Anthropology Department
Brandeis University
Fall 2015
Syllabus draft, subject to minor revisions
ANTHROPOLOGY 186b
Linguistic Anthropology
Janet McIntosh
Class:
Instructor:
Monday and Wednesday 3:30-4:50, Pearlman 113
Dr. Janet McIntosh
Office location: Brown 207
Mailbox location: Brown 229
Office number: 781-736-2215
Email: janetmc@brandeis.edu
Janet’s office hours: Monday and Wednesday 11-12, by appointment
TA:
Holly Walters (holly@brandeis.edu).
Holly’s office hours: TBA
Course Description:
This course offers students an introduction to topics in linguistic anthropology,
the study of language in social and cultural context. We will focus on several inter-related
questions, including: How do context and social interaction affect the meaning of an
utterance? How are selfhood, social relationships, and social hierarchies reflected in and
created by language use? How does culture inflect the way different societies think about
language-in-use? Along the way we will consider such topics as language ideologies,
code-switching and multilingualism, gender, language and institutions, language and
illness/health, childhood socialization, cultural variation in literacy practices, and
language in religion. Background in formal linguistics is not a prerequisite for this class
(as you’ll see, our approach to language will be quite different), but a taste for analytic
philosophy and tolerance for dense theoretical readings will help you considerably in
your understanding and enjoyment of parts of this course. Your own participation,
including leading class discussions, will be crucial as well.
Course Requirements:
1) Class attendance.
2) Participation and class facilitation. Participation in this class will require dedication,
since I’ll count on you not only to keep abreast of the readings but also to engage
with them deeply, striving to comprehend and question them. Furthermore, at least
once during the semester, each student will bear responsibility for a class facilitation
in which they bringing examples of talk or text to class that exemplify the theoretical
readings for the day (or, failing that, bringing in discussion questions). Details to be
provided.
1
3) 6-8 page midterm essay
4) 10-12 page final essay
(Note: Graduate students will either write longer versions of the midterm and final
essays—12-15 pp for midterm, 15-20 pp for final, or a final 30-ish page “mega-paper” in
lieu of the midterm plus final.)
Grading:
-Class attendance: 10%.
-Participation: 25%. This grade will be established on the basis of the quality of your
contributions to discussions and class facilitation.
-First essay: 30%.
-Second essay: 35%.
Policy on Attendance:
Attendance is mandatory and will be factored into your grade (see above). Each student is
permitted no more than one excused absence; absences beyond that will require a makeup exercise so as not to hurt your attendance grade.
Electronic Devices: I strongly prefer that students take notes by hand and refrain from
using electronic devices. Exceptions can be made if you have a medical
reason/accommodation.
Required readings:
There are no books to purchase for this course. Course materials are (or will soon appear)
on LATTE.
SCHEDULE OF READINGS
Monday Aug 31st
Introduction to Class Materials
Ahearn, Laura. 2011. “The Socially Charged Life of Language,” from her Living
Language: An Introduction to Linguistic Anthropology. Wiley-Blackwell. (note: you can
read this after class if necessary…after this, I will expect you will do the listed readings
in time for class meeting)
Wed Sept 2nd
Hymes on the ethnography of speaking
Jakobson on the functional dimensions of language
Hymes, Dell. 1995 [1974] “The Ethnography of Speaking.” In Language, Culture, and
Society, ed. Ben Blount. Waveland Press, Inc. Pp. 248-282.
2
Monday Sept 7th- Labor Day; NO CLASS
Wed Sept 9th
Grice’s “Conversational Maxims” and implicatures; Ochs on implicatures and crosscultural variation
Bonvillain, Nancy. 1997. Excerpt from “Communication”, pp. 107-110 only. In
Language, Culture, and Communication: The Meaning of Messages. Englewood Cliffs,
N.J.: Prentice-Hall.
Grice, H.P. 1975. “Logic and Conversation.” In Peter Cole and Jerry Morgan, ed. Speech
Acts (Syntax and Semantics 3). New York: Academic Press. Pp. 305-315.
Ochs Keenan, Elinor. 1974. “The Universality of Conversational Postulates.” Language
in Society: 5: 67-80.
Thurs Sept 10th (Brandeis Monday)
Meaning and intention
Duranti, Alessandro. 1992. “Intentions, Self, and Responsibility: An Essay in Samoan
Ethnopragmatics.” In Jane H. Hill and Judith T. Irvine, ed. Responsibility and Evidence
in Oral Discourse. Cambridge University Press. Pp. 24-47.
Monday Sept 14th, Rosh Hashanah; NO CLASS
Wed Sept 16th
Speech act theory, indexicals, and doing things with words
Bonvillain, Nancy. 1993. pp. 77-79 and 91-100 of “Contextual Components: Outline of
an Ethnography of Communication”. In Language, Culture, and Communication: The
Meaning of Messages. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall.
Duranti, Alessandro. pp. 273-276, in:
http://studentorgs.utexas.edu/salsa/proceedings/2001/papers/duranti.pdf
Monday Sept 21st
Footing and participant roles I
Goffman, Erving. 1981. “Footing.” In Forms of Talk. Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press. Pp. 124-157.
Wed Sept 23rd—Yom Kippur; NO CLASS
3
Mon Sept 28th—Sukkot; NO CLASS
Tues Sept 29th (Brandeis Monday)
Footing and participant roles II
Irvine, Judith T. 1996. “Shadow Conversations: The Indeterminacy of Participant Roles.”
In Michael Silverstein and Greg Urban, ed. Natural Histories of Discourse. University of
Chicago Press. Pp. 131-159.
McIntosh, Janet. 2005. “Liminal Meanings: Sexually Charged Giriama Funerary Ritual
and Unsettled Participant Frameworks.” Language and Communication 25: 39-60.
Wed Sept 30th
Constructing relationships through language I: Honorifics and politeness
Bonvillain, Nancy. 1997. Pp. 81-89 of “Contextual Components”. In Language, Culture,
and Communication: The Meaning of Messages. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall.
Wardhaugh, Ronald. 2002. “Solidarity and Politeness” in An Introduction to
Sociolinguistics. New York: Blackwell. Pp. 260-283.
Monday Oct 5th—Shmini Atzeret; NO CLASS
Constructing relationships through language II: Cross-cultural misunderstandings
Bailey, Benjamin. 2001. “Communication of Respect in Interethnic Service Encounters,”
In Alessandro Duranti, ed. Linguistic Anthropology: A Reader. Oxford: Blackwell. Pp.
119-146.
Wed Oct 7th
Language ideologies
Irvine, Judith T. and Susan Gal. 2000. “Language ideology and linguistic differentiation.”
In: Kroskrity, Paul, ed. Regimes of Language. Pp. 35-83. School of American Research
Press, Santa Fe, NM.
Monday Oct 12
Power and language appropriation
Hill, Jane. “Mock Spanish: A Site For The Indexical Reproduction Of Racism In
American English,” at:
http://language-culture.binghamton.edu/symposia/2/part1/index.html
4
Barrett, Rusty. 2006. “Language ideology and racial inequality: competing functions of
Spanish in an Anglo-owned Mexican Restaurant” Language in Society, 35(2): 163-204.
(Supplementary: McIntosh, Janet. 2014. “Linguistic Atonement: Penitence and Privilege
in White Kenyan Language Ideologies.” Anthropological Quarterly)
https://www.academia.edu/13216361/Linguistic_Atonement_Penitence_and_Privilege_in
_White_Kenyan_Language_Ideologies
Wed Oct 14th
VIDEO in class: “American Tongues”
Mon Oct 19th
Gender in American discourse
Ochs, Elinor and Carolyn Taylor. 2001. “The ‘Father Knows Best’ Dynamic in
Dinnertime Narratives.” In Alessandro Duranti, ed. Linguistic Anthropology: A Reader.
Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. Pp. 431-448.
Kiesling, Scott Fabius. 2001. “Now I gotta watch what I say:” Shifting constructions of
masculinity in discourse. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 11(2): 250-271.
Wed Oct 21st
Professional/institutional language
Bonvillain, Nancy. 2011. “Language and Institutional Encounters.” Chapter 13 in
Language, Culture, and Communication: The Meaning of Messages (6th Edition). Pp.
346-382.
Goodwin, Charles. 1994. “Professional Vision.” American Anthropologist 96(3):
606-633.
Mon Oct 26th
Language and illness/healing
Mattingly, Cheryl. 1994. “The Concept of Therapeutic Emplotment.” Social Science and
Medicine 38(6): 811-822.
2nd reading TBA
Wed Oct 28th
5
TBA
Mon Nov 2nd, Prof. McIntosh absent (presenting at Harvard Social Anthropology
Seminar)
**Midterm essays due**
Wed Nov 4th
Stance, Power, and Personhood
McIntosh, Janet. 2009. “Stance and Distance: Social Boundaries, Self-Lamination, and
Metalinguistic Anxiety in White Kenyan Narratives about the African Occult,” in Stance:
Sociolinguistic Perspectives. Ed. Alexandra Jaffe. Oxford University Press. Pp. 72-91.
Jaworski, Adam and Crispin Thurlow. 2009. “Taking an Elitist Stance: Ideology and the
Discursive Production of Social Distinction,” in Stance: Sociolinguistic Perspectives. Ed.
Alexandra Jaffe. Oxford University Press. Pp. 195-226.
Mon Nov 9th
The linguistic construction of religious experience
Bauman, Richard. 1974. “Speaking in the Light: The Role of the Quaker Minister.” In
Richard Bauman and Joel Shertzer, ed. Explorations in the Ethnography of Speaking.
Cambridge University Press. Pp. 144-160.
Susan Harding, Falwell Book excerpts
Wed Nov 11th
The linguistic construction of religious experience II
(Analysis of video clips in class)
Mon Nov 16th
Techno-literacies: the valences of text-messaging
Jones, Graham and Bambi B. Schieffelin. 2009. “Talking Text and Talking Back: “My
BFF Jill” from Boob Tube to YouTube.” Journal of Computer Mediated Communication
14(4): 1050-1079.
McIntosh, Janet. 2010. “Mobile Phones and Mipoho’s Prophecy: The Powers and
Dangers of Flying Language.” American Ethnologist 37(2): 337-353.
6
Wed Nov 18th
TBA
Mon Nov 23rd
The politics of bilingualism
Urcioli, Bonnie. 1996. Chapter 1, “Racialization and Language”; Chapter 3, “The
Political Topography of Bilingualism”, and Chapter 4, “Good English as Symbolic
Capital”, in Exposing Prejudice: Puerto Rican Experiences of Language, Race, and
Class. Westview Press.
(Wed Nov 25th—Thanksgiving Holiday; no class)
Monday Nov 30th
Codeswitching and multilingualism
Woolard, Katharine A. 2004. “Codeswitching,” In A Companion to Linguistic
Anthropology. Ed. Alessandro Duranti. Blackwell. Pp. 121-140.
McIntosh, Janet. 2005. “Baptismal Essentialisms: Giriama Code Choice and the
Reification of Ethnoreligious Boundaries.” Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 15. 2:
151-170.
Wed Dec 2nd
Language and thought
Ahearn, Laura. 2011. “Language, Thought, and Culture” from her Living Language: An
Introduction to Linguistic Anthropology. Wiley-Blackwell.
Monday Dec 7th
Linguistic diversity and language death
Mithun, Marianne. 2004. “The Value of Linguistic Diversity: Viewing Other Worlds
through North American Indian Languages.” In A Companion to Linguistic
Anthropology. Ed. Alessandro Duranti. Blackwell. Pp. 121-140.
Wed Dec 9th
TBA
7