Linguistic Anthropology

Course Description

Anthropology studies human diversity across the globe through four sub-disciplines: biological, archaeological, cultural, and linguistic anthropology. Linguistic anthropology is concerned especially with how human languages are interwoven with culture, world-views, and social practices. In brief, linguistic anthropology addresses how we strategically use linguistic structures and communicative practices (phonology, morphosyntax, vocabulary, pragmatics, and discourse) to achieve practical social and political goals in our talk and texts, and (crucially) how speakers of different languages do so differently. The course involves five modules. First, students will learn and apply a precise set of tools for semiotic analysis that will enable them to analyze how speakers construct and negotiate their social identities in face-to-face and online environments (from video-clips, texts, emails, social media posts, etc.). Second, we'll consider language socialization processes that show how learning language is how people become acculturated to ways of life and social participation. Thus, children become culturally competent adults from their parents, siblings, and peers; students acquire insider status during internships from staff and fellow interns; workers take on specific job skills or professions from more seasoned workers; and participants in activities go from newbie to expert. We'll look for examples of socialization in our own lives and histories of our families. Third, to see how social stratification (e.g., gender, race, ethnicity, and economic status) is linguistically codified, fostered, and resisted, we'll examine texts (e.g., news, histories, fiction, movies), again applying the same analytic tools we learned earlier in the course. Fourth, using online inventories of global linguistic diversity to answer questions about the growth and extinction of languages - and corresponding ways of life - over the course of history. Optionally, students will have the opportunity to work in pairs or triads to conduct a small-scale linguistic ethnography of an activity on campus.

Code

ANTH 245N

Credits

3

Subject

ANTH