Linguistic Anthropology in 2018: Signifying Movement

Using the keyword movement , this essay reviews linguistic anthropological research that appeared in 2018 (November 2017 to October 2018) to highlight how linguistic anthropology continues and extends the discipline's traditional focus on the deep embeddedness of language in the dynamism of sociocultural practice. Based on an overview of works on (1) itineraries of people, (2) tensions with the nation‐state, (3) shifts in the political economy, (4) digital communicative practices, (5) metasemiotic chains of interdiscursivity, and (6) movements of social transformation, the essay argues that the effort to signify movement is what allows linguistic anthropology to understand and represent the agentive yet constrained ways in which people engage with the world, navigating time‐space and enacting transformations of social and material conditions of life. It concludes by claiming that an orientation to movement suggests a way forward for the discipline, opening up doors for greater transdisciplinary and international collaborations. [ year in review, linguistic anthropology, movement, mobility, social transformation, transdisciplinarity ]