Making Worlds that Make Sense

This edited volume uses analytic methods from linguistic and semiotic anthropology and the study of folklore to examine social actors’ construction of what they take as real and value as knowledge and truth. The introduction covers concepts informing the case studies, including discourse semiotics, vernacular practice, and knowledge production. The eight case studies (four sets of two each) cover commemoration (the Irish Great Famine Way; memorialization of death in the U.S. and in Japan), constructing objects of reference (Newfoundland and Labrador English; medicinal mushrooms in Finland), academic rationales (transrace and transgender; the nature of bias), and the opposition of us and them (conspiracy theories; attacks on Spanish speakers in the U.S.) A final chapter provides a theoretical discussion and literature review of points of connection among folklore and semiotic/linguistic anthropology.