linguistic anthropology
18 posts
How might individuals undergoing treatment for substance use disorder internalize the cultural model of substance misuse risk and employ it to recognize social stigma and, possibly, to self-stigmatize?
Sign language interpreters have become social media celebrities of our coronavirus moment. But signing is not a form of light entertainment; it should be lifesaving information.
Communicating care has been swiftly ritualized in the pandemic, from rainbow paintings to birthday horn-honking caravans to nightly cheering of workers through city streets. These actions show dearness accruing at points of need and suggest that the language of care provides one kind of sustenance across a straining society.
How an Instagram-based gossip franchise allows celebrities to manage the authenticity of their public personae.
Tea sipping has a distinctly queer pedigree. To serve tea properly, one must be skilled in the art of verbal delivery.
The SLA reports on developments in membership, the Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, the Spring Meeting, section awards, and more.
The government and media call them “immigrant detention centers.” They are meant to be temporary holding facilities—up to 72 hours—for migrants and asylum-seekers crossing the southern US border. But the average length of stay has become much longer and the facilities have become overcrowded and unsanitary. In a word, the conditions are inhumane.
Have you ever been in the US and heard people speaking a language you didn’t understand? Did it bother you? Have you ever thought about why it bothered you? For folks who might tell those people to speak in English, where does that entitlement come from? Why do some people feel they have the right to tell others how or what to speak?
The political struggle over the Mueller report illustrates the tortuous social life of a text—especially a text fraught with high political stakes for a sitting president. Special counsel regulations required Robert Mueller to communicate his “prosecution or declination decisions” in a report to the attorney general who would then provide a summary to Congress—ensuring the report would pass through several links of a twisty speech chain before reaching the public.
The SLA Committee on Language and Social Justice (LSJ) aims to increase awareness, both within the AAA and among the general public, of the ways that language is implicated in social discrimination; and where appropriate, to respond to language-related injustice.
Ardern’s pronouncement before parliament illustrates how naming is integrally linked with social practice while demonstrating what moral and political leadership looks like in a time of national crisis.
When it comes to policy arguments around complex issues like climate change, the messenger can be just as important as the message in mobilizing support for policy responses.
The Linguistic Society of America Summer Institute, held in odd-numbered years, is a unique opportunity for linguistic anthropologists to further their background in general linguistics, the study the structure of specific languages, or to learn new research methods. The LSA Institute offers a wide range of possibilities for discovering new ways to incorporate issues related to language and discourse into their research.
The #MeToo movement—as it emerges in social interaction and digital communication—is a discursive formation that suggests at least two frames of linguistic analysis. This column seeks to unpack the hashtag’s emergence in co-oxygenated social interaction, its transformation through digital communication, and closes with brief thoughts on its limitations for transformative social justice change.
The United States and the world have now spent two years trying to figure out how to deal with an anti-social president. The task holds even more import over the next two years as Democrats and Never Trump Republicans consider how to challenge an incumbent president in 2020. Formulating an effective strategy should start by recognizing the ways Trumpian discourse adheres to prototypical “trolling” behavior and responding accordingly.
Trump’s immigration metaphors set a divisive tone from the top. His immigration metaphors do not constitute “plain speaking,” “strong language,” or “passionate debate,” nor can they be innocently excused as his “own style." His language is textbook demagoguery, and his immigration metaphors help constitute our current sociopolitical moment.