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 women and young people’s speech is pathological leads me to re-read Robin Lakoff, Deborah Cameron, and Nelson Flores.
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 Minister told reporters that ‘forced to work’ does not mean ‘coerced labor’. But that depends on what “mean” means.
Linguistic anthropologists are accustomed to exploring the way speakers create structures of relevance that provide directionality to social activity. Could we also say the same… Read More »AN News: “Anthropological Listening as a Genre” by Xochitl Marsilli-Vargas (UC Berkeley)
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… Read More »Announcing the 2015 Sapir Prize Entries
Anthropology News Article One of the perks offered to faculty at Nazarbayev University is a free campus apartment. When I was hired last year, I… Read More »AN News: “Neither Home Nor Field” by Erika Alpert (Nazarbayev University)
Don’t forget to vote in AAA and SLA elections by 5:00 pm Eastern Time on May 31st.
The annual business meeting of the SLA in Washington DC was attended by about 150 people, and proved to be a lively and informative event.… Read More »AN News: “Report on the 2014 SLA Business Meeting” by Aaron Ansell (Virginia Tech)
Anthropology News Article by Lise Dobrin and Niko Besnier For a long time in anthropology, the documentation of languages on the brink of disappearing was… Read More »AN News: “At the Crossroads of Linguistics and Anthropology: Disciplinary perspectives on language documentation” by Lise Dobrin (University of Virginia) and Niko Besnier (University of Amsterdam)
On behalf of William Leap (American University), Co-editor, Journal of Language and Sexuality: The Journal of Language and Sexuality (www.benjamins.com/#catalog/journals/jls) is now in its fifth year of publication. JL&S explores… Read More »The Journal of Language & Sexuality
A list of links shared by SLA members and correspondents, including bilingual education in Columbia, an oral history of segregation in Alaska, a Faroe Islands documentary, and more. Links do not reflect official opinion of the SLA, its officers or members.
Anthropology News Article by Netta Avineri, Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey; Jena Barchas-Lichtenstein, Independent Scholar; Robin Conley, Marshall University; Mariam Durrani, University of… Read More »AN News: “Silent Meditation: Speech, power, and social justice” by the Committee on Language & Social Justice
The American Anthropological Association has passed a resolution condemning the use of Native American mascots unless appropriate consultation has taken place. The move comes in part through the efforts of the SLA Committee on Language and Social Justice, in conjunction with other AAA sections.
Anthropology News Article On November 24, 2014, St Louis prosecutor McCulloch announced that the grand jury trial did not indict Officer Darren Wilson for the… Read More »AN News: “Digital Counterpublics: Black Twitter in the Aftermath of Ferguson” by Mariam Durrani (University of Pennsylvania)
The submission deadline is November 6, 2015.
Created and awarded for the first time by the SLA in 2014, this award honors an SLA member or members for work that effectively impacts public awareness of social issues involving language and communication and/or represents a significant service to a particular community outside of the academy. Applicants may self-nominate or consent to the nomination of others.
Edward Sapir Book Prize 2015 Submission Deadline: May 15, 2015 The Edward Sapir Book Prize was established in 2001 and is awarded to a book… Read More »Edward Sapir Book Prize 2015 – Open for Submissions
Want to make a difference with your work beyond your undergraduate transcript? Submit to SLA’s Annual Student Essay Contest! Selected winner will be awarded $500,… Read More »Announcing SLA’s Annual *Undergraduate* Essay Contest
Announcing the SLA’s Annual Graduate Student Essay Prize The Society for Linguistic Anthropology would like to invite submissions of graduate student papers for the SLA’s Annual… Read More »Announcing the SLA’s Annual Graduate Student Essay Prize
Annie Claus’s essay, “How a professional writer improved my academic writing” at Savage Minds is quite useful. She counsels academics to resist overly long sentences, to vary the structure of paragraphs, and to reflect on each element of the paper and what it contributes to communicating the message. I differ with Claus, however, in cautioning against a particular set of words. At the risk of being labeled a positivist, I’ve compared the frequency of “insipid grammatical markers” in American Anthropologist, the Corpus of Contemporary American English, and the work of Joan Didion. The results, to paraphrase an academic writing cliche, are a bit more complicated.
The Journal of Linguistic Anthropology is the primary publication of the Society for Linguistic Anthropology. This web site features a variety of information about the journal, and links to additional content from the American Anthropological Association and Wiley Online Library.
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 report whether anyone at Fox News read the book.