What we call “poetics” here is most relevant, but not exclusively restricted, to linguistic poetics articulated by Roman Jakobson (1960), and a subsequent discipline developed under the rubric of “ethnopoetics” (Hymes,... [ view full abstract ]
What we call “poetics” here is most relevant, but not exclusively restricted, to linguistic poetics articulated by Roman Jakobson (1960), and a subsequent discipline developed under the rubric of “ethnopoetics” (Hymes, 1981, 1996). Building on these precursors, the purpose of the present colloquium is to explore the potential of poetic “performance” by examining varied levels of repetition, parallelism, and equivalence in discourse. As such, it further encompasses recent attempts to conceive gestural/nonverbal elements as inherent aspects of poetics (McNeill, 1992, 2005), here re-conceived as “plurimodality.”
While Multimodal analysis is usually geared toward revealing the interplay among several modes (or media) through an artifact or performance, such an analysis tends to focus on ongoing achievements in situ, largely disregarding underlying cultural preferences and assumptions. Attention to cultural artifacts and performance—not only speaking, but dressing, dancing, musicking, and so forth—in a multimodal analysis is often missing and necessary in giving credit to community-based poetic practice. This awareness has urged us to adopt the term “plurimodality,” retaining the possibility of how and what elements of cultural performance could not only be variables, but also naturalized in poetic performance.
With this tenet in mind, we will reconsider poetic performance—including conceptual, somatic, and physical phenomena—from a holistic perspective (cf. Bauman & Briggs 1990, Hanks 1991) with a clear recognition that poetics and performance are mutually constructive through discursive recursivity, or “habitus” (Bourdieu 1991). The explicit and implicit propensities of poetic performance are not only an important means of socializing children/learners/novices into fully functional social members (cf. Duranti, Ochs, and Schieffelin 2011), but also crucial parameters in gauging social success/failure and inequality (e.g., Michaels 1981; Blommaert 2006) above/below the level of consciousness.
This colloquium is organized to examine and reveal the sources and consequences of poetic performance, ranging from highly ritualized sacred performances (Takekuro, Asai, Kajimaru), teacher-student or expert-novice exchanges in educational institutions (Enomoto), specialized performance on TV and radio programs (Furukawa, Kataoka), to even casual verbal exchanges and encounters (Yamaguchi). We would like to show how poeticity permeates every nook and cranny of social life, and focus on how it affects our experiences and potential.
