The Verbal Artistry of Julius Malema
LANGUAGE AND CULTURE The Verbal Artistry of Julius Malema From the Anthro News Blog Language and Culture Column. Guest Columnist Steven P. Black Steven P. Black, Department of Anthropology, Rutgers University In November of 2011, political youth leader Julius Malema was suspended from the ruling party of South Africa, the African National Congress (ANC). The [...]
Siri on Anthropology News
Parsing natural language input to determine what is actually wanted by us humans is difficult, very much because so many contextual clues are buried within linguistic forms that are often quite indirect.
For Ebonics, the New Milennium Is Pretty Much Like the Old One
Language and Culture (Anthro News Blog) I am delighted to announce the launch of the Language and Culture column on the Anthropology News blog. Jacqueline Messing, Richard Senghas and I will be sharing editorial duties for the blog for the coming year. My first act as co-editor was to ask Ronald Kephardt for an update on [...]
SLA Anthro News Column
SLA Column for May 2011 Mark Allen Peterson and James Stanlaw Linguistic Moments in the Movies, Part VII By Mark Allen Peterson (Miami U) It’s time for our annual roundup of films and film clips suitable for initiating discussions about language—or just a good laugh at the way the media industry represents language. The Gods [...]
Developing Expertise
By Mark Allen Peterson (MiamiU) Journalist Alix Spiegel’s feature story “When Did We Become Mentally Modern?” on National Public Radio’s All Things Considered in August 2010 raised a wide-ranging discussion on the Linganth listserv about the expertise of linguistic anthropologists. While a well-intentioned effort, its descriptions of language and semiotics were… simplistic—to be generous. The [...]
