The Pragmatics of Qualia in Practice

Abstract

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 practices organized explicitly around social relations, practices organized around external "things," and body-focal practices. Attention to qualia enables anthropologists to consider ethnographically what is continuous semiotically across and within practices-from communication to embodiment. The article concludes with a discussion of praxis in relation to practice and pragmatics and offers suggestions for future research on qualia in the areas of awareness, language, and ritual.

Metapragmatic comments and orthographic performances of a New York accent on YouTube

“…Phonetic variation, prosodic contour, voice quality, onomatopoeia, and other mimetic signals in speech are all forms of qualia (Ninoshvili, ; Sicoli, ). The sound shape or qualia provides aesthetic and moral anchors of orientation for reflexive, group‐defining conduct and thus for the situated enactment of forms of personhood (Harkness, , p. 573). In other words, sound shapes guide people as to how they should think about and orient to different speakers.…”

The counterpublic of the J(ewish) Blogosphere: gendered language and the mediation of religious doubt among ultra‐Orthodox Jews in New York

“…The term haymish can be helpfully understood as what Peirce called a ‘quale’, an index that carries across semiotic contexts (Harkness : 575). Qualia link language and materiality to provide the aesthetic and moral grounds for ‘group‐defining conduct and thus for the situated enactment of forms of personhood’ (Harkness : 576). That is, qualia cross forms and practices, highlighting connections among signs based on a semiotic ideology.…”

Let There Be Light: Wauja People and the Practice of Photographic Primitivism in Sebastião Salgado's Genesis

“…Differences in chronotopes are made apparent by authors to audiences through formal devices that together make up distinct genres (Bakhtin ). This means that variable yet reproducible cultural models of narrative space‐time take on particular formal and material qualia (Chumley and Harkness ; Harkness ) through which their contours become tangible as style. The style of a genre is inextricably linked both to its chronotopic narrative framing and to its chronotopic place in history.…”