LANGUAGE, CULTURE, SOCIETY

Vassar College ANTH 250 Course Syllabus

Fall Semester, 2015

Mondays and Wednesdays, 9:00-10:15PM
BH 105

Course description: This class offers an advanced introduction the sense in which
language usage is both a consequence of and consequential for human social and cultural
life. We first develop a theory of the sign and its usage, a task that will require us to
consider how signs relate to concepts like concept, performance, textuality, and the body.
We then examine how this theory can be used to illuminate the forms of sociability and
politics at stake in specific sociohistorical contexts, drawing on examples from internet-
mediated forms of social life (i.e., the impact of “new media”) and the presidential
politics of the United States. Students will also be trained in the distinctive methodology
of scholars interested in the relationship between language, culture, and society: the
video-taping, transcription, and analysis of “naturally occurring” talk.

Instructor: Benjamin Smith Email: besmith@vassar.edu

Office hours: TBA

All readings are available over our course moodle site.

Grading

Participation (10) and posted questions/justifications (10) 20%

Take-home midterm exam 20%
Transcription project and paper 20%
Digital discourse project 10%
Extended project paper 30%
Description of assessments:
1. Participation (10%) and posted questions/justifications (10%)
Participation in class is an important way for you to test, develop and extend your
understanding of the topics of the class. Your participation grade will reflect the
relevance and quality of your comments and questions in class.

In addition, you will be responsible for posting “reading responses” to our

Moodle site. You will be divided into groups and will alternate providing
responses to our readings. Your reading response should consist of a question that
you think would be an interesting issue for the entire class to discuss. It should
also include a paragraph-long justification of why you think that question is
relevant to the concerns of our class. Your responses should be submitted via
moodle before midnight of the day before the class session. Your responses will
not be graded. They will be used to drive that day’s class discussion. Please note
that no late responses will be accepted. However, you may skip one of your
assigned postings.

2. Midterm take-home exam (20%)

A midterm take-home exam will be distributed 10/1 and will be due by the end of
the day of Saturday, 10/3.

3. Transcription project and paper (20%)

A significant part of the class will be spent training you in how to engage in the
distinctive methodology of scholars of language as social action: the recording,
transcription and analysis of naturally occurring talk. You will be required, then,
to record and transcribe a segment of unscripted discourse of any kind. You will
turn in a 5-6 page paper that includes this transcript as well as an account of your
analysis of the “interactional textuality” of your transcript. Your analysis should
significantly draw upon a concept or concepts developed in the class. This paper
is due by the end of the day on 11/6.

4. Digital discourse project (10%)

During the course of our discussions of new media (11/9-11/16), I will ask you to
collect data on some of your own new media practices. I will not grade your data.

5. Extended project paper (25%) and presentation (5%)

You are expected to turn in a 9-10 final paper. This paper should be used to
extend and develop the analysis you provided in either your transcription project
paper or your digital discourse paper. In exceptional cases, students will be
allowed to select a paper topic not related to either their transcription or speech
community projects. The final paper is due by the end of the day on 12/13.

You will be expected to give a 10 minute presentation on your final paper.

Attendance:
Attendance is crucial for your success in class. Contact the instructor in case of an
anticipated absence. Absences will be reflected in your participation grade at the
instructor’s discretion. More than three unexcused absences will result in failure of the
class.

Missed or late class work:

Extensions for class assignments will be given only when a student misses a deadline due
to a verifiable emergency, sickness, or athletic event. Late assignments that have not been
granted an extension will be penalized a half letter grade per every 12 hours that they are
late.

Additional help:
All students should feel free to come talk to the instructor during office hours. They are
your time! If these hours are not convenient for you, either email or talk to the instructor
to arrange a more convenient time (a time within “regular business hours” [i.e., 9-5PM]).

Academic accommodations are available for students with disabilities who are registered
with the Office of Disability and Support Services. Students in need of disability
accommodations should schedule an appointment with the instructor early in the semester
to discuss any accommodations for this course which have been approved by the Office
of Disability and Support Services, as indicated in your DSS accommodation letter.

Class Topics, Readings and Schedule of Readings

Students should always bring a copy/copies of that day’s reading/s to class.
Unless otherwise specified, the reading for a class can be found online.
+ = reading can be found in the required text.

8/31 Introduction to Class

1 – Signs and Linguistics Signs

9/2 A theory of signs

Peirce, Charles S. 1958. What Is a Sign? In Charles Hartshorne and Paul Weiss (Eds.)
The Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

9/7 Labor Day, no class

9/9 A theory of linguistic signs

Saussure, Ferdinand de. 1959[1916]. Course in General Linguistics. New York:
Philosophical Library. Pp. 65-70, 110-120.
9/14 Context in language: deixis
Benveniste, Emile. 1971[1958]. Subjectivity in Language. From Problems in General
Linguistics. Coral Gables, FL: University of Miami Press.

9/16 A multifunctional approach to language

Jakobson, Roman. 1960. Closing Time: Linguistics and Poetics. In Style in Language,
edited by Thomas Sebeok. Pp. 350-359.

2 – Language as a Form of Social Action

9/21 Performativity
Austin, J.L. 1975. How to Do Things with Words. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press. Pp. 1-17.

9/23 Context/Contextualization
Auer, Peter. 1995. From Context to Contextualization. Links and Letters 33:11-28.

9/28 Voicing
Bakhtin, Mikhail. 1981. Selections from The Dialogic Imagination. Austin, TX:
University of Texas Press. Pp. 260-275.

9/30 Language and identity in interaction

Wortham, Stanton. 2004. From Good Student to Outcast: The Emergence of a Classroom
Identity. Ethos 32(2):164-187.

10/5 Multimodality
Goodwin, Charles. 2003. The Body in Action. In Discourse, the Body and Identity, edited
by Justine Coupland and Richard Gwyn. New York: Palgrave.

10/7 Aesthetics, Poetry

Nuckolls, Janis. 2010. Selections from Lessons from a Quechua Strongwoman:
Ideophony, Dialogue, and Perspective. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.

FALL BREAK

3 – Doing Linguistic Anthropology: Recording, Making Transcripts, Analysis

10/19 Transcription for Ethnography

Perrino, Sabina. 2002. Intimate Hierarchies and Qur’anic Saliva: Textuality in a
Senegalese Ethnomedical Encounter. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 12(2):225-259.

10/21 Analysis of transcripts

Wortham, Stanton. 2001. Selection from Narratives in Action: A Strategy for Research
and Analysis. New York: Teachers College Press. Pp. 70-75.
10/26 Transcription Workshop

4 – Language and the Mediation of Sociocultural Life

10/28 Speech community

Muehlmann, Shaylih. 2014. The Speech Community and Beyond. In The Cambridge
Handbook of Linguistic Anthropology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

11/2 Speech community: hierarchy, discrimination

Bourdieu, Pierre. 1982. The Economics of Linguistic Exchanges. Social Science
Information 16:645-668.

11/4 Language and Racialization

Flores, Nelson and Jonathan Rosa. 2015. Undoing Appropriateness: Raciolinguistic
Ideologies and Language Diversity in Education. Harvard Educational Review
85(2):149-171.

11/9 Language and the media-ted imagination of a public

Spitulnik, Debra. 1997. The Social Circulation of Media Discourse and the Mediation of
Communities. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 6(2):161-187.

11/11 Case study-1: Digital discourse in the United States

Thurlow, Crispin and Kristine Mroczek. 2011. Selections from Digital Discourse:
Language in the New Media. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

11/16 Case study-1: Digital discourse in the United States

Lee, Carmen. 2011. Micro-blogging and Status Updates on Facebook. In Digital
Discourse: Language in the New Media. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

11/18 Instructor at conference, no class

11/23 Case study-1: Digital discourse in the United States

Newon, Lisa. 2011. Multimodal Creativity and Identities of Expertise in the Digital
Ecology of a World of Warcraft Guild. In Digital Discourse: Language in the New
Media. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

11/25 Case study-2: Language in United States presidential politics

Lempert, Michael. 2011. Barack Obama, Being Sharp: Indexical Order in the Pragmatics
of Precision-Grip Gesture. Gesture 11(3):241-270.
11/30 Case study-2: Language in United States presidential politics
Alim, H. Samy. 2012. Selections from Articulate while Black: Barack Obama,
Language, and Race in the U.S. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

12/2 Wrapping up / First Student Presentations

12/7 Student Presentations

12/9 Student Presentations