The Language and Social Justice committee of the Society for Linguistic Anthropology (SLA) condemns all violent attacks and discrimination against Asian Americans, Asians, and Pacific… Read More »LSJ Statement on Anti-Asian Discrimination
IMAGE CREDIT: JAMES PROVOST (CC BY-ND) Kids in the middle: Recognizing the important role of children as cultural translators By Kendall Powell, Knowable Magazine Linguistic anthropologist… Read More »Kids in the Middle, Q&A with Inmaculada García-Sánchez
In this opinion article, Chad Nilep suggests that empathy, informed by cultural relativism is necessary to help gun control advocates and foes understand one another’s… Read More »Guns in America: Simple solutions are not easy
If a dog wore pants, would word meaning help us decide what they should look like? Using prototype theory and native speaker judgements, we find… Read More »Oh, pants
Core Committee Established The SLA Committee for Language and Social Justice has now established its core committee, and is proud to welcome the new core committee… Read More »Update on the SLA Committee for Language and Social Justice
The Fresh Air interview of David Thorpe and Susan Sankin makes me look forward to Thorpe’s film, “Do I Sound Gay?” But Sankin’s suggestions that… Read More »(Socio-) Phonetics in the news
Word choice played an important role in Japan and South Korea’s agreement to support one another’s applications for UNESCO World Cultural Heritage listing. Japan’s Foreign… Read More »Grammar in the news
A report on Fox News intimates that a course using Jane Hill’s Everyday Language of White Racism is problematic. It is not clear from the… Read More »Everyday Language of White Racism in the news
The January 7th attacks in France caused great sadness, anger, and fear. They also occasioned outpourings of support, and analyses of what went wrong. Some… Read More »Religious terrorism is sadly not unique
Japanese media use the label “Lehman shock” to refer to the 2008 financial crisis and subsequent shocks. The phrase “financial crisis” occurred frequently in 2008… Read More »Shock. Lehman shock.
Press coverage of Dan Jurafsky’s The Language of Food exposes readers to linguistic ideas ranging from etymology and vocabulary to pragmatics, the philosophy of language,… Read More »Jurafsky: The Language of Food
Susan Blum and Kathleen Riley offer a critical evaluation of programs designed to close the “language gap” between disadvantaged and middle-class children at Anthropology News.
A story by Beth McMurtrie in the Chronicle of Higher Education asks what ethical obligations historians have to people they interview. This is, in my… Read More »Human subjects protection and oral history
The Society for Linguistic Anthropology’s column in Anthropology News has been updated with an article by Christopher Ball, Alejandro Paz, and Michael Silverstein, entitled, “Teleologies of… Read More »New SLA Anthropology News Column
Why am I uncomfortable with talk of evolution in the news? Maybe I’m hearing echoes of Herbert Spencer. A brief exploration of Terry Gross and… Read More »Evolution and ‘lies to children’
Gabriel Arana recently published a defense of creaky voice at The Atlantic. He notes that recent criticism of young women’s use of creaky voice, or… Read More »Arana: Good sociolinguistic conclusion despite questionable examples
In 2011 the American Dialect Society listed ‘the 99%’ among its Words of the Year. In 2012 ‘47%’ became the new politically-charged number. These numbers… Read More »Where have all the numbers gone? (Or 1 + 99 = 53 + 47)
Radio programs have recently celebrated a “new understanding” of the importance of preschool for success later in life. Related knowledge has been part of academic… Read More »Why preschool hasn’t saved the world
In this guest post Martha Sif Karrebæk relates how her Journal of Linguistic Anthropology paper, “What’s in your lunchbox today?”, became a topic of discussion… Read More »Danish media reactions to Journal of Linguistic Anthropology paper
The phrase, “women and children” to mean non-combatants killed by war strikes me as somewhat outdated. Non-combatants are not necessarily women or children, and women… Read More »Is “women and children” an outdated cliche?
The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer says conservative Evangelical Christians view President Obama as “the avatar of godless socialism”. Do American Christian conservatives use ‘socialist’ to… Read More »Another possible definition of “socialist”
NPR’s Morning Edition and the Sunlight Foundation suggest that congressional speech-making is becoming less sophisticated. The presentation appears to validate conventional wisdom that American politics… Read More »Sophmoric application of readability tests
Recent news events highlight relationships between fact and story telling. Ethan Zuckerman’s recent ruminations on activism and journalism provide a summary and synthesis of one… Read More »Truth and narrative
Barbara Johnstone (2011) “Making Pittsburghese” and Timothy Messer-Kruse (2012) “The ‘undue weight’ of truth on Wikipedia” present very different views of scholar’s experiences with Wikipedia.… Read More »Wikipedia and the Academy
LANGUAGE AND CULTURE The Verbal Artistry of Julius Malema From the Anthro News Blog Language and Culture Column. Guest Columnist Steven P. Black Steven P.… Read More »The Verbal Artistry of Julius Malema
H. Samy Alim writing in the NY Times about “What if We Occupied Language?” When I flew out from the San Francisco airport last October,… Read More »Occupying Language
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… Read More »Executive order on Native American Language Revitalization
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… Read More »Language Links #3
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… Read More »Call for Papers: Computational Models of Narrative
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… Read More »Response to 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… Read More »Language Links #2
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… Read More »Combatting Linguistic Inaccuracies in the Census
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… Read More »Language Links #1
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… Read More »Marketing language abilities
January 5, 2011 David S. Johnson, Division Chief Housing and Household Economic Statistics U.S. Census Bureau 4600 Silver Hill Road Washington, DC 20233 Dear Mr.… Read More »Letter to the Census Bureau from the SLA Committee on Language and Social Justice
Stephen Chrisomalis, Wayne State University
Recently, there has been a “Puzzle Moment” in the science section of the New York Times, with an eclectic mix… Read More »As I was going through the Times…
New York Times reviews the latest research on baby babbling:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/12/health/12klass.html?src=me&ref=health
and an article on children’s use of irony. Tape recording of naturally occurring speech,… Read More »Baby babbling and irony
P. Kerim Friedman, NDHU Paul Chambers, a 27-year old accountant in training from South Yorkshire got fined £1,000 for posting the following text to Twitter… Read More »The Joke’s on You
Steven Black, UCSD
This morning (Sept. 20, 2010) while drinking my coffee I did a perfunctory survey of the news on Africa, only to be… Read More »The Naming of Africa
Kathryn Woolard, SLA President In response to my original posting on this website, I received the following email message a few days ago from the… Read More »Guy Deutscher responds
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… Read More »John McWhorter on Talk of the Nation
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… Read More »Whorf and 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… Read More »They are them; we are me and others.
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
