Educating Tibetans in Tibetan?
A Fork in the Chinese Road: Educating Tibetans in Tibetan? Susan D. Blum December 23, 2011 Earlier this month a Tibetan monk set himself on fire. It was the twelfth incidence of Tibetan self-immolation by a monk or nun since March, according to unverified but plausible reports. These acts of desperation continue a long line [...]
Occupying Language
H. Samy Alim writing in the NY Times about “What if We Occupied Language?” http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/21/what-if-we-occupied-language/ When I flew out from the San Francisco airport last October, we crossed above the ports that Occupy Oakland helped shut down, and arrived in Germany to be met by traffic caused by Occupy Berlin protestors. But the movement has [...]
Executive order on Native American Language Revitalization
The Linguistic Society of America’s Committee on Endangered Languages and their Preservation is carrying out a letter-writing campaign to urge President Obama to sign an executive order. According to the LSA-CELP, “U.S. government agencies would be directed to ensure that their policies, procedures, and functions support community-based language revitalization. It would compel governmental agencies to follow through on the promises of the Native American Languages Act and the Esther Martinez Native American Languages Preservation Act.”
Language Links #3
This piece does not reflect the official opinion of the Society for Linguistic Anthropology, its officers or its individual members. One of the most important functions of this blog is to inform people of current work being done within linguistic anthropology. As part of this, all linguistic anthropologists are invited to discuss current publications including [...]
Call for Papers: Computational Models of Narrative
This post does not reflect the official opinions of the SLA, its officers or individual members. I thought this call for papers was interesting as it directly connects to the discussion we have been having in Language Links on computational models, cheers, Leila International Workshop on Computational Models of Narrative May 20-22, 2012, Istanbul, Turkey [...]
Response to Language Links #2
This post does not reflect the official opinions of the Society for Linguistic Anthropology, the SLA Blog or individual members of the SLA. From: Aaron Bady, Oakland, CA: http://zunguzungu.wordpress.com/ Do you notice how none of the “don’t read” stuff in that article are actually quotes from Moretti? For example, here’s Moretti: “[W]hy set quantitative evidence in [...]
Language Links #2
These comments do not necessarily reflect the official opinions of the Society of Linguistic Anthropology, its officers or individual members. In the June 24, 2011 edition of the New York Times, Kathryn Schulz reviews Franco Moretti’s work on “distant reading,” the analysis of literary texts such as Hamlet or Victorian novels. Reacting to a paper [...]
Combatting Linguistic Inaccuracies in the Census
Last week, after years of urging, the Census Bureau released this statement: In response to concerns expressed by data user groups, the Census Bureau decided to eliminate the term “linguistic isolation” for data products issued starting in 2011. We have changed the terminology to one that we feel is more descriptive and less stigmatizing. The [...]
Language Links #1
This is the first of columns listing links in the news connected to language. These links do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the Society for Linguistic Anthropology but are connected to topics that members might be interested in. Reaction pieces and comments welcome. From the New York Times: “Phonetic Clues Hint Language Is Africa-Born” [...]
Marketing language abilities
Recently some scholars in language acquisition and education have posted links on Facebook to the Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood (henceforth CCFC), which is asking the US Federal Trade Commission to stop the company Your Baby Can Read (YBCR) from advertising its products. According to CCFC, YBCR sells a system that promises to teach [...]
