Eloquence in Trouble: The Poetics and Politics of Complaint in Rural Bangladesh (Oxford Studies in Anthropological Linguistics, 21)

eloquence In Trouble Captures The Articulation Of Several Troubled Lives In Bangladesh As Well As The Threats To The Very Genres Of Their Expression, Lament In Particular. The First Ethnography Of One Of The Most Spoken Mother Tongues On Earth, Bangla, This Study Represents A New Approach To Troubles Talk, Combining The Rigor Of Discourse Analysis With The Interpretive Depth Of Psychological Anthropology. Its Careful Transcriptions Of Bangladeshi Troubles Talk Will Disturb Some Readers And Move Others—beyond Past Academic Discussion Of Personhood In South Asia. Contents......Page 14 Transcription Conventions......Page 16 Cast of Key Characters Presented......Page 18 1. Troubling Ourselves with Bangla Troubles Talk......Page 24 2. Listening in Matlab: Where Troubles Talk Led Me......Page 47 3. Signs and Selfhood......Page 55 4. Personhood: The "I" in the Complaint......Page 65 5. Self and Indexicals: Language and Locus of Control......Page 101 6. Learning to Tell Troubles: Socialization of Crying and Troubles Telling......Page 125 7. Icons and Icon Indexes: Complaint Practices and Local Views......Page 140 8. Troubles Talk and Social Conflict......Page 155 9. Interacting with Practitioners......Page 175 10. Metacomplaints: Conflict, Resistance, and Metacommunication......Page 203 11. The Pragmatics of Madness: Performance and Resistance......Page 221 12. Legitimacy, Illegitimacy, and Madness in Bangladesh......Page 245 13. Troubles Talk and Its Troubling (and Troubled) Eloquence......Page 254 Appendix: Transcribing Matlab Speech......Page 264 Notes......Page 270 References......Page 296 B......Page 314 E......Page 315 I......Page 316 L......Page 317 N......Page 318 R......Page 319 T......Page 320 Y......Page 321 This book captures the articulation of several troubled lives in Bangladesh as well as the threats to the very genres of their expression, Lament in particular. The first ethnography of one of the most spoken mother tongues on earth, Bangla, this study represents a new approach to troubles talk, combining the rigor of discourse analysis with the interpretive depth of psychological anthropology. James M. Wilce's study of the complaints of medical patients in rural Bangladesh reveals the patient's social world, social relations, sense of self, ideology of language and his or her relation to power "Man invented language to satisfy his deep need to complain," or so says comedienne Lily Tomlin (quoted in Pinker 1994: 32; emphasis added).