Introduction to “Synesthetic Encounters”

Abstract

The articles in this issue examine activity routines in which sensory experiences form the basis of both practical and social coordination. In the ethnographic phenomena that the authors examine, successful coordination between actors almost always requires engagement across multiple senses and practices of sensory expertise, as well as between discursive and non-discursive signs. It is in this spirit that we offer the organizing concept of synesthetic encounters. We advocate for an ethnographic approach to language and synesthetic encounters that foregrounds: (1) a situated practice analysis of the senses, (2) attention to the continuum between improvisation and conventionalization in the use of lexicons for sensory calibration, and (3) the metapragmatic regimentation of sensory experience in specific contexts toward specific ends.