, A. (2014). “Two Hundred Ninety-Four”: Remediation and Multimodal Performance in Tourist Placemaking. Journal of Sociolinguistics 18(4): 459–94.Google Scholar
Whatmore, S. (2006). Materialist Returns: Practising Cultural Geography in and for a More-than-Human World. Cultural Geographies 13(4): 600–9.Google Scholar
Zhu, Hua, Li, Wei, and Lyons, A. (2017). Polish Shop(ping) as Translanguaging Space. Social Semiotics 27(4): 411–33.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×