Edward Sapir Book Prize
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. *Now awarded every two years*
Winners of the Edward Sapir Book Prize
2021
Susan Gal and Judith Irvine for Signs of Difference: Language and Ideology in Social Life
Honorable Mention: Inge Kral and Elizabeth Marrkilyi Giles Ellis for In the Time of Their Lives. Wangka kutjupa-kutjuparringu: How talk has changed in the Western Desert
Honorable Mention: Aurora Donzelli for Methods of Desire: Language, Mortality and Affect in Neoliberal Indonesia
2019
Charles Goodwin for Cooperative Action: Learning in Doing, Social, Cognitive, and Computational Perspectives
2017
Kathryn Woolard for Singular and Plural: Ideologies of Linguistic Authority in 21st Century Catalonia
Honorable mention: Sonia Das, for Linguistic Rivalries: Tamil Migrants and Anglo-Franco Conflicts
Honorable mention: Erika Hoffmann-Dilloway, for Signing and Belonging in Nepal
2016
Angela Reyes and Stanton Wortham, for Discourse Analysis beyond the Speech Event
2015
Kristina Wirtz, for Performing Afro-Cuba: Image, Voice, Spectacle in the Making of Race and History.
2014
Francis Cody, for The Light of Knowledge: Literacy Activism and the Politics of Writing in South India.
Nicholas Harkness, for Songs of Seoul An Ethnography of Voice and Voicing in Christian South Korea.
2013
Paul Manning, for Semiotics of Drink and Drinking.
2012
Summerson Carr, for Scripting Addiction: The Politics of Therapeutic Talk and American Sobriety.
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.
New Voices Book Prize
The New Voices Book Prize was established in 2021 and is awarded to a book by a junior scholar that makes a pathbreaking contribution to our understanding of language in society, or the ways in which language mediates historical or contemporary sociocultural processes.
Winners of the New Voices Book Prize
2023
Scott Maclochlainn for The Copy Generic: How the Nonspecific Makes Our Social Worlds
Piers Kelly for The Last Language on Earth: Linguistic Utopianism in the Philippines.
Honorable Mention: Xochitl Marsilli-Vargas for Genres of Listening: An Ethnography of Psychoanalysis in Buenos Aires
2021 (Inaugural Year)
Juan Luis Rodríguez for Language and Revolutionary Magic in the Orinoco Delta
Honorable Mention: Nicholas Emlen for Language, Coffee, and Migration on an Andean-Amazonian Frontier
Honorable Mention: Jonathan Rosa for Looking like a Language, Sounding like a Race: Raciolinguistic Ideologies and the Learning of Latinidad