Speech & Experience:
The Anthropology of Language
ANTH 110, TTh 1:35-2:50, LCI 108
(Spring 2001)
"no one would talk much in society, if he knew how
often he misunderstands others." -Goethe
Language puts names on things. Linguistics
puts names on features of language and communication generally, and the
anthropology of language examines their social correlates and contexts. This
course is about how to identify the features of communication where culture,
imagination and social experience come together. The course introduces basic
concepts of linguistic analysis, theories of language and the study of
communication in anthropology, including how languages are structured, used in
social relations and provide models for culture. It focuses on relations of
speech, experience and understanding, and on what those settings tell about
sociability and imagination in everyday behavior.
Readings.
Nancy
Bonvillian. Language, Culture & Communication. 2nd Edition.
Upper Saddle River: Prentice-Hall, 1997.
George
Lakoff & Mark Johnson. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1980.
Deborah
Tannen. You Just Don't Understand! New York: Ballantine Books, 1990.
Format and Requirements.
This course will be a mixture of lecture,
in-class discussion and application of concepts to everyday examples of speech,
which students will collect in diaries. Graded work includes the
diaries, a mid-term and a final exam.
Diaries are where you record instances of linguistic usage,
speech acts, forms and expressions for feedback from the instructor. Each week,
you should record one or more instances of two phenomena or conceptualizations
discussed in the readings for that week. These must be handed in on the last
class meeting each month. This work will be graded, and the final (average)
grade for diary work will be one-third of your course grade.
The mid-term
exam will be short-answer and
identification of concepts, phenomena and terminology in Bonvillian, Lakoff
& Johnson and introduced in class.
The final
exam will cover all of the material
in the course.
Instead of a
final exam, students may analyze the
text of a dialogue
(recorded or in a text) using concepts introduced in the course. The dialogue must be chosen in consultation with
the instructor before the end of February and posted on a homepage, where you
will also place your analysis. Note that this is a public document on which you
will be able to receive feedback from others in the class. For how to set up
your homepage on the CUA system, see Creating a Personal Home Page (from the CUA Computing Center). You may find lively
dialogues in the many online newsgroups devoted to a wide range of issues.
(If you aren't familiar with the CUA
computing system and resources on campus, see the Users' Guide, and consult
Mullen Library's Guide to Internet Resources).
How to contact the instructor.
Schedule
Jan 9 Introduction.
Jan 11 What's in a name? Language from
transparency to autonomy Bonvillian, ch. 1
Jan 16-25 Formal properties: phonology,
morphology, syntax. Bonvillian, ch. 2
Jan 30 Syntactical theories of language/mind
Feb 1 Non-verbal communication. (Diaries for
January due)
Feb 6-8 Acquiring language. Bonvillian, chs.
9-10
Feb 13-15 Meaning in language. Bonvillian,
ch. 3
Feb 20-22 Metaphors we live by. Lakoff &
Johnson (all)
Feb 27 Review
Mar 1 Midterm Exam (Diaries for February due)
Mar 6-8 Spring Vacation
Mar 13-15 Ethnography of Communication.
Bonvillian, ch. 4
Mar 20-22 Conversation analysis. Bonvillian,
ch. 5
Mar 27-29 Sociolinguistics. Bonvillian, chs.
6-8
Apr 3-5 Men Talk / Women Talk. Tannen (all)
(Diaries for March due)
Apr 10 Narrative Speech / Telling Stories /
Folklore
Handout: "A sojourner's truth,"
Apr 17-19 Bilingualism and multilingual nations.
Bonvillian, chs. 11-12
Handout: "Hasta la vista, baby: Southwest Anglo-Spanish," by Jane
Hill
Apr 24 Professional & Other Speech
Communities. Bonvillian, ch. 13
Apr 26 Communication in the
"Information Age"
"Middle East Diasporas on the Internet" INET'96,
June 1996
"Cellular Obsession" Wired,
January 1997
"Is the Internet..."
Final Exam, as scheduled for T 3:10
classes (Diaries for April due)
NOTE: This course will make use of computers
for your own work on dialogues, for resources for the study of language and as
a site for studying issues of communication. For technical linguistic
information, start with the Brown University list of Linguistic Anthropology on the Internet, or from the University of Arizona Anthropology Department, or use the Yahoo search list for linguistics on the Internet. The University of Chicago Language & Culture page has articles on language use, language
ideology, current sociolinguistics. For language issues - such as rights
to speak, styles of talk - on the Internet itself, see...
Internet Communication (on the World Wide
Web)
Electronic
Frontier Foundation - Net Censorship Archives (includes full text of court
decision on the 1996 Communications Decency Act, links to the ACLU's site, and
other censorship actions/reactions).
http://www.eff.org/pub/Censorship/Exon_bill/
Center For
Democracy and Technology. News (lobbying) on public policies affecting civil
liberties and democratic values in new computer and communications
technologies.
http://www.cdt.org/
Trust and
Privacy On-line, a public opinion survey on Internet censorship and privacy
issues by the Pew Internet & American Life Project http://www.pewinternet.org/reports/toc.asp?Report=19
How women use
the Internet to cultivate relationships with family and friends, another report
from the Pew Internet & American Life Project http://www.pewinternet.org/reports/toc.asp?Report=11
UCLA Internet
Report, a study of how people communicate on-line that challenges theories of
cyber-alienation http://ccp.ucla.edu/newsite/pages/internet-report.asp
Center For
Democracy and Technology. News (lobbying) on public policies affecting civil
liberties and democratic values in new computer and communications
technologies.
http://www.cdt.org/
MSNBC's
"Wired Curtain," on governments' efforts to censor/control Internet
content
http://www.msnbc.com/news/wired_front.asp
Copyright Bill
in Congress
http://www.pcmag.com/nes/trends/t960521a.htm
An ear to the
rumor mill: PR firms sort out the facts on-line, by Paul Farhi The
Washington Post. Monday, September 23, 1996; F17
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1996-09/23/025L-092396-idx.html
Other Media
"The mosque
and the satellite: Media and adolescence in a Moroccan town" by Susan S.
Davis & Douglas A. Davis. http://uslink.net/ddavis/mosque.html
Effects of media
concentration... "New York, Capital of the Information Age," by Peter
W. Huber
http://khht.com/huber/reports/cjournal.html
Impacts of cell
phones... "Cellular Obsession" [in Israel], Wired, January
1997.
http://www.hotwired.com/wired/5.01/israeliphone/
Class
Projects
(rev: 12-12-00)