ANTH 262
Language, Interaction, and Power in Everyday Life Fall 2015
Division II
Cross-listed WGSS 262
This is not the current course catalog

“Microaggressions.” “Hate speech.” Even on campus, we have a number of terms that point to how spoken interaction can reflect and even further inequality. But how exactly does language intersect with power? In this course, we’ll follow the lead of linguistic anthropology, a subfield of anthropology that explores the role of language and interaction in shaping social life. What are the relationships between linguistic forms and cultural practices? In order to answer that question we’ll explore ethnographic methods focused on language, examining how interactive practices intersect with categories like race, gender, sexuality, and social status. Throughout, we’ll consider concrete examples, ranging from studies of Kenyan courtrooms to American basketball courts. We’ll discuss what we can learn about the operations of power in everyday life by attending carefully to how language use shapes social context and vice versa.