salāam tahīyah: greetings from the highlands of Yemen

Abstract

The North Yemeni speech event of greeting as a rich semiotic act is interesting to analyze from both a linguistic and an anthropological point of view. It is argued that an indexical or pragmatic approach combined with an “interpretive” or symbolic understanding of culture may lead to the most interesting insights into verbal forms and their social meanings. In particular, it is argued that different constructs of the “person” are created in the speech event. [Arabic, ethnography of communication, interpretive anthropology, and self]