Alex Pillen specialises in the anthropology of language. A first theoretical piece that explored visual and spatial dimensions of linguistic practice was published in Current Anthropology in 2017 as The Space that Will Never be Filled. This is a study of how language is ‘stretched to its limit’ at times, when humanity becomes reduced to war, brutality, trauma (https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/journals/ca/pr/171206). She coined the term ‘antipodal words’ for words that encapsulate their opposite, or carry out a U-turn in meaning. Such can be the fate of words as they convey death, radical displacement, sacrifice.
Alex Pillen’s interest in …
Alex Pillen specialises in the anthropology of language. A first theoretical piece that explored visual and spatial dimensions of linguistic practice was published in Current Anthropology in 2017 as The Space that Will Never be Filled. This is a study of how language is ‘stretched to its limit’ at times, when humanity becomes reduced to war, brutality, trauma (https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/journals/ca/pr/171206). She coined the term ‘antipodal words’ for words that encapsulate their opposite, or carry out a U-turn in meaning. Such can be the fate of words as they convey death, radical displacement, sacrifice.
Alex Pillen’s interest in the spatial conceptualisation of language led to a collaboration with the architect and composer Emma-Kate Matthews. Metaphors related to weaving, sewing and fabric have been used since ancient times to talk about language. ‘Text’ from the Latin ‘textus’ (woven) is but one example. It is misleading to imagine language simply as words on a page or ephemeral sounds that can be jotted down as musical scores. In order to further explore the complex shapes embedded in a language’s grammar, Alex Pillen and Emma-Kate Matthews used contemporary software that was developed for video animation and gaming. This resulted in a ‘digital weave’ or 3D conceptualisation of natural language published as a co-authored piece with Emma-Kate Matthews in 2022 (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-022-01089-5).
Recent work by Alex Pillen continues this research trajectory or the mobilisation of theory within an anthropology of language to project visual forms based on natural language. In a study of Northern Kurdish or Kurmanji she relies on concepts within the work of Leoš Janáček (1854-1928), Mikhail Bakhtin (1895-1975), Roman Jakobson (1896-1982), Émile Benveniste (1902-1976), William Empson (1906-1984), Josette Rey-Debove (1929-2005), and Julia Kristeva (1941-). In this work visual tropes such as opaqueness and transparency are central to the analysis of spoken Kurdish. Alex Pillen furthermore focusses on the ‘arcs of reflection’ built into the language via quotation and the use of a reflexive pronoun. This work Endurance: Speaking Kurdish in a Warped World will be published as a monograph by Brill (Leiden, Boston) in the autumn of 2024.
For some ideas about Alex Pillen's future research see: https://alexpillen.com/blog/
