This article suggests that linguistic anthropology offers useful
analytical tools to documentary studies because both fields wrestle with questions
that emerge from the circulation of indexical representations that are putatively
constructing truths. Linguistic anthropology is deeply concerned with the ways
that texts circulate, and how this circulation affects how indexical representations
are structured and how constructions of reality are produced. The question this
article tackles is: how can insights that linguistic anthropologists have been
developing about circulation, indexicality, and the construction of facts be
usefully mobilised to think about documentaries?