Prizes

Edward Sapir Book Prize

Submission Deadline: May 1, 2013

The Edward Sapir Book Prize was established in 2001 and is awarded to a book that makes the most significant contribution to our understanding of language in society, or the ways in which language mediates historical or contemporary sociocultural processes. Beginning in 2012, the Sapir Prize has been awarded annually.

Submissions are now open for the 2013 prize. The SLA invites books with conceptual and theoretical focus, as well as ethnographic and descriptive works. Single-or multi-author books – but not edited collections – are eligible. Books must have been published between June 2011 and December 31, 2012 to be eligible for the 2013 award. Any given book is eligible only in one round of competition.

Three copies of books submitted for consideration should be sent to the address below by May 1, 2013. (Publishers will often send them at the author’s request.) A committee appointed by the president of the SLA will evaluate all submissions. The winner will be determined by late summer 2013 and the author and publisher notified in advance of the AAA annual meeting. The Sapir Prize will be formally awarded at the SLA Business Meeting during the AAA Annual Meeting in 2013.

Three copies of books submitted for consideration should be sent to:

Norma Mendoza-Denton
President, Society for Linguistic Anthropology
The School of Anthropology
1009 East South Campus Drive
P.O.Box 210030
Tucson, AZ 85721-0030

Past Winners of the Edward Sapir Book Prize

2010

William F. Hanks, for Converting Words: Maya in the Age of the Cross.

Honorable mention: Bernard Bate,  for Tamil Oratory and the Dravidian Aesthetic.

Honorable mention: Niko Besnier, for Gossip and the Everyday Production of Politics.

2008

Asif Agha, for Language and Social Relations.

2006

Richard Bauman and Charles Briggs, for Voices of Modernity: Language Ideologies and the Politics of Inequality.

2004

Robert Bringhurst and his posthumous co-authors Ghandl and Skaay, for the three-volume work Masterworks of the Classical Haida Mythtellers.

Honorable mention: Dennis Tedlock, for Rabinal Achi: A Mayan Drama of War and Sacrifice.

2002

Alexandra Jaffe, for Ideologies in Action: Language Politics on Corsica.

Honorable mention: Laura Ahearn, for Invitations to Love: Literacy, Love Letters, and Social Change in Nepal.

Annual Student Essay Prize

The Society for Linguistic Anthropology holds an annual student essay competition at both undergraduate and graduate levels. In order to be eligible for one of these awards, the applicant must have been either a graduate or undergraduate student in a degree-granting program when the paper was written; must be the sole author of the paper; and must submit the paper no more than two years after it was written.

The paper must be an original work based on original research conducted by the author. It will be evaluated on the basis of clarity, significance to the field, and substantive contribution. The paper should be suitable for submission to the Journal of Linguistic Anthropology and must not exceed 25 double-spaced pages, not including bibliography. At the time of submission for this competition, the paper must not have been published or submitted for publication.

The winner in each category (graduate and undergraduate) will receive a $500 prize and a grant of up to $300 to cover expenses for travel to the AAA meeting to accept the award.

Graduate Student Paper Prize Competition:  March 11 deadline

The Society for Linguistic Anthropology would like to invite submissions of graduate student papers for the SLA’s Annual Student Essay Prize.  Papers should be submitted by the deadline, which is March 11, 2013.  Detailed information is below.

Due to the ongoing success of the Graduate Student Paper Prize roundtable at the AAA, we will be including another roundtable in the program this year (note, the undergraduate student paper prize competition is not affected by this and will be announced as usual).  The SLA is calling for graduate students to submit papers to the section by March 11^th; the winner and finalists will then be invited to participate in an SLA-sponsored workshop at the 2013 AAA meetings in Chicago, along with this year’s competition judges, Michael Silverstein and Kira Hall.  In order to be eligible for the award, the applicant must have been a graduate student in a degree-granting program when the paper was written; must be the sole author of the paper; and must submit the paper no more than two years after it was written.  The paper must be an original work based on original research conducted by the author.  It will be evaluated on the basis of clarity, significance to the field, and substantive contribution.  The paper should be suitable for submission to the Journal of Linguistic Anthropology and must not exceed 25 double-spaced pages, not including bibliography.  At the time of submission for this competition, the paper must not have been published or submitted for publication.

The paper must be submitted electronically in either .pdf or .doc format by the March 11 deadline.  It should be sent to Jillian Cavanaugh, SLA Member at Large (at the email below).  The cover sheet should include the title of the paper; the author’s name; the author’s email address; the author’s college or university affiliation; and the name of the faculty member who served as the student’s advisor with respect to the writing of the paper.   Please contact Jillian Cavanaugh with any questions: jcavanaugh@brooklyn.cuny.edu.

Undergraduate Student Paper Prize Competition:  June 15 July 15 deadline

Submissions will be evaluated by a panel of judges. A prize will be awarded in each category only if a submission of sufficiently high quality is received. The winner or winners will be announced at the SLA business meeting, which is held during the annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association. The winner in each category (undergraduate and graduate) receives an award certificate as well as a cash prize.

The paper must be submitted electronically in either .pdf or .doc format. It should be sent to Jillian Cavanaugh (SLA Member at Large) at jcavanaugh@brooklyn.cuny.edu by the deadline of June 15 July 15. The cover sheet should include the title of the paper; the author’s name; the author’s email address; the author’s college or university affiliation; the prize category (undergraduate or graduate) for which the paper is being submitted; and the name of the faculty member who served as the student’s advisor with respect to the writing of the paper.

Annual Student Essay Prize Winners

2012

Graduate

Winner: Jennifer Guzman (UCLA), The Epistemics of Symptom Experience and Symptom Accounts in Mapuche Healing and Pediatric Primary Care in Southern Chile.

Runners-up: Charles Zuckerman (University of Michigan), Dario Valles (Northwestern), and Lauren Zentz (University of Arizona).

Undergraduate

Winner: Kamala Russell from the University of Chicago, with a paper entitled, Form and function: Character Viewpoint Gestures in Dialogic Narrative.

Runner-up is Hannah Carlan (New York University) “It’s a Brown Thing”: Gender, Stereotyping, and Humorous Conversation in a South Asian Community of Practice.

2011

Graduate

Winner: Rebecca M. Pardo (University of Pennsylvania), “There was nothing racial that I said”: Reality Television and The Metapragmatics of Racism

Runners-up:

• Antonio José Bacelar da Silva (University of Arizona), Dialogism in the Brazilian Black Movement’s Affirmative Language Practices;
• Elizabeth Peacock (University of California San Diego), Stance-Taking in a Social Minefield: Ukrainian Youth and Emigration Discourses;
• Lynnette Arnold (University of California, Santa Barbara), “Getting Your Hands Dirty”: Participation in Ideology and Interaction at a California Community Bike Shop

Undergraduate

Winner: Janet Connor (University of Chicago), National standardization or strength in diversity? Language ideological debates in the south of France

Honorable Mentions: Alex Warburton (University of Chicago) “That’s ama:::zing, Jeremy”: Parody and the emerging gendered enregisterment of creaky voice in American English; and Karen M. Kuhn (New York University) Portraits of the White Uniform: Linguistic play and cultural symbols in a Catalan sports-comedy series

2010

Graduate: Nicholas Harkness (University of Chicago), for “Vowel Harmony Redux: A Binary Structure of Attribution in Korean and Its Ideological Framings.

Undergraduate: Jade Sewa De La Paz (Brooklyn College CUNY), for “OMG, Guess What?!”: The Indispensability of Gossip in Community Building.

2009

Graduate: Benjamin K. Smith (University of Chicago), for “Of Marbles and (Little) Men: Bad Luck, Aymara Boyhood and Masculine Identification.”

Undergraduate: Ruairidh Falconer (University of Aberdeen), for “Santiago Atitlán: Globalisation and Bilingual Development among Youth in a Mayan Town.”

2008

Graduate: Alejandro Paz (University of Chicago), for “The Circulation of Chisme and Rumor: Gossip, Evidentiality, and Authority in the Perspective of Latino Labor Migrants in Israel.”

Undergraduate: Lauren E. Deal (George Washington University), for “Fat Birds and Intercostals: Ideologies of Science and Poetry in Bel Canto Singing.”

2007

Graduate: Isaac Gagné (Yale University), for “Role-Playing and ‘Women’s Language’ in Japan’s Gothic/Lolita Subculture.”

Undergraduate, honorary mention: Lauren Knapp (Grinnell College), for “The Way It Ought to Be: Objectification through Bluegrass Performance.”

2006

No prize awarded.

2005

Graduate: Heather Loyd (University of California, Los Angeles), for “Language Socialization in Nicastro, Italy.”

2004

No prize awarded.

2003

Graduate: Joseph Sung-Yul Park (University of California, Santa Barbara), for “Ideological Aspects of Korean EnglishYumeo.”

2002

Graduate (two prizes awarded):

M. Eleanor Culley (University of Virginia), for “Learning to Listen: Confronting Two Meanings of ‘Language Loss’ in the Contemporary White Mountain Speech Community.”

and

Jonathan Larson (University of Michigan), for “Ambiguous Transparency: Résumé Fetishism in a Slovak Workshop.”

2001

Graduate: Sarah Meacham (University of California, Los Angeles), for “Getting Schooled: Rehabilitative Practices in a Los Angeles Court School.”

Honorable mention, graduate: Angela Reyes (University of Pennsylvania), for “Emergent Paradigms of Asian American Identity.”