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Inscribing the Miraculous Place: Writing and Ritual Communication in the Chapel of a Guatemalan Popular Saint
Author(s) -
Knowlton Timothy W.
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
journal of linguistic anthropology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.463
H-Index - 49
eISSN - 1548-1395
pISSN - 1055-1360
DOI - 10.1111/jola.12100
Subject(s) - semiotics , chapel , saint , sign (mathematics) , sociology , anthropology , modalities , aesthetics , history , literature , linguistics , art , art history , philosophy , mathematical analysis , mathematics
The analysis of ritual in linguistic anthropology has witnessed significant advances in recent years, particularly those approaches which theorize ritual as fundamentally semiotic and ritual actions being composed of different kinds of sign relations across multiple modalities. B uilding on S ilverstein's (2009) analysis of the interdiscursive chains of signification linking private and public rituals, this article examines how writing in the form of votive text‐artifacts is used by G uatemalan devotees to a popular saint as a public metasemiotic index substantiating the successful performance of their private ritual encounters, contributing to our broader understanding of writing's semiotic potential in ritual communication.