2018/10/21 by Miyako Inoue · 1 voice · 1 citation
Arts and Humanities · Social Sciences · #Linguistic Variation and Morphology #Multilingual Education and Policy #Translation Studies and Practices
paper · pdf · doi:10.1146/annurev-anthro-102116-041654
openalex publication_date 2018/10/21 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/26
Verbatim—word for word—is assumed to be a text that faithfully captures and represents a discursive event that took place in time and space, which would otherwise be ephemeral and unrepeatable. In modern societies, verbatim stands in for durable indexicality and materializes the social epistemology of evidence, accountability, and authenticity. Today's ubiquitous presence of recording technologies amplifies the conviction that the production of verbatim as in the conversion, for example, from speech to writing is unmediated and transparently mechanical. Far from being unremarkable, however, the seemingly unmotivated commensurability between original and copy is an ideological function of social reproduction and institutional power. Building on both classic and contemporary linguistic anthropological and sociolinguistic studies of verbatim texts, this review suggests how ethnographically situated studies of verbatim in its production and process open up cogent historical and political analysis of social institutions and relations and of subject formation through the labor of inscription.