ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses communicative practices and potential notions of language in lowland Indigenous South America by taking two key dimensions into account: that of intersemiotic relations involving image, words, and music, and that of affect that takes place beyond the human/non-human divide. Drawing mainly on applied linguistics and South American Indigenous ethnology, this chapter provides a review of examples coming from ethnographic studies. It emphasises the co-presence and simultaneous engagement of different verbal and non-verbal components by Indigenous peoples in the region—as well as their particular dynamics of affect between people, animals, plants, spirits, and a range of other characters that may not be humans for us, but that are human for themselves. Drawing mainly on applied linguistics and South American Indigenous ethnology, this chapter calls for a broader ontological and epistemological understanding of what counts as “a language” and discusses communicative practices and potential notions of language in some Indigenous communities.
