Moorings: Linguistic Practices and the Tethering of Action, Status, and Experience.

Linguistic practices allow individuals to build conceptions of experience that are culture specific and community shared. We examine this process in relation to a metalinguistic convention for describing vocal sounds in upland central Laos. We argue that linguistic practices are moorings, in two ways. First, for individuals, a linguistic practice is a public fixture to which action, status, and experience are conceptually tied. Second, for communities, the category serves as a communal fixture that associates may coordinate around. We elaborate a model of the community calibration of experience, proposing mechanisms that motivate and guide people in constructing effectively shared representations. This results in intersubjectively shared moorings for action, status, and experience. Such moorings play a fundamental role in coordinating human society and culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]