College of Social and Behavioral Sciences, NAU
Anthropology 614: The Ethnography of Communication
Anthropology Seminar Room (106), Emerald #4, Swing Space
Thursday 5:30-8 p.m.

Fall 2006

Note: This syllabus is subject to revision, and revisions will be posted on the course’s Vista page.
Instructor: James M. Wilce, Ph.D.
Office hours: Mon. 3:00-4:00; Tuesdays 1-2; and by appointment (Really, ask me for an appointment outside of the appointed times if they don’t work for you—meeting with you is important.)
Office location: Bldg. 98D, Room 101E
Phone and email: Office phone 523-2729; jim.wilce@nau.edu
Course prerequisites: Graduate standing or permission of instructor.
Course description: Presents theoretical models of “comparative speaking,” treating communicative events as systems of social activity analyzed in relation to cultural contexts.
Extended description: This course is an overview of linguistic anthropology, the branch of anthropology that links the analysis of linguistic/semiotic form to the interpretation of sociocultural phenomena. The course title reflects a) a particularly fruitful period in the history of linguistic anthropology when “the ethnography of communication” was in vogue, but more importantly (b) linguistic anthropology’s grounding in a method (ethnography) that is not only central to all of anthropology but also increasingly used by scholars in other disciplines. Finally, the emphasis on “communication” (rather than narrower terms like “language”) indexes the course’s orientation to semiotics, the study of signs—not only linguistic signs but all signs.
            Note: the methods you will learn from the readings will be overwhelmingly qualitative, and often hard to separate from the theory presented in the same reading.
Student learning expectations/outcomes: You will end this course with a working knowledge of theory and method in linguistic anthropology, semiotic anthropology, and the ethnography of communication, the questions raised therein, and their relevance to your research agendas. You will be expected to complete the readings before coming to class and participate in the seminar discussion, and to lead the discussion on at least one reading per week. (See the guidelines on the last page of the syllabus.) Research experiences and in-class demonstrations of methods will expose you to the methodology of linguistic anthropology. In addition to its content-goals, you will learn—by writing a series of short papers—a method of critical/synthetic reading and writing appropriate to 106 pages of challenging readings per week (down from 125 last year).
The downside of Thursdays: We will miss one week, and not reschedule, for Thanksgiving. The other Thursday missed—for the AAAs—we will reschedule at our mutual convenience.
Work load over the semester: Note that the load varies a lot over the semester (see table on next page). Read ahead to level it out. No readings are assigned for week 15 when you orally present your final paper drafts, the week before papers are due. The average number of pages assigned per week in the readings is 106. Learn to read for the main argument without worrying quite as much about every detail of the data.

Assignments:
1)         Students will be responsible to present a reading every week or every other week, depending on enrollment. In relation to every reading, you should tell the seminar a) what possible applications to your own work the piece signals, b) what dimension of language the analysis centered on, c) what lesson it teaches in the uncovering of patterns at the nexus of language and society/culture.
2)         Students will write a total of five short synthesizing papers (3+ pages) on the readings over the semester and participate in one group project. See the guidelines for writing the papers on the last page of the syllabus.
3)         A research paper (15-20 pages) whose topic is worked out in advance with the professor will take up an issue developed in the readings, probably close to one of the weekly topics, and consider it in relation to the student’s own research interests. For this final project, students are invited but not required to collect original data (audio or video recordings), or at least make fresh analyses of a previously recorded speech event. Keep IRB requirements in mind. If you think your project might involve presenting identifiable people on video or audiotape, review the IRB website, http://www2.nau.edu/ovprg/studentprojects.htm . Some help in editing and repeated viewing of the video for purposes of transcription may be available at various lab facilities.
            The paper must be written in American Ethnologist or AAA style in macro as well as micro terms (following the AAA style guide http://www.aaanet.org/pubs/style_guide.htm). This means it must include an abstract, a very brief introduction (about a page), a short literature review (about 2-3 pages; not all the literature assigned in this course but the specific literature on the topic of your paper, literature that may include outside sources), a methods section (1 page), a transcript or series of transcript excerpts in the data section (NOT in an appendix) that also includes a table of Transcription Conventions, an analysis section (the heart of the paper in which you analyze the transcribed data, and Conclusion and References Cited. Your final paper should meet standards of good writing, clarity, and logic—as will be stressed throughout the semester in relation to the shorter papers. Number your pages. You must use AAA style, including citation and bibliographic style. See, for example, the assigned readings that appeared in American Ethnologist (e.g. Woolard 1985, Graham 1993).
Course Policies: Plagiarism includes all forms of using others’ words without citation; plagiarism in papers for this course will result in an “F” for the paper.
Attendance— You are required to attend each class having read the assigned readings and being ready to discuss them; the seminar format requires this. Your grade will reflect your participation and you cannot participate in seminar if you are not present. Remember, the quality of any seminar depends mostly on how well participants prepare prior to coming to class. This involves not only reading the assigned materials but also thinking critically about the issues that they raise. If you anticipate being away, please notify me in advance for the sake of the smooth functioning of the seminar.
Grading system
            Grades will be assigned for participation and writing on a 100 point total:

TEXTBOOKS AND READINGS ON RESERVE
REQUIRED READINGS: (Note: The format of citations to be read is not standard, not AAA style, etc. It is greatly modified to save space. Your final papers need to use AAA style consistently, including in references).
REQUIRED TEXTBOOKS:
1) Duranti, Alessandro. 1997. Linguistic Anthropology. Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press. (LA)
2) Duranti, Alessandro, ed. 2001 Linguistic Anthropology: A Reader. Oxford/Malden, MA: Blackwell. (RDR)
3) Schieffelin, Bambi B.; Woolard, Kathryn A.; Kroskrity, Paul, eds. 1998. Language ideologies : Practice and theory. New York: Oxford University Press. (ID)
4) Silverstein, Michael, and Greg Urban, eds. 1996 Natural histories of discourse. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press. (NHD)
RECOMMENDED (also available on regular reserve behind desk at Cline)
5) Hanks, William F. 1996. Language and communicative practices (Critical Essays in Anthropology No. 1, John Comaroff, Pierre Bourdieu, Maurice Bloch, eds.). Boulder, CO: Westview. (LCP)
6) Duranti, Alessandro and Charles Goodwin, eds. 1992. Rethinking context: Language as an interactive phenomenon. (Studies in the Social and Cultural Foundations of Language, No. 11). Cambridge: Cambridge University. (RC) (No chapters on required reading list, but it's an excellent resource)
7) Duranti, Alessandro, ed. 2006. Companion to Linguistic Anthropology. Blackwell. (Companion)
8) Kroskrity, Paul, ed. 2000. Regimes of Language. Santa Fe: School of American Research Press. (The required chapter will be scanned and available through Vista)
9) Tedlock, Dennis, and Bruce Mannheim. 1995. The Dialogic Emergence of Culture. Champaign/Urbana: University of Illinois. (Dialogic)
10) Urban, Gregory. 2001. Metaculture: How Culture Moves through the World. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press (but we’ll only read one chapter).
ARTICLES: Readings on the course’s Vista pages.

COURSE OUTLINE: TOPICS AND READINGS

Wk. 1, 8/31; Preview and overview of the course; getting to know each other; introduction to dynamism in the third wave of linguistic anthropology, and to semiotics and its relevance for all sciences and humanities
Presentation summarizing insights from:
Duranti, Alessandro. 2003. Language as Culture in U.S. Anthropology: Three Paradigms. Current Anthropology 44(3):323-348.

Wk. 2, 9/7 Organizing perspectives I: What is linguistic anthropology? Methods: Discourse-centered ethnography (asking, learning, observing); the nature and experience of participant-observation in the ethnography of communication
Briggs, Charles. 1984. Learning How to Ask: Native Metacommunicative Competence and the Incompetence of Field Workers. Language in Society 13: 1-28. Web
Caton, Steven C. 1990. “Peaks of Yemen I Summon”: Poetry as Cultural Practice in a North Yemeni Tribe. Berkeley, Los Angeles: University of California Press. Pp. 3-24.
Duranti, Alessandro. 1994. From Grammar to Politics: Linguistic Anthropology in a Western Samoa Village. Berkeley, Los Angeles: University of California Press. Pp. 1-3h.
Hanks, LCP, ch. 1, Introduction: Meaning and Matters of Context, pp. 1-17
LA ch 1, The Scope of Linguistic Anthropology (1-22), ch 4, Ethnographic Methods (84-121)
27+21+2+17+37=104

Wk. 3, 9/14; The circulation of discourse across time and space Methods: Ethnographies of discourse circulation.
Collaborative Project due: In groups of two or three, prepare a presentation and (individually written, different but interlocking) 3 page papers on The Circulation of ‘Text.’ As ‘texts’ you can find something on your own or study one of the following as a succession of text-events in which these mini-texts were circulated: 1) “girlie-men”, 2) “let’s roll,” 3) “we the people,” 4) “free at last,” 5) “I have a dream” (note: MLK ‘warmed up’ to the famous version of the speech over several weeks of lesser known speeches.) You are welcome to use web-based discourse to trace the circulation of any of these. Analyze your chosen “interdiscursive chain” using the readings on circulation below. (You are welcome to, but need not, make use of Week 2 readings in your papers).
Cave, Damien. 2004. Flip-Flopper. New York Times. Section 4 Week in Review, p. 5. December 26, 2004. See Vista course “Web links.”
Kornblut, Anne E. 2006. The Peculiar Power of the Chattering Class. New York Times. Section 4 Week in Review. Pp. 1, 14. New York. April 2, 2006
NHD intro 1-17
Miller, Flagg. 2005. Of Songs and Signs: Audiocassette Poetry, Moral Character, and the Culture of Circulation in Yemen. American Ethnologist 32(1):82–99.
Savan, Leslie. 2005. Popspeak. New York Times Magazine July 10, 2005. p. 16. See Vista course “Web links.”

Urban, Greg. 2001. Metaculture, chapter 3, This Nation Will Rise Up, pp. 92-144. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Web
1+1+17+17+1+52+11=100

Wk. 4, 9/21; Organizing perspectives Part II Methods & Theories: Ethnography (ctd.), Semiotics;
Hymes, Dell. 1972. Models of the interaction of language and social life. In J. Gumperz and D. Hymes (eds.) Directions in Sociolinguistics: The ethnography of communication., pp. 35-71. New York: Holt. Reprinted: Basil Blackwell. Web
Wilce, James M. 2004. To “speak beautifully” in Bangladesh: Subjectivity as pa\gala\mi. In Schizophrenia, Culture, and Subjectivity: The Edge of Experience. Janis H. Jenkins and Robert J. Barrett, eds. New York: Cambridge University Press. Just read pp. 202-205 (“Subjectivity, Intersubjectivity, and Empirical Research”)
RDR, Goodwin and Goodwin, Emotion within Situated Activity, pp. 239-257.
RDR, Silverstein, The Limits of Awareness, pp. 382-401.
Urban, Greg 1996. Semiotics and Anthropological Linguistics. In Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics. Vol. 3, Pp. 406-407. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Web.
Preucel, Robert W., and Alexander A. Bauer. 2001. Archeological Pragmatics. Norwegian Archaeological Review 34(2):85-96.
36+3+18+2+19+2+11=91

Wk. 5, 9/28; Linguistic diversity and the cultural significance of linguistic form; linguistic relativity Methods: structuralist analysis, fine-grained transcription
Paper#2 due: (Before even THINKING about starting this paper, carefully read the instructions at the end of the syllabus). Specific instructions for this paper: Respond to the readings for weeks 2, 4, & 5. What do the terms ‘pragmatic’ and ‘metapragmatic’ mean? Describe a naturally occurring metapragmatic utterance from Briggs. Why are some pragmatic devices harder to access in explicit metapragmatic discourse? What does Duranti’s reworking of linguistic relativity seem to entail (ch 3) and what are the implications of the diversity of grammatical forms outlined in chapter 6? Do those implications raise questions that complicate the argument of chapter 5?
LA, chs. 3, Linguistic Diversity (pp. 51-83); ch 5, Transcription: From Writing to Digitized Images (pp. 122-161); ch 6, Meaning in Linguistic Forms, (pp. 162--213)
33+91=124
Recommended:
Goodwin, Charles and Alessandro Duranti. 1992. Rethinking Context: An Introduction. RC, 1-42.

Wk. 6, 10/5; Poetics, performance, and the analysis of parallelism
LA ch. 7, Speaking as Social Action, 214-243.
RDR ch 7, Verbal Art as Performance, pp. 168-169 only.
Bauman, Richard and Charles Briggs. 1990. Poetics and performance as critical perspectives on language and social life. Annual Review of Anthropology, pp. 59-88. Web
Silverstein, Michael 2003  Death and Life at Gettysburg. In Talking Politics: The Substance of Style from Abe to “W”. M. Silverstein, ed. Pp. 33-62. Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press (distributed by University of Chicago).
Wilce, James M. In submission. Scientizing Bangladeshi Psychiatry: Parallelism, Enregisterment, and the Cure for a Magic Complex. Language in Society.
29+2+29+29+x=about 120
Recommended:
RDR, Bauman, Richard. Verbal Art as Performance (the whole essay)
Wk. 7, 10/12; a) The process of language socialization; b) Analyzing narrative
Ochs, Elinor, and Lisa Capps. 2001. Living Narrative: Creating Lives in Everyday Storytelling. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 1-24 (“A Dimensional Approach to Narrative”); 156-161 (“Experiential Logic”); 201 (“Beyond Face Value”) Web
Collins, James 1996. Socialization to Text: Structure and Contradiction in Schooled Literacy. (NHD 203-228.)
Ochs, Elinor, and Bambi B. Schieffelin. 1984. Language Acquisition and Socialization: Three Developmental Stories and Their Implications. (RDR 263-301)
Ochs, Elinor, and Carolyn Taylor. The “Father Knows Best” Dynamic in Dinnertime Narratives. (RDR 431-449)
25+7+25+38+18=113

Wk. 8, 10/19; Language, history, and identity (Method: Analyzing code-switching, analyzing “textual” poetics of identity construction [Reyes])
Paper 3 due: Weeks 6-8 reading critique. Follow instructions at the end of the syllabus. Covering the four topics in one paper doesn’t mean a lot of integrating across the four. Focus first on commonalities and differences among perspectives within one week. Compare authors (NOT the authors they, in turn, cite). If you have space left afterwards, you could address themes that cross-cut the three weeks.
Blom, Jan-Petter and John J. Gumperz. 1972. Social meaning in linguistic structures: Code-switching in Norway. From Directions in sociolinguistics, 407-34. Web
Kroskrity, Paul. 1993. An Evolving Ethnicity Among the Arizona Tewa: Toward a Repertoire of Identity. In Language, History, and Identity: Ethnolinguistic Studies of the Arizona Tewa. Pp 177-212. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. Web
Mannheim, Bruce. 1991. Introduction. The Language of the Inka Since the European Invasion. Pp. 1-28. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Rampton, Ben. 1995. Language Crossing and the Problematisation of Ethnicity and Socialisation. Pragmatics 5(4):485-513.
Reyes, Angela. 2002. Are You Losing Your Culture? Poetics Indexicality and Asian-American Identity. Discourse Studies 4:183-199.
Woolard, Kathryn. 1985. Language variation and cultural hegemony: Toward an integration of sociolinguistic and social theory. American Ethnologist 12: 738-48. Web
27+35+28+28+16+10=144
Recommended:
Companion Pp. 23-45 Asif Agha. Register.
Companion Pp. 369-394. Bucholtz, Mary, and Kira Hall. Language and Identity.
Companion Pp. 73-94. Woolard, Kathryn A. Codeswitching.
LCP, ch. 12, Meaning in History, 268-306

Wk. 9, 10/26; Interaction: Ethnomethodological Perspectives (Methods: Conversation analysis; Multimodal semiotic analysis of interaction
Video in class
LA ch. 8, Conversational Exchanges 244-280.
Goodwin, Charles. 1979. The interactive construction of a sentence in natural conversation. In Everyday language, G. Psathas (ed.), pp. 97-121.New York: Irvington. Web
Goodwin, Marjorie H., Charles Goodwin, and Malcah Yaeger-Dror. 2002. Multi-modality in Girls’ Game Disputes. Journal of Pragmatics 34:1621–1649.
Read either Goodwin, Charles 2003. Pointing as Situated Practice. In Pointing: Where Language, Culture, and Cognition Meet. S. Kita, ed. Pp. 217-246. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
OR Goodwin 2000. Practices of Color Classification. Mind, Culture, and Activity 7(1-2): 2-37. Web. (Note: Both of these study archaeological fieldworkers using the tools of linguistic anthropology and CA).
36+24+28=88+(29 or 35)=117 or 123
            Recommended:
Wilce, James M. 2004. To “speak beautifully” in Bangladesh: Subjectivity as pa\gala\mi. In Schizophrenia, Culture, and Subjectivity: The Edge of Experience. Janis H. Jenkins and Robert J. Barrett, eds. Pp. 196-218. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Wk. 10, 11/2; Linguistic ideologies (Method: comparing structures, actions, and consciousness)
ID, 3-27 Woolard, Introduction
ID 51-67, Irvine, Ideologies of Honorific Language
ID 87-102. Kulick, Anger, Gender, Language Shift;
ID 149-162, Mertz, Linguistic Ideology and Praxis U.S. Law School Classrooms
ID 256-270, Collins, Tolowa, Our Ideologies and Theirs
Schieffelin, B. B. 2000. Introducing Kaluli Literacy: A Chronology of Influences. In Regimes of Language. Edited by P. Kroskrity, pp. 293-327. Santa Fe: School of American Research Press.Web
24+16+15+13+15+34=117

Wk. 11, 11/9; Language, power, ritual, and space: The “exemplary center,” etc.
ID 103-122  Kroskrity, Arizona Tewa Kiva Speech as a Manifestation of a Dominant LI
Paper#4 due, on readings for weeks 9-11
Duranti, Alessandro 1992 Language and bodies in social space: Samoan greetings. American Anthropologist 94:657-691. Web
Errington, J. Joseph. 1988. Ethics Etiquette, and the Exemplary Center. Pp. 22-45. In Structure and Style in Javanese: A Semiotic View of Linguistic Etiquette. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania.
Kuipers, Joel C. 1998. Place, Identity, and the Shifting Forms of Cultivated Speech: A Geography of Marginality. In Language, Identity, and Marginality in Indonesia. Pp. 22-41. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Silverstein, Michael 2004. “Cultural” Concepts and the Language-Culture Nexus. Current Anthropology 45(5):621-652.
34+23+19+31=107
Recommended:
Fox, James J. 1989. 'Our Ancestors Spoke in Pairs': Rotinese Views of Language, Dialect, and Code. In Explorations in the Ethnography of Speaking. R. Bauman and J. Sherzer, eds. Pp. 65-85. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kroskrity, Paul V. 1985. Growing with stories:  Line, verse, and genre in an Arizona Tewa text. Journal of Anthropological Research 41:183-99.
Wiget, Andrew. Telling the tale: A performance analysis of a Hopi coyote story. In Recovering the Word, pp. 297-336 (skim). Web
Wilce, James M. 2006 [to appear, December] Magical Laments and Anthropological Reflections: The Production and Circulation of Anthropological Text as Ritual Activity. Current Anthropology.

Wk. 12, 11/16; To be rescheduled because of AAA meetings
Language and Gender: Variationist and Performance Perspectives
Eckert, Penelope and Sally McConnell-Ginet. 1992. Think practically and look locally: Language and gender as community-based practice. Annual Review of Anthropology 21: 461-90. Web
Goodwin, Marjorie H.
            2002    Exclusion in Girls' Peer Groups: Ethnographic Analysis of Language Practices on the Playground. Human Development 45:392-415.

Sidnell, Jack. 1999. Gender and Pronominal Variation in an Indo-Guyanese Creole-Speaking Community. Language in Society 28:367-399. Web
Trechter, Sarah 1999. Contextualizing the Exotic Few: Gender Dichotomies in Lakhota. In Reinventing Identities: The Gendered Self in Discourse. M. Bucholtz, A.C. Liang, and L.A. Sutton, eds. Pp. 101-119. New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Web  
29+37+18=84+TBA
Recommended:
Eckert, Penelope, and Sally McConnell-Ginet. 2003. Language and Gender. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Week 13 No class (Thanksgiving)

Week 14—11/30; Applied Issues: Language in Institutional Settings, Literacy, and Language Revitalization

Paper #5 due: Weeks 12&14 readings, 3 pages. See instructions for week 9 and at end of syllabus, but also this—by now you have some ideas as to how linguistic anthropology might be applied. What are the promises and pitfalls of applied linguistic anthropology that the readings might hint at?
Heath, Shirley Brice. What No Bedtime Story Means (RDR 318-342).
Hinton, Leanne 2001. Language Revitalization: An Overview. In The Green Book: Language Revitalization in Practice. K. Hale and L. Hinton, eds. Pp. 3-18. San Diego: Academic Press. Web
Holmes, Janet, Maria Stubbe, and Bernadette Vine. 1999. Constructing professional identity: “Doing power” in policy units. In Talk, Work and Institutional Order: Discourse in Medical, Mediation and Management Settings. S. Sarangi and C. Roberts, eds. Pp. 351-387. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Nevins, M. Eleanor. 2004. Learning to Listen: Confronting Two Meanings of Language Loss in the Contemporary White Mountain Apache Speech Community. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 14(2):269-288.
Roberts, Celia and Srikant Sarangi. 1999.  Hybridity in gatekeeping discourse: Issues of practical relevance for the researcher. In Talk, Work and Institutional Order: Discourse in Medical, Mediation and Management Settings. S. Sarangi and C. Roberts, eds. Pp. 473-503. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
            24+15+36+19+30=124
Recommended:
Scribner, S. & Cole, M. 1981b. Unpackaging literacy. In M. F. Whiteman (ed.) Writing , volume 1, pp. 71-87. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Web
Duranti, Alessandro and Elinor Ochs. 1986. Literacy instruction in a Samoan village. In B. Schieffelin and P. Gilmore (eds.) The acquisition of literacy: Ethnographic perspectives, 213-32.  Norwood, NJ: ABLEX. Web
Friedman, Jonathan. 2003. Globalizing Languages: Ideologies and Realities of the Contemporary Global System. American Anthropologist 105(4):744-752.
Nettle, Daniel, and Suzanne Romaine 2000. Vanishing Voices: The Extinction of the World’s Languages. New York: Oxford University Press. Selection to be announced. Traditional reserves at Cline

Wk. 15, 12/7; Your presentations

Wk. 16 Final papers due December 15 by 9 a.m.

Guidelines for weekly written and oral presentations
Guidelines for the Three Papers on the Readings

These 4 page critiques will be your way of integrating and responding to the readings assigned for the week on which the papers are due (the papers are prospective, not retrospective). Again, the aim of these papers is to help you integrate and think critically about the readings as a whole. Never!!! write “one paragraph per reading” as an method of organizing the paper. Rather, integrate—form paragraphs according to topics you perceive cutting across the readings. Sometimes it will be appropriate in your papers to cumulatively draw on the various perspectives of authors you read over the course of the semester. You should prepare for this paper (and for the seminar) by writing a one-sentence précis of each author’s argument (so, e.g., four précis sentences for four authors) and then finding themes that crosscut. Your papers should touch on the main contribution of each reading to our understanding of the week’s (or semester’s) theme, not on supporting points (subarguments or data). Find differences between authors and take sides, arguing that one perspective is more logical and/or better supported (with evidence) than another. Again, organize each paragraph of every paper by a theme, not by an author. I am looking for evidence that you have gone beyond parroting to be able to compare and contrast perspectives. Write concisely. Do not quote at all. Obviously you need to accurately represent the gist of each author, and to do so you might need to cite a page # for a specific idea. In fact, whenever you get a particular idea from a particular author, try to nail down the page where that idea is best represented and cite it in anthropological citation style (author’s last name date: page) e.g. (Einstein 1941: 243). Note: Citations should be in American Ethnologist or AAA style. No bibliography is necessary unless you cite sources not assigned in class.

Leading discussions

1. Each class session will consist of a group discussion based on a collection of readings. You are required to attend each class having read the assigned readings and being ready to discuss them. You will find it helpful to take notes on the readings and bring them with you to class.
2. You will be responsible for co-facilitating some of the class discussions. Each required reading will be assigned to at least one student who will be expected to lead the discussion on it. In preparing for the discussions you will facilitate, write a one-sentence précis of the argument, cutting out everything but what the author is trying to persuade us to see.

            With every reading, a) tell possible applications to your own work, b) tell what dimension of language the analysis centered on, c) tell how what lesson it teaches in the uncovering of patterns at the nexus of language and society/culture.
            Keep in mind that we are discussing several readings relating to a theme; so look for common or contrasting threads that run through each week’s readings, common questions that those readings address as a unit. Formulate 2-3 questions on “your” reading that help us see the contrasting approaches of the authors to a similar phenomenon. Never ask questions whose answers must be looked up on a particular page. Instead, let your questions point us to the major points or memorable arguments the author makes.