Jack Sidnell

Jack Sidnell has conducted field research in the Caribbean, Vietnam, India and North America. His interests centre on the intersection of language structure, social interaction and reflexive reanalysis. This set of concerns comes together in a current study of language reform and revolutionary politics in 20th century Vietnam.  

Education

Ph.D. (University of Toronto, 1998)

Representative Publications

Sidnell, J. Revolutionary standpoint as enregistered meta-perspective: Self-examination and class struggle in Vietnamese re-education. Anthropological Quarterly. https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/10

Sidnell, J. Speaking for oneself: Language reform and the Confucian legacy in late colonial Vietnam. In M. Candea et al. eds., Freedoms of Speech: Anthropological Perspectives on Language, Ethics, and Power, University of Toronto Press, 73-93. https://utorontopress.com/9781487550875/freedoms-of-speech/

Sidnell, J. How to speak to the masses, part I: Hồ Chí Minh’s instructions to cadres and the dynamics of register formation in 20th century Vietnam. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, 34(1): 4-22. https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jola.12412

Sidnell, J. How to speak to the masses, part II: Hồ Chí Minh as a moral and linguistic exemplar and the dynamics of register formation in 20th century Vietnam. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, 34(1): 23-44. https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jola.12413?af=R

Sidnell, J. & Vũ, Thị Thanh Hương. On the division of labor in the maintenance of intersubjectivity: Insights from the study of other-initiated repair in Vietnamese. Special issue of Frontiers in Sociology - Conversation Analysis and Sociological Theory, Melisa Stevanovic et al. eds., 8:1-17. https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/sociology/articles/10.3389/fsoc.2023.1205433/full 

Sidnell, J. The inconvenience of tradition: Phan Khôi's pragmatism and his arguments for modernizing language reform. Journal of Vietnamese Studies 18(3): 56-97. https://doi.org/10.1525/vs.2023.18.3.56

Enfield, NJ. and J. Sidnell, Consequences of Language: From Primary to Enhanced Intersubjectivity. MIT Press. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/14795.001.0001

Djenar, D. N. and  J. Sidnell (Eds.) Signs of Deference, Signs of Demeanour: Interlocutor Reference and Self-Other Relations across Southeast Asian Speech Communities. National University of Singapore Press. https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/S/bo185856573.html

Sidnell, J. Technique and the threat of deethicalization. Signs and Society 9(3): 343-365. https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/716433

Sidnell, J. Generic reference and social ontology in Vietnamese conversation. Language in Society 50(4): 533–555. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0047404521000361

Fleming, L. & J. Sidnell, The typology and social pragmatics of interlocutor reference in Southeast Asia. Journal of Asian Linguistic Anthropology 2(3):1-20

Sidnell, J. Sign theory and the materiality of discourse. In Anna De Fina & Alexandra Georgakopoulou eds. The Cambridge Handbook of Discourse Studies. Cambridge University Press, pp. 282-305.

Luong, H. V. & J. Sidnell, Shifting referential perspective in Vietnamese speech interaction. In Enfield, N., Sidnell, J. and C. Zuckerman, Studies in the Anthropology of Language in Mainland Southeast Asia. 

Enfield, N., Kockelman, P. and J. Sidnell (Eds.) Cambridge Handbook of Linguistic Anthropology. Cambridge University Press.

Sidnell, J. & M. Shohet. The problem of peers in Vietnamese interaction. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 19(3): 618-638.