The Anthropology of Language

Catalog description

This course introduces students to the study of human language and its use across diverse cultural and social contexts. Inspired by the work of anthropologists, linguistics, literary theorists, novelists, and philosophers, we will examine language as more than a verbal figuration of the world but as a living social process vital to the workings and maintenance of any culture. Topics to be explored include archives, language acquisition and socialization, language contact, literacy, multilingualism, narrative, poetics, semiotics and gender, translation, writing, and other mediated communication. We will also practice different methods of linguistic analysis (the ethnography of speaking, language socialization, and conversation analysis) used to analyze communicative events across cultures.