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Part of
Consensus and Dissent: Negotiating Emotion in the Public Space
Edited by Anne Storch
[Culture and Language Use 19] 2017
► pp. 193–212

Chapter 10
Emotional Edgelands

Even though terminologies for emotions and interior states can be, in principle in any given field context, elicited and listed as linguistic data, these extracted terminologies are not necessarily used. Everyday communication practices, storytelling and historical narration can be decidedly void of epressions of emotions, for various reasons: emotions can be a discursive taboo, they may be communicated only in specific environments, and speaking about them – using emotional language – might be linked to particular contexts and environments (which might not be given in field settings). Therefore, it makes sense to ask about the indexicality of emotional talk and the semiotics of interiority. In Nigerian Jukun-speaking communities, which are in the focus of this contribution, emotional performances and the use of linguistic devices that help to express interior states are closely linked to the semioticization of marginality, the construction of identity concepts and the negotiation of historical experiences. Everyday emotional operations, in turn, are treated in different ways – in silent accounts, through another language, or simply not at all.

Keywords: Jukun, semiotics of marginalization, sadness, gender, secrecy
Article outline
  • 1.Sites and their sounds
  • 2.Language, power and feeling in a Jukun community
  • 3.Concealment and obscenity as gendered practices
  • 4.Memory and storytelling
  • 5.Registers of emotion
  • 6.Edgeland ruins and lament
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 10 March 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/clu.19.10sto
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