Language and Social Signs

Catalog description

Explores a tradition of anthropological inquiry that builds an account of language as a system of socially intelligible signs. Often referred to as semiotics, this class examines how signs and language become the conduits for thinking about and understanding our relationship with the world, our shared social and political ecologies, and how our interpretation of such signs is expressive of larger structures that lie inside of us. Topics and concepts for exploration include the relationship between language, signs, and symbols; structuralism and poststructuralism; performativity and performance; practice and action; ontology and metaphysics; discourse and discursive agency; and speech and communicative rationality.