Spring 2010
4:10-6:40 p.m. Weds., 3 credit hours
Instructor: James M. Wilce, Ph.D.
Office hours: Mondays 5-6 p.m. (in SBS West Computer Lab); Wednesdays 2:30- 4 p.m. (in Anthropology, Building 98D, room 101E); 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: See above
Phone: (928) 523-2729
Email: jim.wilce@nau.edu
Course prerequisites: ANT 102 or the equivalent, and senior or graduate standing; or consent of instructor.
Course description: Cross-cultural perspectives on the power of practitioners’ talk and medical discourse in general, and the power of language in symbolic healing
Extended course description
This seminar uses methods from medical discourse analysis, anthropology, and critical theory to get at the interrelationships between language, power, and medicine. Students will write a final paper based on analysis of a clinical event or healing encounter, e.g. something that's already public via the net. Questions we will ask, or learn to ask, focus on these three thematic areas:
I. Discourse as Power: Foucaultian Perspectives
A. The Globalization of Biomedicine
B. Therapy Culture and the Incitement to Discourse
C. Medicalization: The Constitutive Role of Medical Discourse
D. Racialization and the Discursive Marginalization of the Unhealthy: Communicability
II. Healing & Healters’ Authority: Embodied Aesthetics and/or Circulable Textuality
A. Entextualization, Enregisterment, Circulation, and Power:
B. Aesthetics and Performance in Healing
III. Doctors and Patients: Unilateral Authority, or Interactive Collaboration?
A. The Contributions of Conversation Analysis to the Study of Medical Discourse
B. Bodies as Subjects as Well as Objects in the Production of Medical Meaning
C. Legitimation and Delegitimation of Patients’ Experience
Student Learning Expectations/ Outcomes for This Course:
The course is a seminar. Students lead discussions of common readings and write critical syntheses of those readings A final paper requires an new analysis of a medical discourse phenomenon (e.g. a reanalysis of a published transcript of a practitioner-patient encounter).
Required texts
Briggs, Charles L., and Clara Mantini-Briggs.
2003 Stories in the Time of Cholera: Racial Profiling during a Medical Nightmare. Berkeley: University of California Press. (ST)
Desjarlais, Robert R.
1997. Shelter Blues: Homelessness and Sanity in a Boston Shelter. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. (SB)
Heritage, John, and Douglas W. Maynard, eds.
2006 Communication in Medical Care: Interaction Between Primary Care Physicians and Patients. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (CMC)
Required Articles Online. Most readings for the course are on Vista; some you must download from Cline (under JSTOR, or Anthrosource). Unless otherwise indicated, articles are available through Vista or Cline’s e-journals.
Recommended texts:
Berkenkotter, Carol
2008 Patient Tales: Case Histories and the Uses of Narrative in Psychiatry. Charleston: University of South Carolina Press. (PTS)
Good, Byron J.
1994 Medicine, Rationality, and Experience: An Anthropological Perspective (The Lewis Henry Morgan Lectures 1990). Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. (MRE)
Jenkins, Janis Hunter, and Robert J. Barrett, eds.
2003 Schizophrenia, Culture, and Subjectivity: The Edge of Experience. New York: Cambridge University Press. (SCS)
Laderman, Carol and Marina Roseman.
1996 The Performance of Healing. New York: Routledge. (PH) (Three chs are assigned)
Wilce, James
1998 Eloquence in Trouble. New York: Oxford University Press. Note: Available for $30 (vs. $65 retail) at the Anthropology office. Note: There might be required readings from ET, but for those preferring electronic copies of required chapters, purchasing the book will be unnecessary. ET
Wilce, James M., ed.
2003 Social and Cultural Lives of Immune Systems. New York: Routledge. (SCLIS)
An average of 103 pages of readings (including articles and books) are assigned each week of readings (far fewer on average if you count Week 1 and Week 15)—with tremendous variation around the mean!
Course Outline
Week 1 Jan 13. How does language enter in to the construction of medicine’s power? What is a linguistic anthropological argument, in relation to power and medicine, and how do I build one?
Wilce handout, Healing and Performativity (Vista)
Donahue, Katherine C.
2007 Slave of Allah: Zacarias Moussaoui vs. The USA. London and Ann Arbor: Pluto Press. Pp. 55-56.
Week 2, Jan 20
Primer: What is Culture? How Shall We Look at Language? What is medical discourse?
CMC 1, John Heritage and Douglas W. Maynard, “Introduction: analyzing interaction between doctors and patients in primary care encounters,” pp. 1-21
Goodwin, Marjorie H. 1990. Talk as Social Action. In He-Said-She-Said: Talk as Social Organization among Children. Pp. 1-17. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Kuipers, Joel C. 1989. “Medical discourse” in anthropological context: Views of language and power. Medical Anthropology Quarterly 3(2):99-123. ANTHROSOURCE/JSTOR
Maynard, Douglas W., and John Heritage 2005. Conversation Analysis, Doctor-Patient Interaction and Medical Communication. Medical Education 39:428-435.
Urban, Greg. 1992. Semiotics and Anthropological Linguistics. In International Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics. W. Bright, ed. Pp. 406-408, Vol. 3. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Wilce, James M. 2009. Medical Discourse. Annual Review of Anthropology 38(1):199-215.
Wilce Wikipedia article, “Linguistic Anthropology” (6 pp)
Wilce ‘handout,’ “Healing and Performativity” (6 pp)
21 +17 +24+7+3+16+6 + 6= 100
Recommended
Ochs, Elinor, Olga Solomon, and Laura Sterponi. 2005. Limitations and Transformations of Habitus in Child-Directed Communication. Discourse Studies 7(4-5):547-583.
Week 3, Jan. 27
I. Discourse as Power: Foucaultian Perspectives (and others)
A. The Globalization of Biomedicine
MRE 1 “Medical Anthropology and the Problem of Belief,” pp. 1-24. Laurie
Bender, Margaret unpublished MS Up to Center: Indexicality and Voice in Cherokee Medicinal Texts. Just read pp. 21-32, 45-47 Jonah
Halliburton, Murphy. 2005. "Just Some Spirits": The Erosion of Spirit Possession and the Rise of "Tension" in South India. Medical Anthropology 24(2):111-144. Brandie
Kleinman, Arthur, and Peter Benson 2006. Anthropology in the Clinic: The Problem of Cultural Competency and How to Fix It. PLoS Medicine 3(10/ e294):1673-1676. Shelby
Perrino, Sabina M. 2007. Intimacy and Global Biomedicine in Senegalese Ethnomedical Encounters. Paper presented at the 106th Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association. Washington, D.C. December 1, 2007. (17pp). Sophia
Salmon, Peter, and George M. Hall 2003 Patient empowerment and control: A psychological discourse in the service of medicine. Social Science & Medicine 57(10):1969-1980. Douglas
Summerfield, Derek. 1995. Assisting survivors of war and atrocity: short notes on "psychosocial" issues for NGO workers. Development in Practice 5(4):352-356. Sable
Waitzkin, Howard, and Theron Britt. 1989. Changing the Structure of Medical Discourse: Implications of Cross-National Comparisons. Journal of Health and Social Behavior 30(4):436-449. Jim Wilce
23+11+3+33+3+17+4+13= 107
Recommended:
Liebeskind, Claudia. 2002. Arguing Science: Unani Tibb, Hakims, and Biomedicine in India, 1900-50. In Plural Medicine, Tradition and Modernity, 1800-2000 W. Ernst, ed. Pp. 58-75. London and New York: Routledge.
Pigg, Stacy Leigh. 1996. The credible and the credulous: The question of 'villager's beliefs' in Nepal. Cultural Anthropology 11(2):160-201. JSTOR
Roelke, Volker. 1997. Biologizing Social Facts: An early 20th Century Debate on Kraepelin’s Concepts of Culture, Neurasthenia, and Degeneration. Culture, Medicine & Psychiatry 21:383-403.
Week 4, Feb. 3
B. Therapy Culture and the Incitement to Discourse: Therapy as Ideology
First paper due: Following the instructions at the end of the syllabus, reflect on the readings from Weeks 2-4, and describe themes pertaining to an anthropology of discourse in relation to medicalization
Carr, E. Summerson. 2006. “Secrets keep you sick”: Metalinguistic labor in a drug treatment program for homeless women. Language in Society 35(5):631-653. Douglas
Foucault, Michel. 1990 (1978) The History of Sexuality: An Introduction. R. Hurley, transl. Volume 1. New York: Vintage. (The Repressive Hypothesis, pp. 17-35: Scientia Sexualis, pp. 53-73). Shelby
Hodge, F. S., L. Fredericks, and B. T. Rodriguez. 1996. American Indian women's talking circle. A cervical cancer screening and prevention project. Cancer 78(7):1592-1597. Sable
Langford, Jean M. 1995. Ayurvedic Interiors: Person, Space, and Episteme in Three Medical Practices. Cultural Anthropology 10(3):330-366. ANTHROSOURCE Sophia
Peräkylä, Anssi. 1995. AIDS Counselling. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Just read p. 339
Sansom, Basil. 1982. The sick who do not speak. In D. Park, ed., Semantic Anthropology (ASA Monographs), 183-196. Brandie
Watters, Ethan 2010. The Americanization of Mental Illness. In The New York Times. January 8, 2010. New York. 16pp Laurie
Wenzel, Eberhard. 1997. Environment, development and health: Ideological metaphors of post-traditional societies? Health Education Research: Theory & Practice 12(4): Just read p. 412
22+20+5+36+13+16+1= 113
Week 5, Feb. 10
C. Medicalization: The Constitutive Role of Medical Discourse
SB pp. 120-208 Brandie and Sophia
Cicourel, Aaron V. 1992. The interpenetration of communicative contexts: Examples from medical encounters. In Rethinking Context: Language as an Interactive Phenomenon. A. Duranti and C. Goodwin, eds. Pp. 291-310. Studies in the Social and Cultural Foundations of Language, Vol. 11. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Jonah
Santiago-Irizarry, Vilma. 1996. Culture as Cure. Cultural Anthropology 11(1):3-24. Douglas ANTHROSOURCE/JSTOR
Smith, Benjamin. 2005. Ideologies of the Speaking Subject in the Psychotherapeutic Theory and Practice of Carl Rogers. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 15(2):258–272. Sable ANTHROSOURCE
88+21+14= 123
Week 6, Feb. 17
D. Racialization and the Discursive Marginalization of the Unhealthy: Communicability
ST Introduction: Death in the Delta (pp. 1-18) Sable; Preparing for a Bacterial Invasion: Cholera and Inequality in Venezuela (pp. 19-47) Douglas; Epidemic at the Door: Cholera Prevention in the Bureaucratic Imaginary of Delta Amacuro (pp. 48-58) Laurie; Stories of an Epidemic Foretold: Cholera Reaches Mariusa (pp. 59-80) Brandie; Fighting Death in a Regional Clinic: Cholera Arrives in Pedernales (pp. 81-97) Shelby;
97 pages
Week 7, Feb. 24
The Epistemic Authority of Health Discourses in Modern Nation-States
ST Turning Chaos into Control: Initial Responses by Regional Institutions (pp. 98-137) Laurie; Exile and Internment: The Mariusans on La Tortuga (pp. 163-178) Jonah; Culture Equals Cholera: Official Explanations for the Epidemic (pp. 199-223) Brandie;
80pp.
Recommended:
ST Containing an Indigenous Invasion: Quarantine in Barrancas (pp. 138-162); Medicine, Magic, and Military Might: Cholera Control on La Tortuga (pp. 179-198); Sanitation and Global Citizenship: International Institutions and the Latin American Epidemic (pp. 269-297) Sable
Week 8, Mar. 3
Stories in a Time of Cholera
Second paper due on Theme I, particularly Weeks 5-8
Challenging the Logic of Culture: Resisting Official Explanations for the Epidemic (pp. 224 255) Douglas; Local Numbers and Global Power: The Role of Statistics (pp. 256-268) Sophia; Virulent Aftermath: The Consequences of the Epidemic (pp. 298-332). Shelby
44+34=78
Week 9, Mar 10
II. Healing and Healers’ Authority: Circulable Textuality and/or Embodied Aesthetics
A. Enregisterment, Taxonomy and Category Invention, and Power
PTS, “Case histories in the hospital and the medical journal in Enlightenment Scotland,” (pp. 17-30) Douglas, and “In his own words: Using a patient’s utterances to document an ‘unsound mind’” (pp. 31-51). Laurie
Gaines, Atwood. 1992. From DSM-I to DSM-R; Voices of Self, Mastery and the Other: A Cultural Constructivist Reading of U.S. Psychiatric Classification. Social Science and Medicine 35:3-24. Brandie
Jennett, Bryan, and Fred Plum 1972. Persistent vegetative state after brain damage. A syndrome in search of a name. Lancet 299(7753):734-7.
Wilce, James M. 2008. Scientizing Bangladeshi Psychiatry: Parallelism, Enregisterment, and the Cure for a Magic Complex. Language in Society 37(1):91-114. Jonah
34+21+13+3+25=96
Recommended:
Atkinson, Dwight. 1992. The evolution of medical research writing from 1735-1985. The Case of the Edinburgh Medical Journal. Applied Linguistics 13:337-374.
MacDonald, Malcom N. 2002. Pedagogy, pathology and ideology: the production, transmission and reproduction of medical discourse. Discourse & Society 13:447-467.
Martin, Emily. 2001. Rationality, Feminism, and Mind. In Feminism in Twentieth-Century Science, Technology, and Medicine. A. Creager, E. Lunbeck, and L. Schiebinger, eds. Pp. 214-227. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
SPRING BREAK March 15-19
Week 10, Mar 24
A3. Enregisterment, Taxonomy and Category Invention, and Power, ctd
Third paper due (on weeks 8-10, covering textuality, register, entextualization, enregisterment, taxonomies, and power)
Cambrosio, Alberto, and Peter Keating. 1992. A Matter of FACSP: Constituting Novel Entities in Immunology. Medical Anthropology Quarterly 6(4):362-384. ANTHROSOURCE/ JSTOR Sophia
Koschmann, Timothy, et al. 2007. Formulating the Triangle of Doom. Gesture 7(1):97-118. Laurie
Lee, Sing. 1999. Diagnosis Postponed: Shenjing Shuairuo and the Transformation of Psychiatry in Post-Mao China. Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry 23:349-380. Douglas
Weber, Matthias M., and Eric J. Engstrom. 1997. Kraepelin's 'diagnostic cards': The confluence of clinical research and preconceived categories. History of Psychiatry 8:374-385.
Young, Allan. 1995. The Harmony of Illusions: Inventing Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Pp. 3-10, 145-175 Brandie
22+21+31+11+7+30= 122
Recommended:
Farmer, Paul. 1994. AIDS-talk and the constitution of cultural models. Social Science & Medicine 38(6):801-809.
Week 11, Mar 31
B. Aesthetics and Performance in Healing,
PH Desjarlais “Presence,” 143-164 Brandie and Laurie
Becker, Alton L. 1979. Text-building, Epistemology, and Aesthetics in Javanese Shadow Theatre. In The Imagination of Reality. A.L. Becker and A. Yengoyan, eds. Pp. 211-243. Norwood, NJ: ABLEX. Sophia
Laderman, Carol. 2001. Tradition and Change in Malay Healing. In Healing Powers and Modernity: Traditional Medicine, Shamanism, and Science in Asian Societies. L. Connor and G. Samuel, eds. Pp. 42-63. Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey. Douglas
Toelken, Barre. 1987. Life and death in the Navajo coyote tales. In Recovering the Word: Essays on Native American Literature. B. Swann and A. Krupat, eds. Pp. 388-401. Berkeley: University of California Press Sable
16+21+21+17+13+13= 101 total pages
Recommended:
PH, Introduction by Laderman & Roseman (pp. 1-16)
ET 11, “Pragmatics of Madness,” 200-223
SCLIS Wilce, James M., and Laurie Price. Immune Metaphors Our Bodyminds Live By? (pp. 107-153). Shelby
Delvecchio-Good, Mary Jo, et al. 1994. Oncology and Narrative Time. Social Science and Medicine 38(6):855-862.
Laderman, Carol. 1987. The Ambiguity of Symbols in the Structure of Healing. Social Science and Medicine 24(4): 293-301.
Week 12, Apr 7 (First day of topic)
III. Doctors and Patients: Unilateral Authority, or Interactive Collaboration?
A. Domination or Collaboration?
(Two page outline of final (research) paper due)
Laurie CMC 5, Virginia Gill and Douglas W. Maynard, “Explaining illness: patients’ proposals and physicians’ responses” pp. 115-150
Shelby CMC 8, Anssi Peräkylä, “Communicating and responding to diagnosis,” pp. 214-247
Sophia Todd, Alexandra Dundas. 1993. Exploring women's experiences: Power and resistance in medical discourse. In The social organization of doctor-patient communication. A.D. Todd and S. Fisher, eds. Pp. 267-285. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.
Sable Vehviläinen, Sanna. 2008. Focus on the patient’s action: identifying and managing resistance in psychoanalytic interaction. In Conversation analysis and Psychotherapy. A. Peräkylä, C. Antaki, S. Vehviläinen, and I. Leudar, eds. Pp. 120-138. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
35+33+32+18= 118
Recommended:
CMC 11, David Greatbach, “Prescriptions and prescribing: co-ordinating talk and text-based activities,” pp. 313-339
D. will take this Haakana, Markku. 2001. Laughter as a patient's resource: Dealing with delicate aspects of medical interaction. Text 21(1/2):187-219.
Peräkylä, Anssi. 1998. Authority and Accountability: The delivery of diagnosis in primary health care. Social Psychology Quarterly 61(4):301-320.
Week 13, Apr 14
III B. The Contributions of Conversation Analysis: Bodies as Subjects as Well as Objects in the Production of Medical Meaning (That only applies to two of these readings!)
Brandie CMC Heath “Body Work: The Collaborative Production of the Clinical Object,” Pp. 185-213. (Illustrates IA and IB)
Sophia Ainsworth-Vaughn, N. (1992). Topic transitions in physician-patient interview: Power, gender, and discourse change. Language in Society, 21, 409-426.
Sable Aranguri, Cesar, Brad Davidson, and Robert Ramirez. 2006. Patterns of Communication through Interpreters: A Detailed Sociolinguistic Analysis. Journal of General Internal Medicine 21(6):623–629.
Laurie Drennan, Gerard, Ann Levett, and Leslie Swartz. 1991. Hidden dimensions of power and resistance in the translation process: A South African study. Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry 15(3):361-381.
Hindmarsh, Jon, and Alison Pilnick. 2002. The Tacit Order of Teamwork: Collaboration and Embodied Conduct in Anesthesia. The Sociological Quarterly 43(2):139-164. JSTOR
28+17+6+20+25=96
Recommended:
ET Interacting with Practitioners (pp. 154-181)
Week 14, Apr 21
Fourth paper due— On Weeks 11-14, covering aesthetics in healing encounters, dominance/authority, and collaboration;
III C. Legitimation and Delegitimation of Patients’ Experience and Practioners’ Expertise
Sable PH: The Meaning of Nonsense, the Poetics of Embodiment, and the Production of Power in Warao Healing (Briggs, pp. 185-232)
Douglas Brown, Michael Fobes. 1988. Shamanism and its discontents. Medical Anthropology Quarterly 2(2): 102-120. ANTHROSOURCE/ JSTOR
Shelby Davidson, Brad. 2001. Questions in Cross-Linguistic Medical Encounters: The Role of the Hospital Interpreter. Anthropological Quarterly 74(4):170-178.
Brandie Giordano, Cristiana. 2008. Practices of translation and the making of migrant subjectivities in contemporary Italy. American Ethnologist 35(4):588–606. ANTHROSOURCE
Sophia Trnka, Susanna. 2007. Languages of Labor: Negotiating the “Real” and the Relational in Indo-Fijian Women’s Expressions of Physical Pain. Medical Anthropology Quarterly 21(4):388–408. ANTHROSOURCE
ET,Metacomplaints: Conflict, Resistance, and Metacommunication (pp. 182-199).
SCS (also on Vista) Wilce. To “speak beautifully” in Bangladesh: Subjectivity as pa\gala\mi. Pp. 196-218.
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.
Oral Presentations, Week 15, Apr 28
Final (research) paper due, May 5
Assessment of Student Learning Outcomes
A) Regular assignments: (1-2 below are worth a cumulative 70% of total grade).
1) Analysis of readings— four papers on the readings (40%):
Learn to read for main arguments more than detail, and compare authors’ arguments against each other in your own critical synthesis. All readings discussed before the due date of each paper can be included as cumulative insight, but papers should focus on readings discussed in the previous two weeks. Four such papers are assigned, on the dates noted in the course outline
2) Participation in discussion (30%):
Everyone is expected to have read the assigned chapters/papers enough to participate in class. That does not mean perfect comprehension-- we learn together. Students are required to participate each week by putting before us thoughtful questions regarding the readings or by sharing their insights in response to others’ questions/comments. Individuals will be assigned particular responsibility to help the discussion of certain assigned pages.
B) Final Paper (due at the time noted in the course outline) 30% (25% of course grade for paper itself, and another 5% of course grade reflects your in-class presentation of your paper topic)
The final paper will combine your own observations and experiences of “medicine” (loosely defined as in the readings) with a critical use of the readings. It should speak to one of the weekly reading topics, or outline nodes, in particular. If the paper centers on newly collected data, requiring the taping of a “medical” event, permission from patient, practitioner, and the Institutional Review Board will need to be sought in the second week of the semester. That choice of topic is yours; it is not required. Other papers will rise to a different challenge—a thorough rethinking of one of the theoretical models/topics explored in this course. All papers should include a transcript of some medical encounter, prepared in accordance with one of the transcript forms in your readings (especially CMC), and should make the analysis of the transcribed encounter the center. (Theory-oriented papers can use transcripts from the published sources which they are critiquing.) The phenomenon in focus in the transcript and the theoretical model and analytic method used to interpret the transcript should reflect intimate knowledge of the readings, again focusing on one week’s readings in particular.
You will present your topic orally to the seminar one week before finals are scheduled.
Regular weekly attendance is expected. Participation through making weekly presentations accounts for 20% of total grade.
This course strictly follows the university policy governing plagiarism and cheating.
You will be writing four papers that synthesize and critically reflect on the cumulative readings and discussions. They will be 4-5 pages in length (double-spaced or 1.5-spaced), and will integrate and critically evaluate the perspectives offered in the readings. Here’s another way of saying this: the aim of these papers is to encourage synthetic, integrative, critical reflection on the readings Your papers should reflect an accurate sense of the main argument of each reading and its unique perspective.
In presenting a reading in class and in preparing to write these papers, prepare a one sentence précis of EACH author’s argument before you actually write the integrative paper. Here’s an example: “Finkler argues that the scholarly focus on the doctor-patient relationship is an ethnocentric projection of an issue relevant (only?) to our biomedical encounters.” Compare the collected arguments of the authors whose work you are reflecting on for a given paper (two weeks’ worth usually; the first paper will be an exception). Taking the Finkler example, you might use her notion of “dramaturgy” to set up a paragraph in which you contrast Finkler’s position with Lévi-Strauss’s and Laderman’s. Your paper should then not shift paragraph by paragraph from author to author; that is, no paragraph should be about one author only!!!!!!!. Rather, you should organize it by topics which your own insightful vision sees in as you compare your one-sentence argument-summations (topics like “dramaturgy in the doctor-patient encounter”).
As the semester progresses, your papers can take backward glances at readings you will have analyzed in your previous papers. Papers can be somewhat cumulative in that sense, though I encourage you to spend your limited four pages or so mostly on the two weeks of readings and discussion which you have not previously analyzed. I am looking for evidence that you have integrated, compared and contrasted perspectives. Papers longer than 5 pages are NOT encouraged. Be concise. Quoting is discouraged; digest and paraphrase the material instead.
An absence can throw you off seriously. If you must miss class, contact someone about discussion notes, papers due, etc.
Guidelines for oral presentations on assigned readings
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, try not to spend too much time summarizing the readings, but do so in enough detail to orient the group.
3. You are to present a one sentence précis of your author’s argument, then three questions that prompt synthesis. Your questions should ask the class to think “across” the readings, to compare and contrast, particularly in relation to what you perceive as the common themes any two authors address. (Those commonalities might well need you to unearth them—that is key to grad level reading—developing your own synthetic insights.)
3. In addition to précis and questions, tell the seminar a) what possible applications to your own work the piece signals, and b) what dimension of language, discourse, or semiotic form the analysis centered on.
Guidelines for effective reading
What is the reading about? (should take up about half of your presentation)
What are the broader issues that it seeks to address?
What underlying assumptions-- theoretical or otherwise-- does the author make?
What are the strengths of the argument?
What are its weaknesses or limitations? What considerations has the author failed to take into account?
What have you learned? What more would you now like to know on the topic?
To what related material-- in this class, other classes, your own lives-- does the material relate? Does it help you more clearly understand dynamics or patterns that exist in this society or any others?
Look for common or contrasting threads that run through each week’s readings. Consider the questions that they seek to address as a unit.
Students not leading the discussions that particular week should try to keep these same questions in mind. 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.
Guidelines for Writing the Final Paper
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.
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. Note that the AAA style guide’s convention about representing numbers does not pertain to a) the actual line numbers you insert in your transcript, or b) references back to those lines in your discussion.
Your transcript MUST number lines (never turns, but lines, i.e. literal lines on the page) and the line divisions must be theoretically motivated (e.g. to show the parallelism if that’s what you’re talking about. Follow the model of some reading, and mention it. The most explicit discussion and comparison of various approaches to transcription in your readings is Duranti 1997: chapter 5.
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).
FIXING WRITING/LOGIC PROBLEMS
Tips, rules, abbreviations,
and guide to decoding notes written on your essays
Good writing doesn’t just reflect good thinking—it IS good thinking-on-paper. Writing problems obscure your logic and add unfair burdens to readers. These problems are not just style, and they alienate employers!!!
Here are some of the most common problems. It is likely that I have used the abbreviations to note them on your paper.
Rule 1) Proofread—read your paper aloud (to someone else if possible) before handing it in. That helps you catch nonsense. As you proofread, check for problems of clarity, logic, grammar, and spelling.
Rule 2) Citing sources: What’s too much vs. too little? Constant quoting of others kills your unique voice. If you quote others, cite them—give credit to the author (not the editor, not “someone said.”)
Rule 3) S&S— Keep it SHORT AND SWEET. Use the fewest possible words to do the clearest job.
Rule 4) In every draft of every paper, number your pages consecutively and include in a Bibliography at the end any references cited, alphabetically by author’s surname (exception—the weekly critique papers I assign in some courses).
Abbreviations for problems to be fixed:
¶ = paragraph
2/3—2 commas are needed in any list of three items, for example: “You should go to town with your hat, coat, and umbrella.” More generally, for any list of N items (where N>2), there must be N-1 commas.
1T—1 (one) tense per paragraph is usually best. Don’t mix present and past in one ¶.
Act/Analysis—You’ve confused acts with analysis of actions. There is a relation, but to confuse them prevents you meta-analysis of that relation.
AN—Author’s names should never be abused by misspelling them. Check their spelling!
ASC—Agency/state confusion. Bad writing treats states-of-affairs or events like intentional acts and vice versa by using the wrong verbs for each, e.g. saying that ideas “take place.”
AP—Avoid passives (“It is said,” “to be found.…”). They sound weak. They make your writing lazy. They let you get away with not naming the agent of the action you’re describing.
AUW—Avoid unnecessary words (rule 3).
C/E—Cause/effect confusion. You’ve confused causes and effects. See WC.
COMPLEMENTIZER—Only verbs of speaking or believing take “that” as their complementizer. Here’s an example of a mistake: “His argument parallels Lévi-Strauss’s and that social structures are reproduced in a dialectical process.” Correction: “His argument parallel’s Lévi-Strauss’s; he also claims that…”
CSSP/CSVO—Never use a comma to separate subject from predicate. Likewise, commas should not be used to separate verbs from their direct objects.
CQ—Context question. Bad writing starts a topic (or quotes sources) without giving the reader enough context. So readers can’t make sense of the topic, the quote, or the purpose of either in your work.
EC—Empty comparative. Never use a comparative (e.g. “more x”) without specifying a standard; i.e. say “more x than y is” (e.g. “more industrialized than the rural area”). Likewise, don’t use “aspects” without telling us “aspects of [what?].”
GA—Grammatical asymmetry. E.g. “Huehetenango shares a border with Mexico to the northeast, to the east with El Quiche, to the south with San Marcos.” Usually it’s better to be consistent, as in “with X to the A, with Y to the B, and with Z to the C.”
IS—Incomplete sentence. “Although he ran.” is an incomplete sentence, crippled by the “although,” which turns “ran” into a dependent verb. IS’s lack “main verbs,” “independent verbs.”
MM—Misplaced modifiers, e.g. “Barking and snarling, the babies were attacked by dogs,” or “I love this stuff even though it’s fattening, that I’m eating.” Move the underlined phrases. Typically MM’s end up at either end of the sentence when they should be right next to the noun they modify.
NIB—When written by a citation, it means that citation was not in your bibliography.
PP—Punctuation problem. Use apostrophes when they’re needed—not for plurals. Use semicolons, em-dashes (—), or double-dashes when your sentence has too many commas but you still need to set apart a whole section—like this after-thought!
PWQ—Punctuation goes within quote marks, except when you are quoting an author and your sentence ends with the citation, in which case you do NOT put a period just within the end-quote mark but AFTER the citation, e.g. “and demonstrated the claim with ample data” (Smith 2001: 302).
ROS—Run-on sentences are the opposite of IS’s. When you get to the end of a thought and use a comma instead of a period, and start the next thought after the comma, you usually create a ROS.
RP— Relative pronoun problems. Never use “that” for people (e.g. never say “the man that…”)—use “who.” When to use “that” vs. “which”? When you’re tempted to start a clause with “which” but in fact what comes after it is necessary to delimit what you’re referring to (“the language that perished” vs. another that didn’t), use “that” instead of “which.” When the phrase is unnecessary to distinguishing what you’re talking about and is more descriptive, use “which.” Use which after a comma.
SP—Spelling problem. Check spelling as part of your proofreading. If you haven’t learned to make your word-processor run a spell-check for you before printing, DO SO!
SPA—Singular/plural agreement or consistency lacking. The simple form of this problem—using a plural verb form for a third-person singular subject—usually arises because you lose track of the subject of the sentence. Writers sometimes try to treat any old noun that happens to be near the verb as the subject.
SWS—Switching subjects across clauses. One common and problematic type of sentence affected is a compound sentence whose verbs are ing-verbs (doesn’t work!). Ex.: “By revamping the district policy, the students will benefit…” (The problem is it implies the students revamp the policy. This sentence could be fixed by substituting “from” for “by” and reversing the order of the 2 clauses— “Students could benefit from a revamping of district policy…” The other sorts of examples involve a pronoun as subject of a second (subordinate) clause that does not clearly rest for its reference on any noun in the first clause. E.g. “The category of ‘schizophrenia’ escapes classification because they [schizophrenics?????] are a social anomaly.”
Theory/World—Students sometimes confuse theories, or the products of our analysis, with the worlds they describe, for example referring to “the setting of this transcription” instead of “the setting of this speech event.” Every transcript is an analytic product with a theoretical bent.
TT/EE—Don’t confuse “then” (a conjunction or adverb) with “than” (a comparative); also watch “there” (locative adverb) and “their” (possessive) and effect vs. affect (as both N’s &V’s).
UA—Unclear antecedent. When you use words like “this” or “he,” (deictic anaphors), it must be clear what they refer to (usually, what they refer “back to”—the antecedent).
WC—Wrong conjunction. Conjunctions can be subordinating or coordinating. Writers sometimes use “although”—which clearly implies a contrast or something counter to expectation—when they should use “and” or some other conjunction that does not imply that contrast. Conjunctions are in writing what signs like plus and minus are in math; hence, WC errors are serious logic problems.
WHILE—Use “while” as a temporal conjunction (e.g. “While time passed…”), not when you mean “although.”
IF YOUR WRITING HAS SERIOUS AND PERVASIVE PROBLEMS, YOU WILL BE ASKED TO REWRITE AND PERHAPS GET HELP FROM THE WRITING CENTER (LIBERAL ARTS BLDG.). Try to see this as a foretaste of such real-world situations as responding to an employer or an editor. Anyone who writes must face it.
Anthropology majors and grad students should familiarize themselves with the AAA’s styleguide, http://www.aaanet.org/pubs/style_guide.htm
Northern Arizona University
Policy Statements
Safe Environment Policy
NAU’s Safe Working and Learning Environment Policy seeks to prohibit discrimination and promote the safety of all individuals within the university. The goal of this policy is to prevent the occurrence of discrimination on the basis of sex, race, color, age, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, disability, or veteran status and to prevent sexual harassment, sexual assault or retaliation by anyone at this university.
You may obtain a copy of this policy from the college dean’s office or from the NAU’s Affirmative Action website http://www4.nau.edu/diversity/swale.asp. If you have concerns about this policy, it is important that you contact the departmental chair, dean’s office, the Office of Student Life (928-523-5181), or NAU’s Office of Affirmative Action (928-523-3312).
Students with Disabilities
If you have a documented disability, you can arrange for accommodations by contacting the office of Disability Support Services (DSS) at 928-523-8773 (voice), 928-523-6906 (TTY). In order for your individual needs to be met, you are required to provide DSS with disability related documentation and are encouraged to provide it at least eight weeks prior to the time you wish to receive accommodations. You must register with DSS each semester you are enrolled at NAU and wish to use accommodations.
Faculty are not authorized to provide a student with disability related accommodations without prior approval from DSS. Students who have registered with DSS are encouraged to notify their instructors a minimum of two weeks in advance to ensure accommodations. Otherwise, the provision of accommodations may be delayed.
Concerns or questions regarding disability related accommodations can be brought to the attention of DSS or the Affirmative Action Office. For more information, visit the DSS website at http://www2.nau.edu/dss/.
Institutional Review Board
Any study involving observation of or interaction with human subjects that originates at NAU—including a course project, report, or research paper—must be reviewed and approved by the Institutional Review Board (IRB) for the protection of human subjects in research and research-related activities.
The IRB meets monthly. Proposals must be submitted for review at least fifteen working days before the monthly meeting. You should consult with your course instructor early in the course to ascertain if your project needs to be reviewed by the IRB and/or to secure information or appropriate forms and procedures for the IRB review. Your instructor and department chair or college dean must sign the application for approval by the IRB. The IRB categorizes projects into three levels depending on the nature of the project: exempt from further review, expedited review, or full board review. If the IRB certifies that a project is exempt from further review, you need not resubmit the project for continuing IRB review as long as there are no modifications in the exempted procedures.
A copy of the IRB Policy and Procedures Manual is available in each department’s administrative office and each college dean’s office or on their website: http://www4.nau.edu/ovp/regulatorycompliance/irb/index.htm. If you have questions, contact Melanie Birck, Office of Grant and Contract Services, at 928-523-8288.
Academic Integrity
The university takes an extremely serious view of violations of academic integrity. As members of the academic community, NAU’s administration, faculty, staff and students are dedicated to promoting an atmosphere of honesty and are committed to maintaining the academic integrity essential to the education process. Inherent in this commitment is the belief that academic dishonesty in all forms violates the basic principles of integrity and impedes learning. Students are therefore responsible for conducting themselves in an academically honest manner.
Individual students and faculty members are responsible for identifying instances of academic dishonesty. Faculty members then recommend penalties to the department chair or college dean in keeping with the severity of the violation. The complete policy on academic integrity is in Appendix G of NAU’s Student Handbook http://www4.nau.edu/stulife/handbookdishonesty.htm.
Academic Contact Hour Policy
The Arizona Board of Regents Academic Contact Hour Policy (ABOR Handbook, 2-206, Academic Credit) states: “an hour of work is the equivalent of 50 minutes of class time…at least 15 contact hours of recitation, lecture, discussion, testing or evaluation, seminar, or colloquium as well as a minimum of 30 hours of student homework is required for each unit of credit.”
The reasonable interpretation of this policy is that for every credit hour, a student should expect, on average, to do a minimum of two additional hours of work per week; e.g., preparation, homework, studying.