View as a document here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vYvOFwqTwtpC0nw9bqnaZCe-THnbS6qPVosWh3YF8E0/edit?usp=sharing

Week 1
January 26: syllabus and introductions

read the syllabus and explore our course website here: https://linganth104.commons.gc.cuny.edu/

In class, we will discuss the different kinds of assignments, the standards and criteria of assessments, and our goals and learning outcomes. We will complete the survey attached here, develop a community agreement, and form groups.

Unit 1 : the emergence of linguistic anthropology

Week 2
January 31: why language?

read chapter 4 “Language” in Perspectives: An Open Invitation to Cultural Anthropology (2017) by Brown et al. https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/textbooks/perspectives-an-open-invitation-to-cultural-anthropology

read the poem “I Lost My Talk” (1978) by Rita Joe https://poetryinvoice.ca/read/poems/i-lost-my-talk

keywords: universal, particular, diversity, nature/biological-nurture/culture, system, practice, semantic, pragmatic

February 2: and why linguistic anthropology?

read “Language as Culture in US Anthropology” (2003) by Alessandro Duranti here: http://web.unibas.it/sage/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Language-as-culture-in-US-Antropology.pdf

keywords: linguistic relativity, psyche/mind, culture, ethnography of speaking/communication, performance, variation, sociolinguistics, semiotics, ideology, power, practice

suggested additional blog article: “Linguistic Anthropology” (2022) by Sonia N. Das https://www.sapiens.org/language/what-is-linguistic-anthropology/

Week 3
February 7: language and thought (the Boasian tradition and linguistic relativism)

read Edward Sapir’s “Conceptual categories in primitive languages” (1925) https://pure.mpg.de/rest/items/item_2381146_2/component/file_2381145/content

and excerpts from his text “The unconscious patterning of social behavior” (1927) https://brocku.ca/MeadProject/Sapir/Sapir_1927_a.html

And

read excerpts from “The Relation Of Habitual Thought And Behavior To Language” (1956) by Benjamin Lee Whorf https://www.jstor.org/stable/48617405#metadata_info_tab_contents

listen to “Lost in Translation: the power of language to shape how we view the world” (2018) from the Hidden Brain NPR podcast. https://www.npr.org/2018/01/29/581657754/lost-in-translation-the-power-of-language-to-shape-how-we-view-the-world

Suggested additional blog article: “Whorf” (2004) by
Kerim P. Friedman from Keywords blog.
https://keywords.oxus.net/archives/2004/08/21/whorf/

Suggested additional reading “On Alternating Sounds” (1889) by Franz Boas https://www.jstor.org/stable/658803

keywords: sound variation, phonetics, phonemes, culture, structure, grammar, psyche, behavior, worldview, relativism,

February 9: variationist sociolinguistics and conversation analysis

read William Labov’s “The Social Stratification of (r) in New York City Department Stores,” (1986). https://web.stanford.edu/class/linguist62n/labov001.pdf

read Deborah Tannen’s “New York Jewish Conversational Style” http://www.yorku.ca/kweiser/courses/6222/documents/Tannen.pdf

keywords: sound patterns, quantitative/qualitative, scale, utterance, variation, elicitation, interview, ritual, interaction, style, transcription

Week 4
February 14: speaking as performative and poetics (the ethnography of communication) (i)

read chapter 14 “Performance” in Perspectives: An Open Invitation to Cultural Anthropology. (2017). https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/textbooks/perspectives-an-open-invitation-to-cultural-anthropology

suggested additional reading: “The Interaction Order.” by Erving Goffman (1983). https://www.jstor.org/stable/2095141#metadata_info_tab_contents

keywords: performance/performativity, frame, order, roles, interaction, event, context, ritual, social reality, ethnography, footing, reeflexivity, Goffman, participant roles-frameworks

February 16: speaking as performative and poetics (the ethnography of communication) (ii)

read excerpts from Judith Irvine’s “Strategies of Status Manipulation in the Wolof Greeting” (1974) https://edisciplinas.usp.br/pluginfile.php/5663332/mod_resource/content/2/IRVINE%20%281989%29.pdf

OR

read Keith Bassso’s “To Give Up on Words: Silence in Western Apache Culture” (1970) https://cuny-qc.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01CUNY_QC/1osl74v/cdi_proquest_journals_1291559857

keywords: performance, poetics, ritual, speech acts, roles, utterance, context, ethnography of speaking, form and content, frame, order, interaction

Week 5
February 21: Monday schedule

no class

February 23: linguistic anthropology today: indexicality

read “Indexing Gender” by Elinor Ochs (1992) http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/anthro/faculty/ochs/articles/Ochs_1993_Indexing_Gender.pdf

keywords: index, indexicality, gender, hierarchy, stance, practice, acts, direct/indirect, ideology

February 28: linguistic anthropology today: language ideology and differentiation

read Irvine and Gal’s paper “Language Ideology and Linguistic Differentiation” (2000)
https://web.stanford.edu/~eckert/PDF/IrvineGal2000.pdf

keywords: power, ideology, hierarchy, differentiation, Peirce, semiotics, signs, iconicity/rhematization, recursivity, erasure, history

March 2: linguistic anthropology today: voice and registers

read “The Semiotic Hitchhiker’s Guide to Creaky Voice: Circulation and Gendered Hardcore in a Chicana/o Gang Persona” (2011) by Norma Mendoza-Denton
https://cuny-gc.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01CUNY_GC/4hn5kb/cdi_proquest_miscellaneous_925725607

Suggested reading additional readings:

these 2-page articles in the same Journal of Linguistic Anthropology issue of 1999: https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/15481395/1999/9/1-2
“Register” by Asif Agha;
“Voice” by Webb Keane;
“Heteroglossia” by Vyachesla Ivanov.

And “The grammar of consciousness and the consciousness of grammar” (1985) by Jane Hill https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1525/ae.1985.12.4.02a00080

keywords: registers, enregisterment, voice/voicing, texts, circulation, personae (figure of personhood), interaction, alignment, typification, valorization, micro-macro relation, ideology, stance, reflexivity

Due March 7 before class: Share your learning journal covering unit 1

Unit 2: making persons

Week 7
March 7: review unit 1: the linguistic anthropology toolbox and methods

Review and survey

March 9: language socialization: becoming persons

read “Language Acquisition and Socialization: three developmental stories and their implications.” (2001) by Ochs, Elinor and Bambi B. Schieffelin. https://cuny-qc.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01CUNY_QC/1osl74v/cdi_annualreviews_primary_10_1146_annurev_an_15_100186_001115

keywords: socialization, acquisition, practice, interaction, ideology, culture-nature, ritual, gender

Due March 9 at 10:00am: Unit 1 midterm paper

Week 8
March 14: multilingual selves

read Miki Makihara’s “Linguistic Syncretism and Language Ideologies: Transforming Sociolinguistic Hierarchy on Rapa Nui (Easter Island)” (2004)
https://qcpages.qc.cuny.edu/anthro/Web_Pages/makihara/Makihara2004LinguisticSyncretism.pdf

keywords: language ideology, language shift, code-switching, syncretism, practice, revitalization, colonialism, power, socialization, multilingualism, socialization

March 16: identity in the making, in the flesh

read “ ‘Whatever (Neck Roll, Eye Roll, Teeth Suck)’: The Situated Coproduction of Social Categories and Identities through Stancetaking and Transmodal Stylization” (2010) by Goodwin and Alim
https://cuny-qc.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01CUNY_QC/1osl74v/cdi_crossref_primary_10_1111_j_1548_1395_2010_01056_x

keywords: style, stance, differentiation, alignment, roles, performativity, identity, socialization

Week 9
March 21: race and raciolinguistics (i): perception and alienated selves

read Franz Fanon’s first chapter “The negro and the language” (1952) from Black Skin White Mask here: https://archive.org/details/blackskinwhitema00fran/page/n9/mode/2up

read Jane Hill’s “Language, race, and white public space” (1998) https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdfdirect/10.1525/aa.1998.100.3.680

Keywords: perception, languagelessness, ideology, raciolinguistic, racialization, standardization, differentiation, public space, hegemony, power

March 23: race and raciolinguistics (ii): perception and alienated selves

First read the following interview with Jonathan Rosa (2020) https://revistes.uab.cat/jtl3/article/view/v13-n1-gallego-balsa

And read his article “Standardization, Racialization, Languagelessness: Raciolinguistic Ideologies across Communicative Contexts” (2016) https://cuny-qc.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01CUNY_QC/1osl74v/cdi_proquest_journals_1814123979

Keywords: perception, languagelessness, ideology, raciolinguistic, racialization, standardization, differentiation, hegemony, power

Week 10
March 28: gendered persons and written selves

read “Literacy, Power, and Agency: Love Letters and Development in Nepal” (2004) by Laura M. Ahearn https://anthro.rutgers.edu/downloads/faculty/154-ahearnliteracy/file

keywords: literacy, writing, gender, power, agency, kinship, discourse

March 30: neoliberalism and branded selves

read Ilana Gershon’s piece: “‘I’m Not a Businessman, I’m a Business, Man’: Typing the Neoliberal Self into a Branded Existence.” (2016). https://www.haujournal.org/index.php/hau/article/viewFile/hau6.3.017/2568

keywords: neoliberalism, branding, the self, capitalism, ideology

Due April 4 before class: Share your learning journal covering unit 2

Week 11
April 4: review unit 2 : interaction, persons, types, scales

Review, in-class activity, and survey

April 6: Spring recess (April 5-April 13): no class

Week 12: Spring recess (April 5-April 13): no class

Due April 14 at 10:00am Unit 2 midterm paper

Unit 3 : making worlds

Week 13
April 18: chronotopia

read “Temporalities of Community: Ancestral Language, Pilgrimage, and Diasporic Belonging in Mauritius” by Patrick Eisenlhor (2004)
https://cuny-qc.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01CUNY_QC/1osl74v/cdi_proquest_miscellaneous_85656824

keywords: chronotope (time-space), Bakhtin, belonging, community, temporality, multilingualism, language ideology

April 20: circulation

read Debra Spitulnik’s paper “The Social Circulation of Media Discourse and the Mediation of Communities” (1996) https://cuny-qc.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01CUNY_QC/1osl74v/cdi_proquest_miscellaneous_61541208

keywords: circulation, media, discourse, mediation, community, language ideology, multilingualism

Week 14
April 25: media ideology

read “Breaking Up is Hard To Do” (2010) by Ilana Gershon. https://hcommons.org/deposits/download/hc:14918/CONTENT/gershon.breaking.up_.is_.hard_.to_.do_.pdf/

keywords: media ideology, language ideology, circulation, multimedia, interaction, survey, interview

April 27: poetics and placenames

read “The Poetics of Grievance: Taxi Drivers, Vernacular Placenames, and the Paradoxes of Post-Coloniality in Oran, Algeria” by Stephanie Love (2021) https://cuny-qc.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01CUNY_QC/1osl74v/cdi_proquest_journals_2618222085

keywords: poetics, naming, place, space, past-present, history, post-colonialism, language ideology, power, martyr

Week 15
May 2: worldviews

read the first chapter “Concepts we live by” by Lakoff and Johnson in Metaphors We Live By
https://www.textosenlinea.com.ar/libros/Lakoff%20y%20Johnson%20-%20Metaphors%20We%20Live%20By%20-%201980.pdf

read “Sex and Death in the Rational World of Defense Intellectuals” (1987) by Carol Cohn
https://cuny-qc.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01CUNY_QC/1osl74v/cdi_proquest_miscellaneous_61114279

Or

read “Professional Vision” (1994) by Charles Goodwin
https://pages.ucsd.edu/~johnson/COGS102B/Goodwin94.pdf

Or

read “The Egg and the Sperm: How Science Has Constructed a Romance Based on Stereotypical Male-Female Roles.” (1991) by Emily Martin https://web.stanford.edu/~eckert/PDF/Martin1991.pdf

May 4: documents and the state

read “Ruled by Records: The Appropriation of Land and the Misappropriation of Lists in Islamabad” (2008)
https://sites.lsa.umich.edu/matthewhull/wp-content/uploads/sites/904/2021/03/MHull_2008_Ruled_by_Records.pdf

OR

read “The file: agency, authority, and autography in Islamabad bureaucracy” by Matthew Hull (2003) https://sites.lsa.umich.edu/matthewhull/wp-content/uploads/sites/904/2021/03/MHull_2003_The-File-Agency_Authority_and_Autography_in_a_Pakistan_Bureaucracy.pdf

keywords: materiality, paper, government, bureaucracy, state, post-colonialism,

Due May 9 before class: Share your learning journal entries covering unit 3

Week 16
May 9: review unit 3 and final paper workshops

May 11: Wrap up and goodbyes

Exit survey

Due Friday May 19, at 11:59 pm: Final paper on Unit 3 and complete learning journal