Catherine R. Rhodes
In my recent upper-division, undergraduate course, Language and Culture, most students were unfamiliar with linguistic anthropology, with what linguistic anthropologists do, and the potential value of the sub-field’s contributions. Many students enrolled in the course because it is a requirement for the undergraduate BA program in Ethnology (cultural-linguistic anthropology) or because it fulfills a course requirement for the required secondary or tertiary anthropological subfields track for their degree program (archaeology and evolutionary anthropology). The course also fulfills a requirement for students from the Linguistic and Communication & Journalism Departments. Therefore, a key task of the semester was to develop a widely shared understanding of what linguistic anthropology is and what it does.
I usually structured weekly readings to include one chapter from Laura Ahearn’s (2017) introductory text, Living Language, and a journal article, book chapter, movie, or other material that could help exemplify how the concepts in Ahearn’s text could be applied to the world to make sense of the complex nature of social life. In each class, students also presented their own examples of how they saw the course concepts as useful for making sense of the world around them.
Over the semester, through a variety of readings and materials, assignments, and discussion, we stressed the relational, reflexive, and constitutive nature of communicative encounters (Carr 2010; Mehan 1996). Jan Blommaert’s (2001) research on asylum seeker narratives helped demonstrate the situationally contingent value of communicative performances in constructing people through officially legible (or not) narratives claiming asylum status. At a larger scale, we surveyed research demonstrating the critical importance of linguistic norms and ideologies to producing the “modern” nation state (Gold 1989; Smith 1982; Weber 1976).
In the fall of 2019, I tried out a new assignment with students. Replacing an essay, instead I asked students to submit a product of their choosing that would allow them to communicate a linguistic anthropological concept to individuals who had no background in anthropology or in the study of ‘language.’ Among the things they created were brochures, a song, advertisements, video vignettes, and a radio spot. In our course, we focused on developing an understanding of ‘language’ as a socially enacted, communicative system that people situationally mobilize in daily life to accomplish social work. We questioned what we thought we knew and stretched the bounds of our understanding of ‘language.’ Students worked to come to understand ‘language’ and other communicative phenomena as key means through which social work is done, such as how sociological differentiators like ‘gender’ and ‘race’ become socially salient.
In response to the assignment that asked students to practice communicating linguistic anthropological concepts to broader audiences, two students offered responses that I would like to share with the SLA community. Both highlight the potential for students to successfully demonstrate understanding of course material through creative alternate assignment formats (especially now while we are having classes online). Often the products of these assignments are productive and accessible means through which students can share course content with friends and family members who are unfamiliar with linguistic anthropological tools and insights.
First, Jacob Sandoval created a brief radio spot that deftly weaves personal and academic material together to offer a concise definition of, and justification for studying, linguistic anthropology.
Language and Culture was the first course on language that Mr. Sandoval had taken. He found the course enlightening and, in the radio spot he produced in response to the course assignment, he encourages other students to take courses of this nature, because they can shed light on the practices of everyday life. Mr. Sandoval’s own inclusion of autobiographical details—done in relation to course theory—suggests the importance of articulating course material to lived experiences for enhancing student learning, understanding, and teaching.
Second, Mr. Romero, a gifted musician, composed a song that he sung in front of the class while playing the acoustic guitar.
In the song, he points to the multifunctionality of language and to how words can carry non-referential meanings. I congratulate Messrs. Sandoval and Romero on these insightful contributions. I hope that you will enjoy and learn from them as much as I have, offering new ideas for creatively engaging students in extending the linguistic anthropological classroom into the practices of everyday life.
Student Creative Contribution and Song Lyrics
“Just Say The Words”
By Daniel Romero
Right from the start Ahearn gives us this idea of a “socially charged life of language” and presents us to some questions regarding language. One of these questions has to do with how language shows the ways in which we are the same yet extremely different. As we have explored many different uses of language, this song explores the idea of “indexicality” specifically. Words can mean so much and what is said can depend on multiple things such as context, intonation, delivery. “Just say the words” implies that many words might have been said in the singer’s relationship but he seems to be looking for certain words that are “socially charged” in a very specific way. In other words, you can say a lot of words but not say anything; you can say one word and say everything!
Lyrics:
Just say the words words
[Verse 1]A picture’s worth a thousand words
But what are words really worth?
You feel so far away
Does what you say, in any way
Correlate to more than just these
sounds and breaks
[Pre Chorus]Mm-mmm
Just say the words
Mm-mmm
Just say the words
[Verse 2]Words of love, words of hate
Words to mean, words to state
It’s all right there
Words can build words can break
Words can give and words can take
We’re so close to here
[Pre Chorus]Mm-mmm
Just say the words
Mm-mmm
Just say the words
[Chorus]What do our words really say?
So much more than you think
So much more than sounds
I believe that we can state
So much more than we really say
I know we can we work this out
Mm-mmm
Just say the words
Mm-mmm
Just say the words
[Bridge]So say what you really mean
Instead of all this make belief
One word means so many things
And I can’t go on just guessing
[Chorus]What do your words really say?
much more than what you think
So much more than sounds
Everything that you just said
Now I know what you meant
I know we can we work this out
Mm-mmm
Just say the words
Mm-mmm
Just say the words
References
-Ahearn, Laura M. 2017. Living Language: An Introduction to Linguistic Anthropology. 2nd ed. Hoboken: Wiley-Blackwell.
-Blommaert, Jan. 2001. “Investigating Narrative Inequality: African Asylum Seekers’ Stories in Belgium.” Discourse & Society 12 (4): 413–49.
-Carr, E. Summerson. 2010. “Enactments of Expertise.” Annual Review of Anthropology 39 (1): 17–32. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.anthro.012809.104948.
-Cohn, Carol. 1987. “Sex and Death in the Rational World of Defense Intellectuals.” Signs 12 (4): 687–718.
-Gold, David. 1989. “A Sketch of the Linguistic Situation in Israel Today.” Language in Society 18 (3): 361–88.
-Kroskrity, Paul V. 2004. “Language Ideologies.” In A Companion to Linguistic Anthropology, edited by Alexandro Duranti, 496–517. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.
-Mehan, Hugh. 1996. “The Construction of an LD Student: A Case Study in the Politics of Representation.” In Natural Histories of Discourse, edited by Michael Silverstein and Greg Urban, 253–76. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
-Smith, Anthony D. 1982. “Language and Nationalism.” The Incorporated Linguist 21 (4): 144–47.
-Weber, Eugene. 1976. “Civilizing in Earnest: Schools and Schooling.” In Civilizing in Earnest: Schools and Schooling. In Peasants into Frenchmen: The Modernization of Rural France, 1870-1914, 303–38. Stanford: Stanford University Press.