Nicholas Harkne
Biographic Data
| ID | 150953 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Nicholas Harkne |
| GIVEN NAMES | Nicholas |
| FAMILY NAME | Harkne |
| SIGNATURE | HARKNE N |
| AFFILIATIONS | Harvard University Press |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-6415-7486 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 19 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 232 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 19 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2010 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
Commentary
The papers in this special issue, “Localizing Hallyu: The Semiotics of the Korean Wave in Media and Discourse,” observe how Korea-sourced popular semiotic forms recombine anew, and are recontextualized afar, through various pathways of mediatization. The authors analyze commodified semiosis in an era of late interdiscursivity. Under the conditions of late interdiscursivity, the relationship between intertextuality and interdiscursivity is profoun…
Qualia, categorias semióticas, verdade sentida
É um truísmo sócio-científico, e também um problema, que as verdades sentidas “imediatas” dos indivíduos façam parte de uma semiótica “dinâmica” dos grupos sociais e, portanto, devem ser investigadas como tais. Qualia, cuidadosamente formulados como fatos de primeiridade, disagregam e esclarecem partes desse problema. Os fatos de primeiridade se tornam uma categoria semiótica metodologicamente viável a partir da reformulação, feita de acordo com …
Qualia
Qualia (singular, quale) are cultural emergents that manifest phenomenally as sensuous features or qualities. The anthropological challenge presented by qualia is to theorize elements of experience that are semiotically generated but apperceived as non‐signs. Qualia are not reducible to a psychology of individual perceptions of sensory data, to a cultural ontology of “materiality,” or to philosophical intuitions about the subjective properties of…
Glossolalia and the Problem of Language
The Open Throat
This article develops a Peircean conceptualization of qualia as “facts of firstness” by examining the pedagogical pragmatics of a voice lesson in which an intersubjective orientation to vocal sound via listening becomes a subjective orientation to voice production via bodily feeling. I focus specifically on various attempts by a teacher and a student collaboratively to repair and cultivate the student’s voice by generating and isolating qualia ac…
Transducing a Sermon, Inducing Conversion
This paper is an analysis of the final sermon of Billy Graham's 1973 Crusade in Seoul, South Korea, when he preached to a crowd estimated to exceed one million people. Next to Graham at the pulpit was Billy Jang Hwan Kim, a preacher who, in his capacity as interpreter, translated Graham's sermon verbally and peri-verbally-utterance by utterance, tone by tone, gesture by gesture-for the Korean-speaking audience. I examine the dynamic pragmatics (f…
Glossolalia and cacophony in South Korea
In Christian traditions of "speaking in tongues,"glossolaliarefers to an explicitly linguistic form of involvement with the deity, one carried out through denotationally unintelligible behavior. Its religious legitimacy depends on its being speech and not merely speech-like. South Korean Christians practice glossolalia widely across denominations, commonly in cacophonous settings of group prayer. Combined, glossolalia and cacophony impose limits …
A bottleneck in the plenum
Comment on Keane, Webb. 2016. Ethical life: Its natural and social histories. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press
The Pragmatics of Qualia in Practice
This review addresses general anthropological understandings of practice and a technical semiotic approach to pragmatics through the concept of qualia. Qualia are pragmatic signals (indexes) that materialize phenomenally in human activity as sensuous qualities. The pragmatic role of qualia is observed through exemplary accounts of the “feeling of doing” from the ethnographic record of practice in four domains: linguistic practices, phatic practic…
Basic Kinship Terms
This ethnographic analysis of the pragmatic links among forms of address, honorifics, and narratives of spiritual maturity clarifies a conflict between two Christian models of social change in South Korea: absolute social rupture and transcendence, and progressive shifts in social orientation and institutional self-location. The focus is on a Protestant proposal for all Korean Christians to address one another with the terms hyŏngje-nim (brother)…
Voicing Christian aspiration
This article proposes some analytical and methodological approaches to the urban ethnography of the human voice. Drawing on research among Protestant Christians in Seoul, South Korea, I consider the voice along three semiotic dimensions: the relationship between body and sound, the relationship between speech and song, and the relationship between the literal voice and more metaphorical understandings of voice (as perspective, political position,…
Songs of Seoul
Songs of Seoul is an ethnographic study of voice in South Korea, where the performance of Western opera, art songs, and choral music is an overwhelmingly Evangelical Christian enterprise. Drawing on fieldwork in churches, concert halls, and schools of music, Harkness argues that the European-style classical voice has become a specifically Christian emblem of South Korean prosperity. By cultivating certain qualities of voice and suppressing others…
Softer soju in South Korea
This paper explores the ascendancy of 'softness' in South Korea as it is experienced through the qualia of one of Korea's most important social rituals: drinking soju. I combine an analysis of ethnographic evidence with widely-distributed advertisements to show how the experience of an abstract quality, softness, is made concrete by the cultural-semiotic renderings - and genderings - of alcohol consumption in various sensory modalities, including…
Introduction
This special issue proposes that the semiotically theorized concept of 'qualia' is useful for anthropologists working on problems of the senses, materiality, embodiment, aesthetics, and affect. Qualia are experiences of sensuous qualities (such as colors, textures, sounds, and smells) and feelings (such as satiety, anxiety, proximity, and otherness). The papers in this issue, first presented in a conference in honor of Nancy Munn and her groundbr…
Encore
"Homecoming Recitals" ( kwiguk tokch'anghoe ) in South Korea are events in which singers of European-style classical music, after having studied and worked professionally abroad, return home and are integrated into the social and musical life of Seoul. This article explores what appear to be blatant contradictions in the key elements of the recital. Although the recitals are presented as public events and the singers as professionals, the audienc…
Vowel harmony redux
This paper examines an ideology of standard pronunciation and spelling of English loan words in South Korea through the lens of Korean vowel harmony. I focus specifically on the alternation between an older Japanese-style 'a'[a] and a newer Korean-style 'ŏ'[ɔ] for the mapping of mid-vowels from English to Korean. The opposition between 'a' and 'ŏ' also figures into the dichotomy of vowel classes between 'yang' or 'light' vowels and 'yin' or 'dark…
Anthropology at the Phonosonic Nexus
commentary, Music and Sound, voice, sound, body, Christianity, South Korea, Eastern Asia
Culture and Interdiscursivity in Korean Fricative Voice Gestures
This paper explores the cultural significance of a type of audible gesture in Korean speech that I call the Fricative Voice Gesture (FVG). I distinguish between two forms of this gesture: the reactive FVG, which serves as a self-standing utterance that signals personally felt intensity, and the prosodic FVG, which can be superimposed upon an utterance as a form of intensification. Based on an ethnographically informed analysis of interviews, Chri…
Words in motion and the semiotics of the unseen in two Korean churches
Introduction
This special issue proposes that the semiotically theorized concept of 'qualia' is useful for anthropologists working on problems of the senses, materiality, embodiment, aesthetics, and affect. Qualia are experiences of sensuous qualities (such as colors, textures, sounds, and smells) and feelings (such as satiety, anxiety, proximity, and otherness). The papers in this issue, first presented in a conference in honor of Nancy Munn and her groundbr…
Softer soju in South Korea
This paper explores the ascendancy of 'softness' in South Korea as it is experienced through the qualia of one of Korea's most important social rituals: drinking soju. I combine an analysis of ethnographic evidence with widely-distributed advertisements to show how the experience of an abstract quality, softness, is made concrete by the cultural-semiotic renderings - and genderings - of alcohol consumption in various sensory modalities, including…
Songs of Seoul
Songs of Seoul is an ethnographic study of voice in South Korea, where the performance of Western opera, art songs, and choral music is an overwhelmingly Evangelical Christian enterprise. Drawing on fieldwork in churches, concert halls, and schools of music, Harkness argues that the European-style classical voice has become a specifically Christian emblem of South Korean prosperity. By cultivating certain qualities of voice and suppressing others…
Culture and Interdiscursivity in Korean Fricative Voice Gestures
This paper explores the cultural significance of a type of audible gesture in Korean speech that I call the Fricative Voice Gesture (FVG). I distinguish between two forms of this gesture: the reactive FVG, which serves as a self-standing utterance that signals personally felt intensity, and the prosodic FVG, which can be superimposed upon an utterance as a form of intensification. Based on an ethnographically informed analysis of interviews, Chri…
The Open Throat
This article develops a Peircean conceptualization of qualia as “facts of firstness” by examining the pedagogical pragmatics of a voice lesson in which an intersubjective orientation to vocal sound via listening becomes a subjective orientation to voice production via bodily feeling. I focus specifically on various attempts by a teacher and a student collaboratively to repair and cultivate the student’s voice by generating and isolating qualia ac…
Basic Kinship Terms
This ethnographic analysis of the pragmatic links among forms of address, honorifics, and narratives of spiritual maturity clarifies a conflict between two Christian models of social change in South Korea: absolute social rupture and transcendence, and progressive shifts in social orientation and institutional self-location. The focus is on a Protestant proposal for all Korean Christians to address one another with the terms hyŏngje-nim (brother)…
Glossolalia and cacophony in South Korea
In Christian traditions of "speaking in tongues,"glossolaliarefers to an explicitly linguistic form of involvement with the deity, one carried out through denotationally unintelligible behavior. Its religious legitimacy depends on its being speech and not merely speech-like. South Korean Christians practice glossolalia widely across denominations, commonly in cacophonous settings of group prayer. Combined, glossolalia and cacophony impose limits …
Vowel harmony redux
This paper examines an ideology of standard pronunciation and spelling of English loan words in South Korea through the lens of Korean vowel harmony. I focus specifically on the alternation between an older Japanese-style 'a'[a] and a newer Korean-style 'ŏ'[ɔ] for the mapping of mid-vowels from English to Korean. The opposition between 'a' and 'ŏ' also figures into the dichotomy of vowel classes between 'yang' or 'light' vowels and 'yin' or 'dark…
Voicing Christian aspiration
This article proposes some analytical and methodological approaches to the urban ethnography of the human voice. Drawing on research among Protestant Christians in Seoul, South Korea, I consider the voice along three semiotic dimensions: the relationship between body and sound, the relationship between speech and song, and the relationship between the literal voice and more metaphorical understandings of voice (as perspective, political position,…
Transducing a Sermon, Inducing Conversion
This paper is an analysis of the final sermon of Billy Graham's 1973 Crusade in Seoul, South Korea, when he preached to a crowd estimated to exceed one million people. Next to Graham at the pulpit was Billy Jang Hwan Kim, a preacher who, in his capacity as interpreter, translated Graham's sermon verbally and peri-verbally-utterance by utterance, tone by tone, gesture by gesture-for the Korean-speaking audience. I examine the dynamic pragmatics (f…
Words in motion and the semiotics of the unseen in two Korean churches
A bottleneck in the plenum
Comment on Keane, Webb. 2016. Ethical life: Its natural and social histories. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press
Words in motion and the semiotics of the unseen in two Korean churches
Anthropology at the Phonosonic Nexus
commentary, Music and Sound, voice, sound, body, Christianity, South Korea, Eastern Asia
Culture and Interdiscursivity in Korean Fricative Voice Gestures
This paper explores the cultural significance of a type of audible gesture in Korean speech that I call the Fricative Voice Gesture (FVG). I distinguish between two forms of this gesture: the reactive FVG, which serves as a self-standing utterance that signals personally felt intensity, and the prosodic FVG, which can be superimposed upon an utterance as a form of intensification. Based on an ethnographically informed analysis of interviews, Chri…
Encore
"Homecoming Recitals" ( kwiguk tokch'anghoe ) in South Korea are events in which singers of European-style classical music, after having studied and worked professionally abroad, return home and are integrated into the social and musical life of Seoul. This article explores what appear to be blatant contradictions in the key elements of the recital. Although the recitals are presented as public events and the singers as professionals, the audienc…
Vowel harmony redux
This paper examines an ideology of standard pronunciation and spelling of English loan words in South Korea through the lens of Korean vowel harmony. I focus specifically on the alternation between an older Japanese-style 'a'[a] and a newer Korean-style 'ŏ'[ɔ] for the mapping of mid-vowels from English to Korean. The opposition between 'a' and 'ŏ' also figures into the dichotomy of vowel classes between 'yang' or 'light' vowels and 'yin' or 'dark…
Songs of Seoul
Songs of Seoul is an ethnographic study of voice in South Korea, where the performance of Western opera, art songs, and choral music is an overwhelmingly Evangelical Christian enterprise. Drawing on fieldwork in churches, concert halls, and schools of music, Harkness argues that the European-style classical voice has become a specifically Christian emblem of South Korean prosperity. By cultivating certain qualities of voice and suppressing others…
Softer soju in South Korea
This paper explores the ascendancy of 'softness' in South Korea as it is experienced through the qualia of one of Korea's most important social rituals: drinking soju. I combine an analysis of ethnographic evidence with widely-distributed advertisements to show how the experience of an abstract quality, softness, is made concrete by the cultural-semiotic renderings - and genderings - of alcohol consumption in various sensory modalities, including…
Introduction
This special issue proposes that the semiotically theorized concept of 'qualia' is useful for anthropologists working on problems of the senses, materiality, embodiment, aesthetics, and affect. Qualia are experiences of sensuous qualities (such as colors, textures, sounds, and smells) and feelings (such as satiety, anxiety, proximity, and otherness). The papers in this issue, first presented in a conference in honor of Nancy Munn and her groundbr…
The Pragmatics of Qualia in Practice
This review addresses general anthropological understandings of practice and a technical semiotic approach to pragmatics through the concept of qualia. Qualia are pragmatic signals (indexes) that materialize phenomenally in human activity as sensuous qualities. The pragmatic role of qualia is observed through exemplary accounts of the “feeling of doing” from the ethnographic record of practice in four domains: linguistic practices, phatic practic…
Basic Kinship Terms
This ethnographic analysis of the pragmatic links among forms of address, honorifics, and narratives of spiritual maturity clarifies a conflict between two Christian models of social change in South Korea: absolute social rupture and transcendence, and progressive shifts in social orientation and institutional self-location. The focus is on a Protestant proposal for all Korean Christians to address one another with the terms hyŏngje-nim (brother)…
Voicing Christian aspiration
This article proposes some analytical and methodological approaches to the urban ethnography of the human voice. Drawing on research among Protestant Christians in Seoul, South Korea, I consider the voice along three semiotic dimensions: the relationship between body and sound, the relationship between speech and song, and the relationship between the literal voice and more metaphorical understandings of voice (as perspective, political position,…
A bottleneck in the plenum
Comment on Keane, Webb. 2016. Ethical life: Its natural and social histories. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press
The Open Throat
This article develops a Peircean conceptualization of qualia as “facts of firstness” by examining the pedagogical pragmatics of a voice lesson in which an intersubjective orientation to vocal sound via listening becomes a subjective orientation to voice production via bodily feeling. I focus specifically on various attempts by a teacher and a student collaboratively to repair and cultivate the student’s voice by generating and isolating qualia ac…
Transducing a Sermon, Inducing Conversion
This paper is an analysis of the final sermon of Billy Graham's 1973 Crusade in Seoul, South Korea, when he preached to a crowd estimated to exceed one million people. Next to Graham at the pulpit was Billy Jang Hwan Kim, a preacher who, in his capacity as interpreter, translated Graham's sermon verbally and peri-verbally-utterance by utterance, tone by tone, gesture by gesture-for the Korean-speaking audience. I examine the dynamic pragmatics (f…
Glossolalia and cacophony in South Korea
In Christian traditions of "speaking in tongues,"glossolaliarefers to an explicitly linguistic form of involvement with the deity, one carried out through denotationally unintelligible behavior. Its religious legitimacy depends on its being speech and not merely speech-like. South Korean Christians practice glossolalia widely across denominations, commonly in cacophonous settings of group prayer. Combined, glossolalia and cacophony impose limits …
Qualia
Qualia (singular, quale) are cultural emergents that manifest phenomenally as sensuous features or qualities. The anthropological challenge presented by qualia is to theorize elements of experience that are semiotically generated but apperceived as non‐signs. Qualia are not reducible to a psychology of individual perceptions of sensory data, to a cultural ontology of “materiality,” or to philosophical intuitions about the subjective properties of…
Glossolalia and the Problem of Language
Qualia, categorias semióticas, verdade sentida
É um truísmo sócio-científico, e também um problema, que as verdades sentidas “imediatas” dos indivíduos façam parte de uma semiótica “dinâmica” dos grupos sociais e, portanto, devem ser investigadas como tais. Qualia, cuidadosamente formulados como fatos de primeiridade, disagregam e esclarecem partes desse problema. Os fatos de primeiridade se tornam uma categoria semiótica metodologicamente viável a partir da reformulação, feita de acordo com …
Commentary
The papers in this special issue, “Localizing Hallyu: The Semiotics of the Korean Wave in Media and Discourse,” observe how Korea-sourced popular semiotic forms recombine anew, and are recontextualized afar, through various pathways of mediatization. The authors analyze commodified semiosis in an era of late interdiscursivity. Under the conditions of late interdiscursivity, the relationship between intertextuality and interdiscursivity is profoun…
Linguistics (10 works) · Philosophy (10 works) · Psychology (10 works) · Sociology (10 works) · Semiotics (9 works) · Anthropology (8 works) · Epistemology (7 works) · Philosophy (7 works) · Consciousness (6 works) · Qualia (6 works)