Power from Switching across Netdoms through Reflexive and Indexical Language

In differentiated societies with far-reaching yet fragmented social networks, the ability to manage pervasive ambiguity is crucial to navigate domination orders. In this paper we contend that identities, to enhance their control through switchings across networks and domains (netdoms), manage growin...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Fontdevila, Jorge, White, Harrison C.
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Fecha de publicación:2010
País:España
Institución:Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
Repositorio:Dipòsit Digital de Documents de la UAB
Idioma:inglés
OAI Identifier:oai:ddd.uab.cat:59862
Acceso en línea:https://ddd.uab.cat/record/59862
https://dx.doi.org/urn:doi:10.5565/rev/redes.398
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Identity
Social Network
Indexicality
Power
Language
Identidad
Red Social
Indexicalidad
Poder
Lenguaje
Descripción
Sumario:In differentiated societies with far-reaching yet fragmented social networks, the ability to manage pervasive ambiguity is crucial to navigate domination orders. In this paper we contend that identities, to enhance their control through switchings across networks and domains (netdoms), manage growing ambiguity via language's reflexive and indexical features. We elaborate on several features-metapragmatics, heteroglossia, and poetics-and assert that they are seldom innocent performances to build consensus in the reproduction of social orders. On the contrary, language is inherently implicated in relations of domination. We then argue that metapragmatic control of stories acquired in countless netdom switchings leads to strong footings that secure resources and opportunity; that rhetorics that include rich heteroglossic voicing via structural holes generate stories that can be reflexively transposed to other institutional arenas; and that poetic control of speech styles may transform identities into power-law constellations with robust footing that decouple into prisms to preserve quality. Our goal is to twofold: First, to show that the reflexivity and indexicality of language emerges from myriad switchings across netdoms; and second, to demonstrate that reflexive and indexical language is critical to identities' struggles for control-of footing and domination-via their switchings across rapidly polymerizing netdoms.