Embodied Sociolinguistics
As my view of linguistic phenomena involved in the formation of subjectivity has expanded, I have turned more attention to the role of embodiment in everyday interaction. My interest in the body’s potential for producing social meaning has existed since my early work with hijras, who are known throughout India for a system of handclaps that carry referential as well as indexical meaning. I discuss this system in a 2010 article Language, Embodiment, and the Third Sex, coauthored with Lal Zimman and published in the collection Language and Identities.
One of my main theoretical articles in this area, Embodied Sociolinguistics, is coauthored with Mary Bucholtz and appears in Sociolinguistics: Theoretical Debates. This 2016 article considers how a focus on bodies broadens sociocultural linguists’ understanding of the key concepts of indexicality, discourse, and agency. Mary and I are currently engaged in a book project with colleagues Monty Benesch and Kendra Calhoun called Parsing the Body: Language and the Social Life of Embodiment. In this edited collection, scholars across the subfields of sociocultural linguistics analyze the centrality of a ‘body part’ (e.g., The Wrist, The Finger, The Head, The Chin) to the production, perception, and interpretation of language and social life.
Another prominent example of my analytic work in this area is my publication with Donna Goldstein and Matthew Bruce Ingram titled The Hands of Donald Trump: Entertainment, Gesture, Spectacle. Published in HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory shortly before the 2016 November presidential election, the article brings together linguistic anthropology, cultural anthropology, and rhetorical theory. We examine how Trump’s unconventional political style, particularly his use of gesture to critique the political system and caricature opponents, built campaign momentum by creating spectacle. More information about our findings can be heard in my  with Nathan Heffel of Colorado Public Radio, which aired ten days after the election.
More recently, my 2021 article with Donna Goldstein, Darwin's Hug: Ideologies of Gesture in the Science of Human Exceptionalism (published in HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory), examines how accounts of gesture across evolutionary paradigms define the boundary between humans and animals. The article critiques twentieth-century experimental protocols, from Soviet sociocultural theory to Chomskyan universal grammar, that excluded gesture from the study of language. We term this historical exclusion "gestural cleansing," arguing instead for the importance of embodiment to ethnographic work in linguistics and anthropology.