Category Archives: Performance

Representing Representation: Wunang and Lawyers as Mediators of Social Encounter in Anakalangese and American Culture

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by Gretchen Long (grlong@vassar.edu)

In Signs of Recognition, one of Keane’s main points is that all communicative efforts in social encounters are liable to misinterpretation, resulting in a “hazardous” outcome for the unfortunate speaker. He writes that scenes of encounter “iconically represent social action as a form of dialogue between a pair of speakers” (139): in other words, a situational exchange of speech becomes a complete icon of a larger conflict, so that any discrepancy in the deliverance of linguistic cues and meanings threatens to render the issue at hand beyond resolution. Since all that is known to both parties is that which is expressed in the presence of both parties (i.e. a scene of encounter), “nothing is known except that which has been presented formally… within the… frame of the event.” (156) Therefore, that which is presented becomes the only source of knowledge for negotiation, so presenting things “correctly” becomes very important.

Keane outlines the roles in everyday speech in the beginning of Chapter Six: the animator “voices the words;” the author “determines what words are… said;” and “the words are attributed” to the principal “who is held responsible for them.” (Goffman 1979 in Keane 1997:139) Balancing all three roles may be difficult as one may have clear intentions but lack oratorical charisma, or possess a strong speaking voice but have difficulty forming thoughts into coherent phrases. The difficulty of balancing these three roles is a potential cause of misfires in speech acts. Another source of hazard is in-group “debates over procedure” (148) in which members of a party bicker amongst themselves over correct protocol, further inhibiting the party’s ability to clearly articulate its intents.

As such linguistic errors would be hazardous (in the sense of invoking social embarrassment and stalling the negotiation’s progress,) one way that actors can ensure the efficacy of a social encounter is to employ mediators they know will correctly communicate the necessary information. The Anakalangese accomplish this by appointing wunang to act as mediators between two opposing parties (in events such as bridal negotiations); similarly, other cultures appoint specialists like lawyers to act out similar roles in similar events requiring compromise. Both the wunang and the lawyers take on the role of author and animator, as they are skilled in articulating and composing their principals’ intents in the formal discourse of the situation (the wunang employing structured formal speech and the lawyer using law jargon). There is safety in the explicit nature of formality, and employing a specialist to present one’s case in such terms lessens the likelihood of hazardous speech acts while working towards a negotiation.

Lawyers and wunang also use their expertise “to restrain the excesses and tempers of their principals” (154), preventing their clients from saying something that will ruin the state of their negotiations. How many times have we seen a character in a book or movie lose their case because they wanted to “act as their own lawyer?” The same consequences befall any principal not well-versed in the terms of the conflict. Keane writes that people are often prompted to defend themselves because “the public forum… places… pressure on people’s pride and reputation… [and] gives so many people a say in what transpires” (149), but by electing a representative (“one who represents” the sentiments of another party) to act as a mediator between potentially combative forces in a forum, the principals ensure correct and safe conduct throughout the discussion.

Lawyers can represent anyone (and we actually use the phrase “represent”) just as wunang can stand in for men and women of any class. Likewise, there are not specialized lawyers for men, women, or age groups—any lawyer can represent anyone. Lawyers tend to use deictic, demonstrative speech (“My client says that he left at six o’ clock”), while the wunang actually personifies the person they are referring to by “adopting the ‘voice'” of an individual they are representing (i.e. by using “female speaker kin terms” in formal address [163]). Nonetheless, both forms of speech are still highly presentational in that they emphasize the intentions of the principals in formalized, structured discourse.

One major difference is that there are actually two wunang per Anakalangese party (the “sitting” wunang and the “traveling” wunang) while there is only one lawyer per side (they communicate information to the principals and the larger court, fulfilling the roles of both types of wunang.) A lawyer still engages in their own form of motion, moving between the judge, witness, and jury, and conferring with all. The more public the principals’ intentions are made through the mediator (wunang/lawyer), the more likely it is that negotiations will go smoothly.

To highlight a few crucial differences between wunang and lawyers, I direct you towards the following clip— I recommend watching first minute or so, then skipping to 3:50 and watching to the end (unless you just really like Legally Blonde, which is also fine):

While acknowledging that this is a highly dramatized clip, for all of the wunang’s idiosyncratic alterations in couplet-choice to match the context of their principals’ debate (161), no Anakalangese speaker could ever do what Elle Woods just did. I do not mean that wunang would be incapable of making such a dramatic performance, but that committing such infractions against the formal structure of negotiations would be hazardous to the point of an ancestral intervention resulting in bad luck or an actual fatality. For the Anakalangese, going against an ancestral structure literally endangers the natural order of things, whereas (Western) lawyers going against the grain are often viewed as martyrs, heroes, or geniuses. Even as a principal, Mrs. Windham makes what would be a startling choice to the Anakalangese by choosing Elle to represent her; she chooses a personal favorite over her appointed representative, and values Elle’s creativity over the former lawyer’s formal technique.

Elle’s informal speech actually threatens the breakdown of the scene of encounter, but “formality… may open up possibilities as much as foreclose them.” (144) While methodically and formulaically approaching a case ensures a scrutinizing objectivity, if Elle hadn’t deviated from the formal approach of question-and-answer to deliver an anecdote about her sorority days, the witness never would have been prompted to confess the murder. Nonetheless, Elle’s individualistic approach is largely a Western ideal. Keane warns how “the necessary delegation of voice” to the wunang “threatens to become full detachment” (170) if the wunang is too free with their interpretations, which would fully separate them from the principals’ intents. Thus, if any Anakalangese wunang stepped forward like Elle in a social encounter, the current negotiations would be in danger of immediate termination, and social or spiritual punishments would be brought upon the affronting wunang for such “bald speech” (164) (see 164 for an example).

This is not to say that the Anakalangese dismiss all personal talent in this sphere. When Elle announces her desire to take the case, Mrs. Windham’s former lawyer snaps, “She’s a law student— she can’t defend you.” Practicing law requires specific credentials, whereas “the knowledge just comes” to wunang. (155) Personal skill is valued as not just anyone can become a wunang, but at the same time the specialists’ skill is expected to accentuate ancestral values (and thus, value formal structure) as opposed to developing a new form of negotiation.

* What are some other similarities and differences between Western and Anakalangese legal structures?

* How does the materiality of language play a part in wunangs’ affects? How does a different ideology of language affect Western lawyers’ presentations?

* What are some other examples of delegation of voice?

Performances and Utterances: Humor in Music Videos

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by Sarah Evans (saevans@vassar.edu)

I know that the relationship between music and semiotics has come up before in this course, but since we’re moving into studying performativity and speech acts in class, and I love taking things just a little bit too literally, I really wanted to talk about musical performances, especially with regards to music videos.  Music videos are a strange type of performance. especially since they aren’t always clearly a performance: a general template for the band-made video is that it’s a short film built around a band’s performance, but the band isn’t really performing, it’s lip-syncing to the perfectly mixed and mastered version of the song that’s on their record.  Fan made videos, usually hobbled by a lack of funds, tend to be either flash-made, or, most commonly, a series of photos of a band or the lyrics of a single with a single playing in the background.  However, some videos make it obvious (sometimes ludicrously so) that not only are they performances, but they also change the meaning of the songs by placing them in contexts that are contraindicated by the music, in effect creating completely new meanings and utterances based upon the interplay between the infelicitous statement and a counter-intuitive context, capitalizing on what Grice dubs the conversational implicative.

Although Grice calls his idea “conversational implicature”, I’m going to stretch the idea past language and into music.  I’m talking a very specific type of music video, one which takes the stance that what you’re watching is not only not real, but not even a staged performance, and it tends to do so by subverting the felicity of their actual statements within the song.  Perhaps the best way to phrase it is thus: musical performances tend to occupy a nebulous space–there is generally no assurance that the singer is voicing his own thoughts or not unless the song directly indicates that that is so–but it can generally be assumed that a performance, especially within the context of a music video is just that–a performance, where the words being spoken do not directly perform any work on behalf of the speaker because they are inherently infelicitous, to apply Austin’s definition.  Lyrics sung during a song are generally considered, like poetry and fiction, to be the words of a narrator who is not the singer, so that when the speaker is singing them, he cannot be held to anything that he sings because he is speaking on behalf of something else.  It’s comparable, but by no means identical to Hanks’ example of Jack’s hypothetical infelicitous statement, “I promise that you [Natalia] will be home by 6:00”, which Jack cannot felicitously say unless the onus is on him to furnish Natalia with the means to be home by 6:00.  Any promises, injunctions, requests, or other personal statements within a song’s lyrics are not actually being enacted by the singer; the singer is just singing.

However, this is just an Austinian interpretation, and, moreover, one that only really takes lyrics into account.  In terms of music videos, especially ones that derive humor from the contradiction of the song being used in a specific way in the video, the focus tends to be on factors like the composition of the video, its personnel, its concept, and so on and so forth, as well as the context in which all of this is happening.  The song is taken as a piece of fictitious entertainment, so the singer’s rendition and how it meshes with the rest of the video within the context in which the video exists is what produces humor.  Grice’s theory of conversational implicature, specifically the idea of implicature, is at work here: “Grice’s theory assumes that speakers routinely make utterances that are infelicitous, at the level of what they actually say” (Hanks 101).  In terms of songs, it seems safe to say that, in light of Grice’s theory, it is both assumed and not problematic that a song’s lyrics as they are sung is infelicitous because the content (regardless of its connection to the performance of such) and context are logical.

This is where the blatant ludicrousness of certain performances in videos comes in: the song’s lyrics are logical, the context is logical, and what is being said is ridiculousness.  Just consider the video for the song “Dance Yrself Clean”.

Now, the Muppets are not hipster party animals, or if they are, then that’s clearly an aspect of them that I glossed over during my infatuation with them sometime in elementary school.  On just a basic level, this music video is funny because the Muppets are doing things that would never be associated with them outside the realm of parody; even if all of the parts of the video with all of them performing were excised and there was no music in the background, the images would still be funny (or at least trying to be funny) simply because watching puppets who are ingrained in our cultural consciousness as being family friendly, a little corny, and definitely safe for kids are put in situations that conform to a completely different stereotype, one which was, before it became primarily a source of ridicule for the very people for whom it used to apply, associated with adults and the underground.  Even in the video, the passers-by laugh when the puppets do something that they would consider to be out of character.

In fact, the video would also work if it were just the puppets and the song, or just the song and the concept: the former has the same incongruities, whereas the latter syncs up pretty perfectly with the content of the song.  What’s peculiar about this video is watching the performance–there is no speech or song more infelicitous in its delivery than this one with Kermit the frog sing it.  It’s the exact same version of the song that appears on the album, not a cover, and Kermit is not singing it in his voice, he’s lip-syncing with James Murphy’s voice.  For anyone who has heard Kermit’s voice actor, there is no way that he could be mistaken for singing this song, so it becomes plain that he’s singing for someone else.  Taking a step back: the video is not only funny because it has muppets doing inappropriate things, it’s also funny and strange because one’s first instinct is to associate Kermit with the song and the lyrics because he’s singing it, but he’s no more beholden to them than Murphy would be if he were performing in the video instead.  It’s blatantly artificial.

The logical conclusion of this line of thought, of building a music video that is predicated upon exposing the infelicity of performance that videos are, is the video for “Strictly Game”.

Where “Dance Yrself Clean” was funny because it exploited the incongruity of the performance, “Strictly Game” is funny because it conforms to the tropes of a specific type of fan-made music video.  It has that as the most recognizable part of its context.  At the very beginning, it actually looks completely like one of those videos (the same static images, the same font, even the same wipes from photo to photo), as though that was what the band wanted to do.  However, what appears to be static at the beginning grows gradually and more obviously into a series of videos, almost as though the images are coming to life.  Watching it a second time, I looked for indications that every “photo” was actually a staged video of the band, and it was.  The video was funny and intriguing because it was so perfectly integrated with the concept of it looking like a fan-made product, but the way that it played with the form called attention to the fact that it was made by the band, even if the song and the band-in-the-video were not in any way synced so that there was an obvious disconnect between the band and the performance.

To bring this back to Grice, “Strictly Game” looks like a fan-made video, which connotes that the person who made it has no involvement with the band but enjoys their music.  It also, in that vein, emphasizes that while there is a connection between the people in the video and the people singing, it is not the connection that those people are in the act of singing that song to an audience.  Altogether, it is an example of implicature: the audience (or, in this case, the YouTube commenter population and myself) assumed one relationship, a completely infelicitous relationship as sundered in content and delivery as Kermit singing LCD Soundsystem, but by the end of the video, we understood that the band was actually directly involved in presenting this, and while it is in no way identical in meaning with the song itself, the video presents a performance unique to that video which actually suggests an infelicitous, but still communicative and performative utterance of parodic humor in the same way as “Dance Yrself Clean”–by capitalizing on both the understanding that what’s being presented is a performance, a rendition, and playing with that idea as it applies to music videos.