Your own private griot
P. Kerim Friedman, NDHU In her now classic 1989 paper on language and political economy, Judith Irvine talked about situations where language doesn’t merely index… Read More »Your own private griot
P. Kerim Friedman, NDHU In her now classic 1989 paper on language and political economy, Judith Irvine talked about situations where language doesn’t merely index… Read More »Your own private griot
Reposted comment by Susan M. DiGiacomo John Tagliabue’s New York Times article on the new Catalan law mandating the dubbing and/or subtitling of 50% of… Read More »Susan DiGiacomo on Catalan
Yesterday John McWhorter discussed the recent call by the DEA to hire “Ebonics translators” on Talk of the Nation. He did a good job describing his positions on translation and education, but his parting remarks on the nature of language variation were cut short. I presume to expand the description.
Roundup #13 looks at fear of the number thirteen, as well as the study of WEIRD subjects in psychology.
Nice interview with Arika Okrent on her new book “In the Land of Invented Languages” including a good description of the Whorf Hypothesis and an in depth discussion of a variety of invented languages.
Kathryn Woolard, SLA President The question of linguistic relativity is the topic of an August 29, 2010 New York Times magazine article, “You Are What… Read More »Linguistic Relativity, Whorf, Linguistic Anthropology
Comments by Michel DeGraff on responses to his petition on Haitian Kreyòl As it turns out, these responses echo age-old arguments about the (mis)use of… Read More »Michel DeGraff on Haitian Kreyòl
Stanley Fish notes that critics of the so-called ‘Ground Zero mosque’ see the terrorist attacks of September 11 as an act committed by Islam, for which all Muslims are responsible. In contrast, the stabbing of a cab driver by an attacker who reportedly asked the driver if he is Muslim is seen as “the act of a disturbed individual,” not a representative of an anti-Islamic position.
A lengthy excerpt from Guy Deutscher’s new book examines current evidence for linguistic relativity: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/29/magazine/29language-t.html?src=me&ref=homepage
From: Leila Monaghan, University of Wyoming, 8/25/10 Interesting article in the New York Times on changing peer review process on articles. Makes me think about… Read More »Peer Previewing
Repost of an article by H. Samy Alim and Imani Perry originally written for the The Grio blog: http://www.thegrio.com/opinion/why-the-deas-embrace-of-ebonics-is-lost-in-translation.php When the headlines appeared this week… Read More »DEA and Ebonics
Reposted from Celso Alvarez Cáccamo 2010/08/24 at 3:13 am Catalonia’s educational system is one of immersion in Catalan. Catalan- and Spanish-speaking children alike (as well… Read More »Haitian Kreyòl and Catalan
Sometime in the early 17th century in Northern Peru, a Spaniard jotted down some notes on the back of a letter. Four hundred years later, archaeologists dug up and studied the paper, revealing the first traces of a lost language.
“It’s a little piece of paper with a big story to tell,” says Dr. Jeffrey Quilter, who has conducted investigations in Peru for more than three decades, and is director of the archaeological project at Magdalena de Cao Viejo in the El Brujo Archaeological Complex, where the paper was excavated in 2008. Quilter explains this simple list offers “a glimpse of the peoples of ancient and early colonial Peru who spoke a language lost to us until this discovery.”
Many things happening with SLA members…
Some interesting comments on the education system in general in a New York Times Editorial on Haitian Education These comments were posted in response to… Read More »More on Haitian Kreyòl and the education system
Posted for: Michel DeGraff, MIT Linguistics & Philosophy
Dear friends and colleagues,
We ask that you please take time to read, sign and distribute Professor Yves Dejean’s urgent public petition about school reform in Haiti.
The petition is available online at:
Why I find “geek”, when used as a slur, more offensive than words which may commonly be viewed as quite foul and offensive.
This year’s AAA meetings have the highest number of registrants on record. As one of the student assistants on the Executive Program Committee, the level… Read More »The Making of the AAA Meetings
Rounding Up the Web It seems to be common practice among bloggers, at least among academic ones, to summarize interesting items from recent online texts.… Read More »Linguistic Anthropology Roundup #10
Short bio for Lindsay Bell, the SLA’s graduate student representative