Performative Linguistic Space

This volume offers ethnographic accounts of the processes through which space can promote or hinder particular types of utterances. Space coaxes, muffles, or silences utterances, which in turn shapes space. The chapters problematize wider, historically-constructed relationships between space and language which are often taken for granted. Inspired by approaches and theoretical insights from deaf studies, sign linguistics, deaf anthropology, and cultural geography, fields in which discussions about language are inextricably linked to concepts of space, the contributors interrogate how physical and imagined spaces can coax and promote utterances, or silence and hinder them. Chapters cover a diverse range of what is referred to as "performative linguistic space": study-abroad space, English-medium classroom space, the virtual space of online remote teaching, deaf and hearing spaces, and the "safe and brave" space of critiquing volunteer tourism. In exploring performative linguistic space, where space and linguistic practices are co-constructed in diverse contexts, this volume adds to linguistic anthropological debates that focus on language ideologies through a new consideration of the effects of spacing on the politics of language.