John Dusty Rovin
B.A., Anthropology, University of Texas at Austin, 2021
Specialties
Speech Play and Verbal Art, Discourse Analysis, Typology, Areal Linguistics, Indigeneity, Language Revitalization, Brazil, the Lusosphere
My research interests revolve around the discursive strategies employed by ritual specialists in the Northwest Amazon not merely to treat, but also to speak about treatment: to extoll its virtues or expand its domain. This came about in an undergraduate honors thesis in which I examined how Indigenous peoples in the Northwest Amazon were adapting tradition to treat COVID-19. I want to examine the role of language in constructing attitudes toward Indigenous and Western medicine, towards Indigenous and non-Indigenous diseases. Moreover, I want to make space for how such language use might amplify our understanding of verbal art and language as social action.
I draw on much of the literature which founded the study of speech play and verbal art; scholars such as Joel Sherzer, Dell Hymes, Keith Basso, Michael Silverstein, and Dennis Tedlock. Naturally, I also look to contemporary linguistic anthropologists, or scholars of Indigenous languages more generally, for inspiration: Anthony Webster, Patience Epps, Erin Debenport, N. Tulio Bermudez, Laura Graham, Alessandro Duranti, Paul Kroskrity, Anthony Woodbury, Jenny Davis, Barbara Meek, and many more. However, I am also keenly aware of the continued need to attend to the Indigenous critique of Anthropology, and my work ever seeks to put Indigenous studies and Linguistic Anthropology in conversation.