Leila
Leila Monaghan is Digital Content Editor for this SLA Website. She has a PhD in linguistic anthropology from UCLA and has done work on the development of language and cultures of the Deaf community of New Zealand and internationally. She also does research on the history of linguistic anthropology and local women's groups.
Celso Alvarez Caccamo on Catalan Language Policies
Celso Alvarez Caccamo had such an interesting response to my first roundup that I have pasted it in full so anyone seeing the blog will see it. I was tempted to remove the Altalang.com link but will leave it (and its evidence of my utter lack of knowledge about Spanish dialects and Iberian penninsula languages) [...]
Linguistic Anthropology Roundup #2: Our Man at the Times, Ben Zimmer
A special edition of the Linguistic Anthropology Roundup to introduce, Ben Zimmer, a Chicago-trained linguistic anthropologist, linguist and lexicographer who was just appointed as the New York Times’s Sunday Magazine, “On Language” columnist.
Linguistic Anthropology Roundup #1
Welcome to the inaugural Society for Linguistic Anthropology Roundup Blogpost that will briefly summarize some of the current interesting linguistic anthropology related materials available on the web. Three of us, Alex Enkerli (SLA Web Guru), Chad Nilep (a regular blogger on this site), and myself (Leila Monaghan, SLA Digital Content Editor), will share the duties [...]
Wyoming Language, Culture and History Conference
We got so many interesting paper proposals that we have extended the conference for an extra half day so we could fit them all in. The Wyoming Language, Culture and History Conference now runs from Thursday, July to Saturday, July 3. See full blog post for the preliminary program
CFP AAA: Circulating Discourses of Past and Present: Linguistic Anthropology and History
History traditionally was part of linguistic anthropology but in more recent years much of the focus of the field has been on close analysis of specific events rather than ideas of the past and historical patterns. This panel aims to bring many notions of history back into circulation within the field of linguistic anthropology and [...]
SLA Call for Invited Sessions
It’s that time of year again: The Society for Linguistic Anthropology (SLA) invites your submissions for the American Anthropological Association’s 2010 Annual Meeting, to be held in New Orleans, on November 17-21. As this year’s SLA Section Program Editor, I am writing to encourage you to submit invited sessions, volunteered sessions, and volunteered papers and posters so that we can have an exciting meeting in New Orleans this November. The theme of the 2010 Meeting is “Circulation.” I hope that you will consider orienting your panels to the conference theme, although you do not have to do so.
Language, Culture and History Conference
Language, Culture and History conference
Call for Papers, Abstracts due March 1
Official Website: http://uwadmnweb.uwyo.edu/anthropology/info.asp?p=19234
Department of Anthropology
Co-sponsored by the journal Ethnohistory
University of Wyoming
July 1-2, 2010
Joint Call for Papers for Society for Linguistic Anthropology and Council on Anthropology and Education
Charting Multilingual Confluences within Education Eric Johnson (ejj AT tricity.wsu.edu) Building on the “Circulation” theme for the 2010 AAA meetings, the committee on Multicultural and Multilingual Education within the Council on Anthropology & Education would like to invite presentation proposals to be considered for participation on an “Invited” session panel. The general aim of this [...]
Economist on the World’s Hardest Language
The Economist picks Tuyuca, an Eastern Amazon language as the world’s hardest language for its 50-140 noun classes http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15108609 (Thanks to Alexander King and Sierra for the link).
A quick overview of sign languages
Basic Background:
Sign languages are different from both spoken languages and from each other. There is no universal sign language. Because Deaf people can’t hear the spoken language of the country, a sign language like American Sign Language has a different grammar from spoken language. It is also different from other sign languages—even British Sign Language—because of the separate histories of American and British Deaf communities. Sign languages are also not spelled out words, although fingerspelling can be used if you want to translate a written words like the name of an unfamiliar town into sign language.
