This essay reveals the play of fiction and reality in cinematic depictions of Native Amazonian language and speech in films from the 1980s to the present. It considers these linguistic representations, linguistic simulacra, to be tokens of “primitivist linguistic imagery,” part of a broader semiotics of primitivism that invokes a set of assumptions about modernity and primitivity as well as understandings of Native (Amazonian) Peoples as primitive. Analysis reveals techniques and semiotic processes that entangle illusion with realism in the construction of cinematic fictions of Native Amazonian language and speech. Specific linguistic ideologies and assumptions support the strategies of linguistic manipulation involved in these constructions and enable “sound-blind” audiences to take linguistic simulacra as the sound of primitivity and believable expressions of Native Amazonian radical alterity. The essay demonstrates that linguistic imagery plays a major role in the cinematic construction of Native Amazonian primitivity and audiences’ sensory—especially acoustic—experience of it. By enriching appreciation of the role of language—and, more broadly, the acoustic modality—within primitivist imagery and aesthetics, the analysis contributes to the decentering of (Euro-American) anthropological ocularcentrism and to a critical anthropology of primitivism.

中文翻译：

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从“呃”到 Babble（或 Babel）

这篇文章揭示了 1980 年代至今电影中亚马逊土著语言和演讲的电影描绘中虚构和现实的作用。它认为这些语言表征、语言拟像是“原始主义语言意象”的象征，是更广泛的原始主义符号学的一部分，它援引了一系列关于现代性和原始性的假设，以及对土著（亚马逊）人民作为原始人的理解。分析揭示了在亚马逊土著语言和语音的电影小说的构建中将幻觉与现实主义纠缠在一起的技术和符号学过程。特定的语言意识形态和假设支持这些结构中涉及的语言操纵策略，并使“声音盲”的观众能够将语言拟像视为亚马逊原住民激进他异性的原始和可信表达的声音。这篇文章表明，语言意象在亚马逊原住民原始性的电影构建和观众的感官体验中发挥着重要作用，尤其是听觉体验。通过丰富对原始主义意象和美学中语言的作用——更广泛地说，是声学模态——的欣赏，该分析有助于（欧美）人类学眼中心主义的去中心化和原始主义的批判人类学。这篇文章表明，语言意象在亚马逊原住民原始性的电影构建和观众的感官体验中发挥着重要作用，尤其是听觉体验。通过丰富对原始主义意象和美学中语言的作用——更广泛地说，是声学模态——的欣赏，该分析有助于（欧美）人类学眼中心主义的去中心化和原始主义的批判人类学。这篇文章表明，语言意象在亚马逊原住民原始性的电影构建和观众的感官体验中发挥着重要作用，尤其是听觉体验。通过丰富对原始主义意象和美学中语言的作用——更广泛地说，是声学模态——的欣赏，该分析有助于（欧美）人类学眼中心主义的去中心化和原始主义的批判人类学。