Call for Papers, AAA Conference, November 16-20, Minneapolis, MN.

Life, Death and Language Ideologies: Historical Accidents of Community Formation and the Framing of Evidence in Linguistic Anthropology

All linguistic anthropologists examine language and work within specific paradigms of language ideology and linguistic praxis.  Historical and contemporary communities of linguistic anthropologists both within the United States and internationally, therefore, make a fertile field for the study of interactions between, as Dell Hymes put it, code and community. The contingent nature of community building and how chance plays a role in our understanding of our evidence, documented language practices, will be one key theme in the session. Papers should use linguistic anthropology concepts to explore the structure of past or present communities and language projects.  An American example would be the exploration of the communities behind various generations of the Handbook of American Indian Languages, from those compiled by John Wesley Powell to the famous 1911 version edited by Franz Boas.  International topics could include the history of national language surveys such as George Grierson’s Linguistic Survey of India.  Linguistic anthropologists are often interested in exploring the emergence of social structure from interactions.  This session will give up an opportunity to examine the emergence of our own institutions.

People interested in submitting a paper to this session should send a 200-250 word abstract to Leila.Monaghan@gmail.com by Sunday, April 3, 2016.

Authors
Adrianna Link: contributions / website / alink@amphilsoc.org