Stephen Pax Leonard
Biographic Data
| ID | 645871 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Stephen Pax Leonard |
| GIVEN NAMES | Stephen Pax |
| FAMILY NAME | Leonard |
| SIGNATURE | LEONARD S P |
| AFFILIATIONS | Sechenov University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-2166-540X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 12 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 14 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 12 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2011 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Becoming Orthodox: Transcendental pathways as intimate structures of subjectivity
What is it about Orthodoxy that helps the worshipper build the “right” interiority? It is shown here how the transcendental may be perceived as a sonorous cosmology. The chanting of a semi-intelligible, liturgical language that can appear at times as more signs than words can be endowed with a transcendental appeal. Orthodoxy is a sensorium and the commingling of the senses is conducive to a semiotic ambiguity. This article, which weds the anthro…
The Nihilistic Turn
This essay explores what one might call the "nihilistic turn": the structures of intellectual self-destruction that seem to have become embedded in social anthropology. Using the author's long-term fieldwork in Greenland as a backdrop and from the point of view of the ethnographer in the field, it finds that much of the nihilistic navel-gazing that has come to characterise the subject is to be found wanting. The ethnographer is seldom in the supe…
The Word as an Icon: The embodied spirituality of Church Slavonic
How do Russian Orthodox Christians frame their understanding of semiotic ideologies of worship? That is to say, how do worshippers interpret liturgical language 'signs' and how do these interpretations colour their views as to which language is 'right' for the Church? There are to be found two semiotic ideologies of worship in Moscow. There are traditionalists for whom the liturgical language is embodied; it becomes the language of God through it…
Doing things with voices: Colombian ‘kidnap radio’ and the sound of God
Some hostages of the FARC held in the Colombian Amazon spoke of how they believed a certain radio voice could result in an action. For over 20 years, every Saturday night a radio programme broadcast messages from the hostages’ families and loved ones. A small number of these captives recycled the prophetic radio voice in a dialogic interaction with prayer in their inner speech, and this resulted in what they believed to be the voice of God. By as…
A semiotic approach to language ideologies: Modelling the changing Icelandic languagescape
Attempts have been made to examine how speakers frame linguistic varieties by employing social semiotic models. Using ethnographic data collected over many years, this article applies such a model to Iceland, once described as the ‘e-coli of linguistics’ – its size, historical isolation and relative linguistic homogeneity create conditions akin to a sociolinguistic laboratory. This semiotic model of language ideologies problematizes the prevailin…
Remembering the Dead: The (Re)Construction of Faroese Community on the Radio
This article triangulates radio, social relations, and remembrance to explore how the Faroese memorialize their dead and what these practices tell us about how “communities of meaning” are symbolically created in small-scale societies. The Faroese have a remarkable appreciation for local remembrance through obituaries, “death notices,” well-attended funerals, and the writing of local histories (bygdarsøgur). The Faroese constantly (re)construct F…
Voices from the outside: The instrumentality of radio messages in Colombian kidnappings
Travels in Cultural Nihilism: Some Essays
Spoken language is a prison’: Ways of belonging and speaking in northwest Greenland
‘Speaking’ and ‘belonging’ have a particular salience as indices of intimacy in a remote corner of northwest Greenland where connectedness is constantly reinforced through a distinct commonality of expression and certain social practices, such as very frequent visiting of one another, story-telling, recycling of names and a shared monistic philosophy. The Inugguit define themselves by a repertoire of communicative and behavioural strategies which…
A "High-Intimacy" Language in the Atlantic: Radio and Purism in the Faroe Islands
This article explains the importance of the Faroese language and the ways in which it is spoken to a Faroese identity. It emphasizes the role and the significance of the radio as well as the policies of linguistic purism, which have been much discussed on air, to build and sustain this identity. A so-called high-intimacy language and public radio make for an obvious ethnographic juxtaposition. The shaping of affective experience through radio sou…
The need to ‘belong’: Social connectedness and spatial attachment in Polar Eskimo settlements
Climate and environmental change places a variety of different pressures on remote, indigenous Arctic communities. The sea ice is the platform on which the Inugguit culture of northwest Greenland is based and thus it is inevitable that its retreat will have implications for the indigenous notion of place and for the manner in which the Inugguit articulate their sense of belonging with respect to the natural environment. With the demise of story-t…
Relative linguistic homogeneity in a new society: The case of Iceland
The language of a speech community can only act as an identity marker for all of its speakers if linguistic norms are widely shared and if a minimal number of language varieties are spoken. This article examines briefly how a linguistic norm came to serve the whole of Iceland and how a situation of relative linguistic homogeneity was maintained for centuries. Sociolinguistic theory tells us that the speech community that we can reconstruct for ea…
A "High-Intimacy" Language in the Atlantic: Radio and Purism in the Faroe Islands
This article explains the importance of the Faroese language and the ways in which it is spoken to a Faroese identity. It emphasizes the role and the significance of the radio as well as the policies of linguistic purism, which have been much discussed on air, to build and sustain this identity. A so-called high-intimacy language and public radio make for an obvious ethnographic juxtaposition. The shaping of affective experience through radio sou…
The need to ‘belong’: Social connectedness and spatial attachment in Polar Eskimo settlements
Climate and environmental change places a variety of different pressures on remote, indigenous Arctic communities. The sea ice is the platform on which the Inugguit culture of northwest Greenland is based and thus it is inevitable that its retreat will have implications for the indigenous notion of place and for the manner in which the Inugguit articulate their sense of belonging with respect to the natural environment. With the demise of story-t…
Voices from the outside: The instrumentality of radio messages in Colombian kidnappings
The Word as an Icon: The embodied spirituality of Church Slavonic
How do Russian Orthodox Christians frame their understanding of semiotic ideologies of worship? That is to say, how do worshippers interpret liturgical language 'signs' and how do these interpretations colour their views as to which language is 'right' for the Church? There are to be found two semiotic ideologies of worship in Moscow. There are traditionalists for whom the liturgical language is embodied; it becomes the language of God through it…
Remembering the Dead: The (Re)Construction of Faroese Community on the Radio
This article triangulates radio, social relations, and remembrance to explore how the Faroese memorialize their dead and what these practices tell us about how “communities of meaning” are symbolically created in small-scale societies. The Faroese have a remarkable appreciation for local remembrance through obituaries, “death notices,” well-attended funerals, and the writing of local histories (bygdarsøgur). The Faroese constantly (re)construct F…
Spoken language is a prison’: Ways of belonging and speaking in northwest Greenland
‘Speaking’ and ‘belonging’ have a particular salience as indices of intimacy in a remote corner of northwest Greenland where connectedness is constantly reinforced through a distinct commonality of expression and certain social practices, such as very frequent visiting of one another, story-telling, recycling of names and a shared monistic philosophy. The Inugguit define themselves by a repertoire of communicative and behavioural strategies which…
Relative linguistic homogeneity in a new society: The case of Iceland
The language of a speech community can only act as an identity marker for all of its speakers if linguistic norms are widely shared and if a minimal number of language varieties are spoken. This article examines briefly how a linguistic norm came to serve the whole of Iceland and how a situation of relative linguistic homogeneity was maintained for centuries. Sociolinguistic theory tells us that the speech community that we can reconstruct for ea…
Relative linguistic homogeneity in a new society: The case of Iceland
The language of a speech community can only act as an identity marker for all of its speakers if linguistic norms are widely shared and if a minimal number of language varieties are spoken. This article examines briefly how a linguistic norm came to serve the whole of Iceland and how a situation of relative linguistic homogeneity was maintained for centuries. Sociolinguistic theory tells us that the speech community that we can reconstruct for ea…
The need to ‘belong’: Social connectedness and spatial attachment in Polar Eskimo settlements
Climate and environmental change places a variety of different pressures on remote, indigenous Arctic communities. The sea ice is the platform on which the Inugguit culture of northwest Greenland is based and thus it is inevitable that its retreat will have implications for the indigenous notion of place and for the manner in which the Inugguit articulate their sense of belonging with respect to the natural environment. With the demise of story-t…
Spoken language is a prison’: Ways of belonging and speaking in northwest Greenland
‘Speaking’ and ‘belonging’ have a particular salience as indices of intimacy in a remote corner of northwest Greenland where connectedness is constantly reinforced through a distinct commonality of expression and certain social practices, such as very frequent visiting of one another, story-telling, recycling of names and a shared monistic philosophy. The Inugguit define themselves by a repertoire of communicative and behavioural strategies which…
A "High-Intimacy" Language in the Atlantic: Radio and Purism in the Faroe Islands
This article explains the importance of the Faroese language and the ways in which it is spoken to a Faroese identity. It emphasizes the role and the significance of the radio as well as the policies of linguistic purism, which have been much discussed on air, to build and sustain this identity. A so-called high-intimacy language and public radio make for an obvious ethnographic juxtaposition. The shaping of affective experience through radio sou…
Travels in Cultural Nihilism: Some Essays
Voices from the outside: The instrumentality of radio messages in Colombian kidnappings
Doing things with voices: Colombian ‘kidnap radio’ and the sound of God
Some hostages of the FARC held in the Colombian Amazon spoke of how they believed a certain radio voice could result in an action. For over 20 years, every Saturday night a radio programme broadcast messages from the hostages’ families and loved ones. A small number of these captives recycled the prophetic radio voice in a dialogic interaction with prayer in their inner speech, and this resulted in what they believed to be the voice of God. By as…
A semiotic approach to language ideologies: Modelling the changing Icelandic languagescape
Attempts have been made to examine how speakers frame linguistic varieties by employing social semiotic models. Using ethnographic data collected over many years, this article applies such a model to Iceland, once described as the ‘e-coli of linguistics’ – its size, historical isolation and relative linguistic homogeneity create conditions akin to a sociolinguistic laboratory. This semiotic model of language ideologies problematizes the prevailin…
Remembering the Dead: The (Re)Construction of Faroese Community on the Radio
This article triangulates radio, social relations, and remembrance to explore how the Faroese memorialize their dead and what these practices tell us about how “communities of meaning” are symbolically created in small-scale societies. The Faroese have a remarkable appreciation for local remembrance through obituaries, “death notices,” well-attended funerals, and the writing of local histories (bygdarsøgur). The Faroese constantly (re)construct F…
The Word as an Icon: The embodied spirituality of Church Slavonic
How do Russian Orthodox Christians frame their understanding of semiotic ideologies of worship? That is to say, how do worshippers interpret liturgical language 'signs' and how do these interpretations colour their views as to which language is 'right' for the Church? There are to be found two semiotic ideologies of worship in Moscow. There are traditionalists for whom the liturgical language is embodied; it becomes the language of God through it…
The Nihilistic Turn
This essay explores what one might call the "nihilistic turn": the structures of intellectual self-destruction that seem to have become embedded in social anthropology. Using the author's long-term fieldwork in Greenland as a backdrop and from the point of view of the ethnographer in the field, it finds that much of the nihilistic navel-gazing that has come to characterise the subject is to be found wanting. The ethnographer is seldom in the supe…
Becoming Orthodox: Transcendental pathways as intimate structures of subjectivity
What is it about Orthodoxy that helps the worshipper build the “right” interiority? It is shown here how the transcendental may be perceived as a sonorous cosmology. The chanting of a semi-intelligible, liturgical language that can appear at times as more signs than words can be endowed with a transcendental appeal. Orthodoxy is a sensorium and the commingling of the senses is conducive to a semiotic ambiguity. This article, which weds the anthro…
History (8 works) · Sociology (7 works) · Linguistics (5 works) · Philosophy (5 works) · Psychology (4 works) · Art (3 works) · Epistemology (3 works) · Geography (3 works) · Political science (3 works) · Semiotics (3 works)