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Snack Sharing and the Moral Metalanguage of Exchange: Children's Reproduction of Rank‐Based Redistribution in Senegal
Author(s) -
YountAndré Chelsie
Publication year - 2016
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.12108
Subject(s) - semiotics , sociology , negotiation , reproduction , materiality (auditing) , psychology , social psychology , epistemology , aesthetics , social science , ecology , philosophy , biology
Adults in Senegal explain children's snack sharing practices as the product of gender and age differences in children's temperament, describing older girls as better behaved and thus better suited to divvy up food. But close examination of children's language practices while sharing food reveals the nuanced semiotic strategies they draw on to negotiate rights to material resources. This article builds on Judith Irvine's research into the intersections of language and material exchange, to shed light on the ways children participate in the reproduction of linguistic forms that mediate material circulation. Analysis of snack sharing between siblings in Dakar illustrates how children embody contrasting semiotic practices linked to caste‐based modes of behavior. I argue that the semiotic resources children use to negotiate obligation and entitlement while sharing food can illuminate the naturalization of morally charged forms of language materiality that underpin material circulation according to asymmetrical, but complimentary social roles.