ANTH104 PO - Linguistic Anthropology

When Offered: Irregularly
Instructor(s): C. Evers
Credit: 1

This course provides an intensive introduction to selected theories, methods, and themes in linguistic anthropology, one of the discipline’s four subfields. The primary aim of the course is to familiarize students with the linguistic anthropological approach to language, according to which language is a social tool with significance for sociopolitical processes, on the one hand, and basic research methods in linguistic anthropology, on the other. The course has two interwoven parts. The first is the sequence of readings, which will be analyzed in particular for the evidence and methods on which they draw. These readings trace the development of linguistic anthropology chronologically, beginning with the branching of linguistics into the fields of theoretical linguistics and linguistic anthropology, then examining early linguistic anthropologists’ inquiries into linguistic relativism and whether language shapes thought, before turning finally to contemporary semiotic approaches to language, illustrated through selected ethnographic examples. The second part of the course is a field practicum in which students will observe language in the social setting of their choice, produce field notes, and draft written analyses guided by questions that we will consider at length. Via their fieldwork students will become adept at using a range of methods for collecting data and analyzing how people use language, including participant observation, interviews, field notes, audio recordings, and discourse analytic transcriptions. The course also has a writing-intensive overlay; accordingly, throughout the semester students will write up a series of shorter ethnographic analyses that they will then revise and collate into an original research paper. Previously offered as ANTH189L PO.

Satisfies the following General Education Requirement(s), subject to conditions explained in the Degree Requirements section of this Catalog:
Area 2; Writing Intensive