Does Thomas Friedman read Thomas Friedman?
In his 24 December column, Time to Reboot America, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman compares US education, transportation and communication infrastructure - unfavorably - with that of Hong...
View ArticleBest of Anthro 2008
Daniel Lende at Neuroanthropology is hosting the Best of Anthropology Blogging 2008 anthology/awards. Linguistic Anthropology is among the blogs anthologized -- though of course, you've read those...
View ArticleMedia modality and word choice. Or: Is an 'emergency landing' a 'crash'?
Megan Garber, writing in the Columbia Journalism Review, notes an interesting difference in the words used to describe the... event involving US Airways flight 1549 on 15 January.Garber quotes the...
View Article(Re)Reading Benedict Anderson
I recommend Christopher Kelty's piece at Savage Minds, "Thoughts on Imagined Communities on Inauguration day." Each of Kelty's three points may be of interest to linguistic anthropologists and fellow...
View ArticleInteresting teaching method: How to get students to find and read 94 articles
Michael Wesch from Digital Ethnography used a very interesting class assignment. "How to get students to find and read 94 articles before the next class" describes the project in which students found,...
View ArticleWhen Speech Acts Collide
I recently had two experiences in which people -- college-aged individuals on or near a college campus -- used routine speech formulas in surprising ways.The first was relatively easy to explain. As I...
View ArticleI don't know, you know? Discourse markers and knowledge claims
Anyone doing work on discourse markers in English might want to look at Greta Van Susteren's recent interview with Bristol Palin. I find the use of the discourse markers 'you know', 'I don't know', and...
View ArticleGetting started in anthropology
A few weeks ago I noticed that a lot of people who read Linguistic Anthropology are referred here by search engines. Often the search terms are something like "anthropology - getting started". I...
View ArticleRespect for B.L. Whorf?
Benjamin Lee Whorf doesn't get much respect from linguists, at least in certain quarters. His notions of linguistic relativism - or just as often, notions attributed to him after the fact - are...
View ArticleEggcorns and Fuzzy Spots
The term eggcorn was coined in 2003 by linguist-bloggers Geoffrey Pullum and Mark Liberman, and has spawned something of a cottage industry of eggcorn-hunters on the Web. An eggcorn is defined as "an...
View ArticleAmerican Anthropological Association - new blog
The American Anthropological Association has a new blog, which is a very good thing. I think it must be difficult, however, to select topics and coverage broadly enough to satisfy a target audience as...
View ArticleReactions to Cheney's speech at the American Enterprise Institute (Part I)
I had two reactions while listening to former Vice President Richard Cheney's speech about national security yesterday, 21 May 2009. In this posting I will describe a purely linguistic and fairly...
View ArticleReactions to Cheney's speech at the American Enterprise Institute (Part II)
In his speech at the American Enterprise Institute yesterday, former Vice President Cheney made the following suggestion.The intelligence officers who questioned the terrorists can be proud of their...
View ArticleFollow up: Not to split infinitives
As I promised last week, I have a slightly more elaborate analysis of two functions of negated infinitives. Recall that I experienced a very brief confusion during a speech by former Vice President...
View ArticleLSA Ethics Statement and Blog
[This is a guest post by Claire Bowern, LSA Ethics committee member and blog co-webmaster] The Linguistic Society of America recently finalized and released a statement of professional ethics. The...
View ArticleUniversities offering graduate programs in Linguistic Anthropology
Over the past few weeks I have received email from a number of recent or soon-to-be college graduates asking for my recommendations for graduate programs in linguistic anthropology. I assume that my...
View ArticleClassifying click consonants
I'm sorry that no new content has been added here in a month. It's not that I've stopped thinking about linguistic anthropology, it's just that I'm getting really close to completing a draft of my...
View ArticleWhat is a "white man"?
This morning Weekend Edition Sunday featured an interesting story on the Shoshone Youth Language Apprenticeship Program being held at the University of Utah campus this summer. Toward the end of piece...
View ArticleWho speaks Shoshone, and when?
A comment on last Sunday's Weekend Edition radio program inspired me to think about two questions. A participant in the Shoshone/Goshute Youth Language Apprenticeship Program (SYLAP) commented:Someone...
View ArticleAnother political non-lie
I've been hearing an awful lot about health care reform in the US this summer - even from British outlets. It's all a bit disconcerting, especially the riotous town hall meetings and the arguments that...
View ArticleThe Invention of Saying-things-that-don't-strictly-accord-with-empirical-fact
(Sorry for the long delay between posts. I'm writing up my dissertation research, which I will defend in a couple of weeks.)I recently enjoyed seeing the film The Invention of Lying. The film's premise...
View ArticleAmerican Anthropological Association 2009 Annual Meeting
The American Anthropological Association will hold its annual meeting December 2nd through the 6th at the Philadelphia Mariott Downtown hotel in Philadelphia, PA. The theme for the 2009 meeting is "The...
View ArticleSLA Blog
New blog posts relating to linguistic anthropology are available at SLA Blog, the official blog of the Society for Linguistic Anthropology. Also check out the official homepage of Society for...
View Article'Top' not-for-profit linguistic anthropology journals
There has been a recent flurry of discussion of for-profit versus non-profit publishing in anthropology, occasioned by a 29 August piece in The Guardian by George Monbiot. Blog postings at...
View ArticleBlog has moved to http://linguisticanthropology.org/
Hi, this blog is basically defunct these days. We have all moved over to the official website of the Society for Linguistic Anthropology at http://linguisticanthropology.org/. If you are interested...
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