Anthony K. Webster

The ability to learn and use language is a quintessentially human characteristic—one that distinguishes homo sapiens from other animal species. Language is simultaneously generated through and generative of social life; the former is a primary resource that we humans use in both the structuring and accomplishment of the latter. These dynamics form the subject of study of linguistic anthropology.

This course is an introduction to linguistic anthropology. It is impossible in a single semester to provide a complete overview of all topics that linguistic anthropologists address, so this course covers selected topics, the selection of which is aimed to illustrate how linguistic anthropologists go about doing their work: the range of topics they examine, the kinds of questions they ask, the types of approaches and methods they utilize, and the sorts of conclusions they reach.

Linguistic anthropology comes into being in large part as an effort to document Indigenous languages of the Americas. What they found were languages that differed significantly, both from Indo-European languages they were familiar with, but also from each other. Confronted with such diversity, linguistic anthropologists attempted to make sense of the ramifications of that diversity—one way they did that, though they did not invent the idea, was through a concern with linguistic relativity (asking how languages facilitate particular ways of orienting to the world). This class traces the history of the relationship between languages in cultures and cultures in languages, first as it was formulated by the early Boasians, but later as it became a refigured in the ethnography of speaking, ethnopoetic and language ideologies literatures. While an explicit orientation to linguistic relativity may no longer be at the fore of linguistic anthropology, such a perspective undergirds much work in linguistic anthropology (language ideological work is founded on Whorfian insights, for example). How and it what ways do “language” and “culture” interanimate each other? The class concludes by reading recent work in linguistic anthropology and thinking through the ways that contemporary linguistic anthropology engages the question of languages in cultures and cultures in languages. 

This class takes an ethnographic and linguistic approach to the twin and twined concerns of speech play and verbal art. Ultimately, speech play and verbal art are social practices that are deeply embedded within and creative of linguistic structurings (call this grammar, if you like). After orienting students to the basic ideas of play, grammar, performance, and context; this class proceeds to look at a variety of examples of speech play and verbal art (from puns to lies to songs to stories to poetry) in a host of contexts and languages. Rather than being seen as a marginal pursuit, speech play and verbal art are revealed to be central features of the language, culture and individual nexus and thus essential to both ethnography (anthropology) and linguistics. Along the way, we may also find delight and wisdom in such examples of speech play and verbal art.

At issue in this course is the fundamental anthropological problem of the negotiation of difference, and of how difference is made manifest, created, concealed, or analyzed. Although at one point anthropology thought of its task as making other cultures and people comprehensible to Western audiences through a process of cultural translation, the pre-suppositions of that task came under heavy criticism at the end of the twentieth century. More and more scholarship is now focused on the ways in which situated social actors are themselves engaged in processes of cultural and linguistic translations as a regular, if not always mundane, fact of social life. But without the religious, universalizing, or evolutionary basis of earlier translation models, how do we conceptualize these projects of transformation? Although we will start by analyzing models of translation that seek to ensure “authenticity” (of selves or of cultures) we will problematize such models over the course of the semester through readings on colonial knowledge production, gender, law, language and the subject, and techno-science. Rather than thinking of translation as an exceptional moment of confrontation between two autonomous linguistic or cultural systems, we will end with analyses that examine translation as the site of the production of cyborgs and assemblages – people, objects, and texts in cultural circulation. One line of research, a concern with poetics and translation has sought to think about both linguistic difference—particular constellations of uses of lexico-grammatical features—and of the role of parallelism as a form of poetic translation (where parallelism seeks to create an equivalence). In this way of thinking of translation, translation begins as a kind of iconicity—a resemblance of something to someone and parallelism a mode a creating such iconicity, such “translations.” Poetics then both defies translation and is a form of translation.  

This course explores the myriad of indigenous languages (variously conceived) of the North America and how they are intertwined with culture. The focus of this course is from the perspectives of linguistic anthropology and an ethnography of speaking. That is, the indigenous languages of the Americas will be considered with respect to their phonologies, complex morphologies, discursive structures, and historical relations as well as their place within the sociocultural milieu of speakers. Focus will be on issues concerning literacy, language change, language shift, speech play, language and gender, verbal art, language ideologies and the quotidian ways of getting things done in and through language.  Language is made real in use. We will look to the uses and users of language.

This class explores the diverse Native cultures of the Southwest. The class focuses on the philosophical underpinnings and the frameworks of meaning and moral responsibility of indigenous peoples of the American Southwest. The goal is to give students a broader view of the Native peoples of North America and specifically of the Southwest. By focusing on the diverse groups of the Southwest, this course aims to increase knowledge concerning specific Native populations. The course will involve three ethnographies and readings that will orient students to peoples and issues of import in the Southwest. This course pays particular attention to the expressive forms of Native American peoples and cultures of the Southwest as well as political economy.

How do we recognize place? How do we find that place? How do we talk or sing or tell place into being? What does it mean to be from a place? To imagine a place?  This class investigates the ways languages are implicated in our constructions of and senses of places, the ways that linguistic forms aid in emplacements. From the ways that the Hudson River school crafted a “sanctified landscape” both in literature and in art to the persistent literary imaginings of the “Atlantic world” to the ways that placenames are used in Apache and Foi discourse to Aboriginal Australian sand stories and acrylic “dot” painting to the variable ways languages encode directionals this class seeks to understand the sociocultural, language in use (poetry, song, narrative, conversational, etc.), multimodal, and historical constitutions of place and perspective. There is an often enduring, if variable, import in being from a place, in having a place, in, that is, being emplaced.

The ability to learn and use language is a quintessentially human characteristic—one that distinguishes homo sapiens from other animal species. Language is simultaneously generated through and generative of social life; the former is a primary resource that we humans use in both the structuring and accomplishment of the latter. These dynamics form the subject of study of linguistic anthropology.

This course is an introduction to linguistic anthropology. It is impossible in a single semester to provide a complete overview of all topics that linguistic anthropologists address, so this course covers selected topics, the selection of which is aimed to illustrate how linguistic anthropologists go about doing their work: the range of topics they examine, the kinds of questions they ask, the types of approaches and methods they utilize, and the sorts of conclusions they reach.

An Anthropology Core Course, this course is an introduction to the theoretical and methodological foundations of the study of language from a sociocultural perspective. Topics discussed include linguistic, philosophical, psychological, sociological and anthropological contributions to the understanding of verbal and non-verbal communication as a social activity embedded in cultural contexts. No prior training in linguistics is presupposed. Readings include both ethnographic studies and theoretical work about language.

For many people, sound is ubiquitous. It surrounds us. It inhabits us. It reverberates through us. It emanates from us. This class takes sound and soundedness as crucial to the anthropological and ethnographic enterprise. From questions of soundscapes to the role of sound in on-going concerns with linguistic relativity to ideophony and phonological iconicity to the physicality of voice to the problem of noise to acoustemology this class seeks to listen to such sounds and their resonances. It takes the sounds of languages seriously and not as mere garments that hang on the more important work of semantico-referentiality. Classes will revolve around readings that help us attune to the places of sound in anthropology.

This course explores the myriad of indigenous languages of the North America and how they are intertwined with culture. The focus of this course is both descriptive and anthropological. That is, the indigenous languages of the Americas will be considered with respect to their phonologies, complex morphologies, discursive structures, and historical relations as well as their place within the sociocultural milieu of speakers. Language is made real in use. We will look to the uses and users of language.

In American popular imagination, literacy is seen as unquestioned good. Beginning with the controversial work of Walter Ong, this seminar explores literacy and literacies as cultural and linguistic practices. Discussions of the role of literacy have often been framed in technologically deterministic ways: literacy causes a new consciousness. Such grand pronouncements, like the current technological determinism found in discussions of the ways the internet has changed everything, often lack the basic component of anthropology, namely, ethnography. This class takes an ethnographic and linguistic approach to literacies (understood here as a multiplex set of practices). What are the roles of literacies in a Peruvian village? How are some forms of writing erased and/or marginalized? What is the role of literacy in concerns with power and domination? What does it mean to say that someone “writes” in a language? What are the language ideologies that inform what gets counted as writing? Or as “correct” writing? Why might some societies eschew writing in their indigenous language? How is literacy linked with questions of rationality and Enlightenment in Tamil?

This class explores the diverse Native cultures of the Southwest. The class focuses on the philosophical underpinnings and the frameworks of meaning and moral responsibility of indigenous peoples of the American Southwest. The goal is to give students a broader view of the Native peoples of North America and specifically of the Southwest. By focusing on the diverse peoples and cultures of the Southwest, this course aims to increase knowledge concerning specific Native populations today (Hopi, Navajo, Apache, Zuni, Tohono O’odham, Yaqui, and others). This course pays particular attention to expressive forms, current political issues, political economy, and the on-going legacy of settler colonialism.

Recent trends in some linguistics and linguistic anthropology tend to downplay the role of the imagination in the language/culture/individual nexus and rather focus on the banal and the putative “cognitive.” This seminar reverses that and puts the interplay between language and the imagination at the center of linguistic anthropology. We begin by thinking through the ways that imagination and languages interanimate and make possible each other. This, of course, entails taking a principled stance on what we might mean—cross-culturally—by imagination and language(s). We then rethink ways of imagining languages more generally. What might it mean to see imagination as a crucial locus in languaging? This leads us to questions of linguistic relativity, poetics, creativity, and questions of craft and inspiration. Following this we then engage several ethnographies that put imagining and the interplay of language and imagination at the forefront of their research. The goal, then, is to reflect on our own imaginings of language, our languages of imagining, the ways languages-in-use facilitate imaginative acts, and what that might mean for linguistic anthropology.

The ability to learn and use language is a quintessentially human characteristic—one that distinguishes homo sapiens from other animal species. Language is simultaneously generated through and generative of social life; the former is a primary resource that we humans use in both the structuring and accomplishment of the latter. These dynamics form the subject of study of linguistic anthropology.

This course is an introduction to linguistic anthropology. It is impossible in a single semester to provide a complete overview of all topics that linguistic anthropologists address, so this course covers selected topics, the selection of which is aimed to illustrate how linguistic anthropologists go about doing their work: the range of topics they examine, the kinds of questions they ask, the types of approaches and methods they utilize, and the sorts of conclusions they reach.

This class examines the rise, application and changing theoretical concerns of language/linguistic ideology. Since its formulation in 1979 by Michael Silverstein, language ideology has been an important theoretical concern in linguistic anthropology, sociolinguistics, sociocultural anthropology, sociocultural linguistics, language documentation and other like-minded language-in-use-centered disciplines. This class traces that history—reading the classic articles and edited volumes as well as influential thinkers like Raymond Williams—and then moves on to look at the ways that language/linguistic ideological frameworks have been applied to a multitude of ethnographic and historical circumstances. Readings here include examinations of the rise of modernist conceptions of language, the role of language ideological clarification in the work of language revitalization and documentation projects, the relation of language ideologies to questions of power, publics, and affect, the ways language/linguistic ideologies have influenced linguistic change, and the ways local/non-local language ideologies have changed in response to colonialism (in its myriad forms). We then step back and think about the logocentric view of language/linguistic ideologies and ask if, and in what ways, conceptions of language ideologies might be a reflex of pervasive modernist semiotic ideologies. Here we engage the question of whether or not it might be time to rethink language/linguistic ideologies and, in its stead, talk of semiotic ideologies (as articulated by Webb Keane). What are the limits of a language/linguistic ideological approach? What are the limits, as well, of a semiotic ideological approach? 

 This course explores the myriad of indigenous languages of the North America and how they are intertwined with culture. The focus of this course is both descriptive and anthropological. That is, the indigenous languages of the Americas will be considered with respect to their phonologies, complex morphologies, discursive structures, and historical relations as well as their place within the sociocultural milieu of speakers. Language is made real in use. We will look to the uses and users of language.

This course explores the sociocultural and linguistic foundations and uses of speech play and verbal art. We will explore a variety of kinds of speech play and verbal art (from jokes, to songs, to stories, to puns, to poetry). Issues to be discussed will revolve around the social uses of speech play and verbal art (what is being commented on and what is being done through such poetic uses of language), questions of translation, aesthetics, and changes in the uses and aesthetic judgments of speech play and verbal art. Far from a marginal pursuit of anthropology, this class will place a concern with speech play and verbal art at the center of questions about identity, power and inequality, and language ideologies. Speech play and verbal art become central to understanding the language, culture, society, and individual nexus.

For many people, sound is ubiquitous. It surrounds us. It inhabits us. It reverberates through us. It emanates from us. This class takes the sound and soundedness as crucial to the anthropological and ethnographic enterprise. From questions of soundscapes to the role of sound in on-going concerns with linguistic relativity to ideophony and phonological iconicity to the physicality of voice to the problem of noise to acoustemology this class seeks to listen to such sounds and their resonances. Classes will revolve around readings that help us attune to the places of sound in anthropology.

This course explores the myriad of indigenous languages (variously conceived) of the North America and how they are intertwined with culture. The focus of this course is from the perspectives of linguistic anthropology and an ethnography of speaking. That is, the indigenous languages of the Americas will be considered with respect to their phonologies, complex morphologies, discursive structures, and historical relations as well as their place within the sociocultural milieu of speakers. Focus will be on issues concerning literacy, language change, language shift, speech play, language and gender, verbal art, language ideologies and the quotidian ways of getting things done in and through language.  Language is made real in use. We will look to the uses and users of language.

This course explores the sociocultural and linguistic foundations and uses of speech play and verbal art. We will explore a variety of kinds of speech play and verbal art (from jokes, to songs, to stories, to puns, to poetry). Issues to be discussed will revolve around the social uses of speech play and verbal art (what is being commented on and what is being done through such poetic uses of language), questions of translation, aesthetics, and changes in the uses and aesthetic judgments of speech play and verbal art. Far from a marginal pursuit of anthropology, this class will place a concern with speech play and verbal art at the center of questions about identity, power and inequality, and language ideologies. Speech play and verbal art become central to understanding the language, culture, society, and individual nexus.

This class begins a discussion on the ways that language and emotion are intertwined, intermingled, and co-animating. One way of talking about this issue is as language as a way to express emotions. Another way of exploring this issue concerns the emotional attachments that adhere to language and expressive forms. A third linked way of engaging this issue is to look at the ways that the language of emotion is an emergent property that co-animates affective attachments to expressive forms. To engage this discussion we will read a number of ethnographies that focus on expressive forms from laments to letters to poetry and the emotional attachments that are both created and expressed through such forms.

An introduction to the study of culture through communication and the theory of signs. This class introduces and explores the nature and structure of the “uniquely” human achievement known as “language.” In so doing, we examine (briefly) the structural properties of language (i.e., morphology, syntax, semantics, and phonology) and the social and cultural embeddedness of language in use. Languages are social and cultural practices and linguistic anthropologists attend to that interface between languages, cultures, and the individual.