College of Social and Behavioral Sciences, NAU
Department of Anthropology
ANT 714: Advanced Seminar in Linguistic Anthropology
Spring 2004
Thursday 2:20- 4:50
3 credit hours

Instructor: James M. Wilce, Ph.D.

Office address: Anthropology (Bldg. 60) Rm. 211

Phone and email: 523-2729; jim.wilce@nau.edu

Office hours: Tuesday 12:15-1:30; Thursday 11-noon; and by appointment

Course prerequisites: ANT 614

Course description: Advanced theoretical and methodological readings in linguistic anthropology will be applied in a final research project resulting in a paper publishable in a peer-review journal. Readings will include several ethnographies by linguistic anthropologists. The course will include training in collection and analysis of audio or videotaped data.

Student Learning Expectations/Outcomes for this Course: The course will prepare students to carry out graduate research in linguistic anthropology grounded in the latest theory and methods in use in the discipline. Students write a publishable paper in linguistic anthropology that may be incorporated into a thesis or dissertation. More specifically:
1)         Students will read approximately 150 pages per week.
2)         Students will write seven 3-4 page critiques of the readings over the semester. See the guidelines for writing these on the last page of the syllabus.
3)         Students will also complete exercises in the analysis of language and culture, using data from field recordings on audio and video tape (digitized).
4) Finally, a publishable paper (20-30 pages) whose topic is worked out in advance with the professor will develop the student’s research interests using the theoretical and methodological perspectives acquired in this course. Students are required to use original data (audio or video recordings), obtained with IRB approval. Help in editing and analysis of taped material will be available at the department’s labs and/or the South Campus LAC.

Course structure/approach: This is a seminar. Students lead discussions, sharing already (by virtue of reading), and adding (through discussion) to, a high level of understanding.

TEXTS

Ahearn, Laura M.
2001    Invitations to Love: Literacy, Love Letters, and Social Change in Nepal. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.

Bauman, Richard, and Charles Briggs
2003    Modernizing discourse/Voices of modernity: Language ideologies and the politics of inequality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Eckert, Penelope, and Sally McConnell-Ginet
2003    Language and Gender. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Farnell, Brenda M.
1995    Do You See What I Mean?  Plains Indian Sign Talk and the Embodiment of Action. Austin: University of Texas Press.

Goodwin, Marjorie Harness
1990    He-said-she-said:  Talk as social organization among children. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Hymes, Dell
1981    In Vain I Tried to Tell You:  Essays in Native American Ethnopoetics. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Jaffe, Alexandra
1999    Ideologies in Action: Language Politics on Corsica. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Kroskrity, Paul, ed.
2000    Regimes of Language. Santa Fe: School of American Research Press.

Lee, Benjamin
1997    Talking Heads: Language, Metalanguage, and the Semiotics of Subjectivity. Durham: Duke University Press.

Linde, Charlotte
1993    Life Stories. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.

Rampton, Ben
1995    Crossing: Language and Ethnicity Among Adolescents. London: Longman.

RECOMMENDED TEXTS (ON TRADITIONAL RESERVE AT CLINE)

Bakhtin, Mikhail
1981    The Dialogic Imagination. Austin: University of Texas Press.

1984    The Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics. C. Emerson, transl. Volume 8. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Hoopes, James, ed.
1991    Peirce on signs: Writings on semiotic by Charles Sanders Peirce. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina.

Innis, Robert E., ed.
1985    Semiotics, an Introductory Anthology. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Jakobson, Roman
1987    Language in Literature. Cambridge, MA. and London: The Belnap Press of Harvard University.

1990    On language. L.R. Waugh and M. Monville-Burston, transl. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

Lucy, John A., ed.
            1993    Reflexive Language: Reported Speech and Metapragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Tedlock, Dennis
1983    The Spoken Word and the Work of Interpretation. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Volos&inov, Valentin Nikolaevitch
1973    Marxism and the philosophy of language. L. Matejka and I.R. Titunik, transl. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Whorf, Benjamin Lee
            1956    Language, Thought, and Reality:  Selected writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

TEXTS YOU SHOULD ALREADY HAVE
Duranti, Alessandro
1997    Linguistic Anthropology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Duranti, Alessandro, ed.
2001    Linguistic Anthropology: A Reader. Oxford
Malden, MA: Blackwell.

Hanks, William F.
1996    Language and Communicative Practices. Volume 1. Boulder, CO: Westview.

Schieffelin, Bambi B., Kathryn A. Woolard, and Paul Kroskrity, eds.
1998    Language ideologies : practice and theory. New York: Oxford University Press.

Silverstein, Michael, and Greg Urban, eds.
1996    Natural histories of discourse. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.

Course Outline

Paper 1 due (on readings for Week 2)
Hymes chapter 3 (79-139?)
Jakobson 1987 Language in Literature, 121-144, (Grammatical parallelism and its Russian facet), pp. 250-261 (Subliminal verbal patterning in poetry), pp. 413-427 (Quest for the Essence of Language),
Jakobson 1990 pp. 134-142 (The Concept of Mark, written with Krystyna Pomorska), 69-79 (The Speech Event and the Functions of Language)
Volosinov 83-98 (Verbal Interaction);
Whorf 1956 . Pp. 87-101 (Grammatical Categories)

Hymes 60, Jak 23+25+18 (66), Volosinov 15, Whorf 14= 155 pages

Week 3 1/29   Formalism ctd.

Bakhtin 1981, pp.  259-294
Bakhtin 1984, pp. 181-202
Lee, ch. 8, pp. 277-320 (The Metalinguistics of Narration)

Recommended:

Hymes, Dell
1992    Helen Sekaquaptewa's "Coyote and the Birds": Rhetorical Analysis of a Hopi Coyote Story. Anthropological Linguistics 34(1-4):45-72.
Jakobson, Closing statement: Linguistics and poetics. In Semiotics: An Introductory Anthology. R.E. Innis, ed. Pp. 145-175. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Paper 2 due (on readings for Weeks 3 & 4)

Week 5 2/12 Conversation Analysis in Linguistic Anthropology
Goodwin: Talk as Social Action (1-17); Fieldwork (18-26); Building Opposition in Children’s Argument (143-189); He-Said-She-Said (190-228); Perspectives on Stories (229-238); Stories as Participation Structures (239-257); Conclusion (283-288)
26+46+67+5=144 pages

Week 6 2/19 Sociolinguistic Methods and Anthropology: Language, Narrative and and Identity

Paper 3 due (on readings for Weeks 5&6)
Linde: The Creation of Coherence in Life Stories (3-19), What is a Life Story? (20-50), Methods and Data for Studying the Life Story (51-97); Narrative and the Iconicity of the Self (98-126); Coherence Principles: Causality and Continuity (127-162)
Pay particular attention to the first chapters, and at least skim the last three to get the gist.

160 pages

Week 7 2/26 Semiotic issues in linguistic anthropology

Lee chs. 4 and 5, pp. 105-180??? (Peirce’s Semiotic; Linguistics and Semiotics)
Peirce 1991, pp. 33-49? (Questions concerning certain faculties claimed for man)
Peirce, Charles Sanders
1985    Logic as Semiotic: The Theory of Signs. In Semiotics, an Introductory Anthology. R.E. Innis, ed. Pp. 4-23. Bloomington IN: Indiana University Press.
Silverstein, Michael
2003    Indexical order and the dialectics of sociolinguistic life. Language and Communication 23(3-4):193-229.
75+16+19+36=146 pages
Recommended: Lucy (on reserve) 1993; pp. 9-32 (Lucy, Reflexive Language and the Human Disciplines) pp. 261-286 (Parmentier, The Political Function of Reported Speech)

Week 8 3/4 Knowing language and its users: Phenomenology, Bodies and Space

Paper 4 due (on readings for Weeks 7&8)

Farnell Introduction (pp. 1-28); The Nineteenth-Century Legacy (pp. 29-40); Bias Against the Iconic (pp. 41-58); Storytelling and the Embodiment of Symbolic form (pp. 173-242); The Primacy of Movement in Assiniboine Culture (pp. 243-292)

Ruthrof, Horst
2000    The Body in Language. London/New York: Cassell. Pp. 1-21 (Introduction and The Corporeal Turn).
To view in ANT 110 on Mac: Farnell, Brenda M. 1995. Wiyuta: Assiniboine Storytelling with Signs. Austin: University of Texas Press. CD-ROM on reserve at Anthropology Desk.
58+49+49+20=176 pages

Week 9 3/11 The Gendered Self in Discourse

Eckert and McConnell-Ginet: Making social moves (ch 4, 129-156); Positioning ideas and subjects (ch. 5, 157-191); Mapping the world (ch 7, pp. 228-265); Working the market: use of varieties (ch 8, pp. 266-304)
27+34+37+38=136 pages

SPRING BREAK

Week 10 3/25 Linguistic Change and Linguistic Ideologies I

Paper 5 due (on readings for Weeks 9&10)
Jaffe: Introduction (1-32); Language shift and diglossia (71-118); Language Activism Part I (119-159); Language Activism Part 2 (160-190)
31+47+40+30=148 pages

Week 11 4/1 Linguistic Change and Linguistic Ideologies II
Kroskrity pp. 35-83 (Irvine and Gal, Language Ideology and Linguistic Differentiation); pp. 85-138 (Silverstein, Whorfianism and the linguistic imagination of nationality); pp. 205-228 (Errington, Indonesian(‘s) Authority)
Schieffelin et al, eds. (Blommaert & Verschueren, The Role of Language in European Naitonalist Ideologies, pp. 189-210)
48+53+23+21=145 pages

Week 12 4/8 Uncovering Modern Transformations of Language and Performance

Paper 6 due (on readings for Weeks 11 &12)
Ahearn: Invitations to Love (3-26); Juggling Roles (27-44); Key Concepts and Their Application (45-66); Developing Love: Stories of Development Discourse in Nepali Love Letters (149-190);
Rampton ch 9, Creole and SAE (iii): Rituals of morality and truth, falsity and doubt (225-243); ch 10, Panjabi (iii): Looking beyond the borders (244-272);
23+17+21+41 (Ahearn, 102); 225-272 (Rampton, 47)= 149 pages

Week 13 4/15 Uncovering Modern Transformations of Language and Performance (II)
Bauman and Briggs Scientizing textual production in the service of the nation: the Brothers Grimm and Germanic philology (197-225); The making of an American textual tradition: Henry Rowe Schoolcraft’s Indian researches (226-254); The foundation of all future researchers: Franz Boas’s cosmopolitan charter for anthropology (255-298); Conclusion (299-321)
197-321=124 pages

Week 14 4/22 Performativity, Performance, and “Crossing”

Paper 7 due (on readings for Weeks 13&14)
Lee chapters 1& 2 The Foundations of Performativity and Deconstructing Performativity (16-65); The Performativity of Foundations (pp. 321-345)
Rampton ch 11, Crossing and the sociolinguistics of language contact (275-302); ch 12, Crossing, discourse, and ideology (303-322)
Lee, Benjamin, and Edward LiPuma. 2002. Cultures of Circulation: The Imaginations of Modernity. Public Culture 14(1):191-213.
49+24+27+19+23=142

Week 15 4/29                         Presentations

Week 16 5/6                           PAPERS DUE

Assessment of Student Learning Outcomes

Methods of Assessment
1) Weekly papers will receive percentage grades.
2) Participation is graded cumulatively based on the quality of comments in class.
3) Attendance is also part of the participation grade; students are expected to attend.
4) The final presentation and paper will be graded on a percentage basis.

Timeline of Assessment

Students will receive grades for the 9 short papers one week after they are handed in. Grades for presentations will be emailed the next day. Final paper grades will be available in my office on the day grades are posted on Louie.

Grading System

            Grades will be assigned for participation and writing on a 100 point total:

Course policy

Attendance is required. Missing two seminars will result in 10% lowering of the participation grade. Missing three will result in 20% off. To be more specific, you are required to attend each class having read the assigned readings and being ready to discuss them. 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. Attend every week; the seminar format requires it. If you anticipate that you must be away, please notify me in advance for the sake of the smooth functioning of the seminar.

Plagiarism is a serious offense. Papers with substantial plagiarized portions—uncited use of others’ work—will receive an F.

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. Take separate notes on the readings and bring notes and readings 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, believe, do, etc. 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 or for definitions of a term unique to one page of one source. Instead, let your questions point us to concepts popping up in more than one source (treated differently), concepts that will nearly always be central to or memorable in the arguments the authors make.

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. You are expected to attend—and be on time—every week; the seminar format requires it. If you anticipate being away, please notify me in advance for the sake of the smooth functioning of the seminar.

Writing Critical/Integration Papers

            Your biweekly papers and your final papers should be in AAA format. Note that the “bibliographic citations” in this syllabus are NOT (in order to save space). ). The final paper will require a bib. in AAA format, but you should not waste paper on a bib. for the biweekly response papers unless you cite sources not assigned in class. The Hopper reading (Week 5) is an example of AAA format, as is Wilce in Week 7. Here is AAA in-text citation format— (Einstein 1948: 223). Note, never punctuate between author and date, and never insert p. or pp. before pages cited. Similarly, never insert editor’s names in citations. Save all such info for your References Cited.
These 3-4 page critiques will be your way of integrating and responding to the readings. Since 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).