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
Accent, Race, and Social Preferences
A piece in Scientific American Mind called “Accents Trump Skin Color” reviews work by Katherine Kinzler and colleagues suggesting that, for young children, accent is as important as visual cues to race, gender, and age in selecting friends. The magazine article was interesting, and led me to look for the research paper it was based on.
Basic Color Terms + Gender Stereotypes
The perfect cartoon for teaching Deborah Cameron and Berlin and Kay
Study the life and culture of the Highland Maya (Deadline: March 26, 2010)
Ethnographic Field School in Highlan Guatemala 6 undergraduate credits in anthropology May 25–July 8, 2010 (two days on-campus, six weeks abroad) Maury Hutcheson, Ph.D. mhutcheson@vcu.edu Program cost: $2,380 (includes roundtrip airfare) plus applicable VCU tuition[1] Based in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala, this six-week program will provide students with a comprehensive overview of Mayan indigenous life in Guatemala, [...]
CFP Volunteer Session AAA 2010: “Circulate-able” Selves
CFP Volunteer Session AAA 2010: How We Formulate “Circulate-able” Selves: Introductions as a Social and Political Discourse Genre. Send to Nathaniel Dumas by March 15th, 2010.
Toyota and Japanese orthography
A radio quiz program suggested that Toyota uses a character written with eight strokes, while Toyoda uses one with ten, and that eight is a more auspicious number. This is strange for at least two reasons.
It turns out that BBC News contributor Kathryn Westcott published an article last week addressing the question, “Why is the car giant Toyota not Toyoda?” which does a pretty good job explaining the apparent inconsistency.
Logo Contest (Deadline: May 1, 2010)
In order to form a more perfect Society for Linguistic Anthropology and provide the SLA with a recognizable visual identity, we would like to have a logo that we can use as an avatar in diverse social media contexts (Twitter and Facebook, especially). To that end we are having a logo design competition, open to anyone involved directly or indirectly with the SLA.
The deadline for this contest is May 1, 2010, and we will award a prize of $100 for the winning design.
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 [...]
An orphan by any other name…?
I know very little about adoption practices in Haiti, and all I know about events in that country since the earthquake last January I have learned from the news media. Still, I wonder whether the thing that American missionaries call an orphanage is really the same as what most Haitians think of as an orphelinat. It appears that Haitian orphanages are quite different from my own image of an orphanage.
AAA 2010: SLA Call for Invited Sessions
AAA 2010: SLA Call for Invited Sessions
