Teaching
Linguistic Anthropology
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Unit 1
Language and Identity
Language shapes the way we think about, understand, and communicate who we are individually and as members of the many intersecting groups that define us. This unit will allow students to consider how identity is demarcated and sustained by language and ways of speaking both among members of the same group and between different populations.
Sapiens articles
Combatting Stereotypes About Appalachian Dialects
Far from being “the rude language of the mountains,” the diversity of Appalachian dialects reveals a complex history of cultural change.
Can an iPhone App Help Save an Endangered Language?
As the world’s Indigenous languages fade away at an alarming rate, some people are turning to technology to preserve their ancestors’ native tongues—and the cultural knowledge held in them.
Keywords
View All in Identity
![A person wearing a long-sleeved black maxi dress and a red headscarf holding a green umbrella walks on a public street with a silver truck and several people in black hats, helmets, and khaki uniforms in the background.]()
![On the left, smoke billows out from the top of several large smokestacks on a long sandy shore that a few people are walking along. On the right, over dark blue water, an orange sunset illuminates a pier in the distance.]()
![A large, brown sculpture depicts a cluster of people looking outward, one cradling a child in their arms. A village and blue sky are visible in a distant horizon.]()
![A crowd watches a parade float shaped like a building with rainbow-colored windows and a heart made of rainbow handprints. Text reads, “justice community equality” and words on a blue roof read, “United Church of Christ, UCC.org/lgbt.” A small sign propped up against the float reads, “Amen. Advocate for Marriage Equality.”]()
![In a brick-covered public square surrounded by buildings, a metal statue features two people with flattened fronts and their hands extended sideways facing each other. They stand on opposite sides of a gap in the rounded brick hill they are built on.]()
![Several pink stemless flowers surrounded by white dust and yellow particles float in mid-air against a black background.]()
08.03.2019
A poet-anthropologist from India recalls a checkpoint encounter in Sri Lanka, just months after the Easter Sunday bombings.
Between the Lines
A poet-anthropologist in Israel looks to his students and their surroundings, calling for “seekers of peace” to create lifelines across social and geopolitical divides.
Poems of Witness and Possibility: Inside Zones of Conflict
Anthropological poems from around the globe speak to people’s creative will, resistance, and resilience—and the significance of our shared humanity.
Being LGBTQ+ in U.S. Protestant Churches
As homophobic and transphobic rhetoric sweeps the U.S., some churches are increasingly welcoming LGBTQ+ parishioners who participate in religious life and help reconcile Christianity with a spectrum of sexual and gender identities.
Dismantling the Walls in Our Heads
The Berlin Wall fell more than three decades ago—but political, social, and economic divides between East and West Germany continue to reverberate, even among those born after Reunification.
To Wear the Wind
A tribal scholar from the state of Nagaland in India engages with the loss of traditional cultural practices and locates the creation of a new world order where the “natural” is increasingly isolated from the “human.”
View All in Language
![Dark gray clouds hang in a pale blue sky. With orange light shining from behind them, these clouds seem to touch dark rolling hills scattered with trees and buildings.]()
![A close-up image features a circular street sign with random black symbols such as an exclamation mark and hashtag and a red circle and strikethrough over them.]()
![A picture features a sky with a large, slightly orange, billowing cloud at its center that morphs on its left side to look like the side profile of dark-skinned woman’s face. To the left of her is a bright-blue sky with clouds.]()
![From an aerial perspective, a photograph features a large circular garden with green shrubs crisply pruned into arc shapes oriented to form a maze. A gazebo topped with similar greenery sits at the maze’s center.]()
![A photograph features five people in colorful clothing standing on cement tiles in front of tall trees and green grass.]()
![A crowd faces a large outdoor screen showing video of a nuclear missile launching into a blue sky. Several buses are visible in the background.]()
Speaking in Tongues
A scholar from Nagaland in India offers visceral, familial insights on language and culture loss in her Indigenous tribal community.
Why I Ask My Students to Swear in Class
An anthropologist uses explicit insults to get students thinking about gender and power in everyday language. Plus, a brief explainer on the slang term “sus.”
Indigenizing What It Means to be Human
SAPIENS offers a curated collection of poems and stories that center Indigenous values, worldviews, and insights, creatively reimagining anthropology and the human experience.
Best of SAPIENS 2022
In a year of continuing global conflagrations, anthropologists investigated a wide range of pressing and curious questions about humanity’s past, present, and future. Here are the editors’ picks for this year's most compelling contributions.
How a Song Bridged Diné and Ndebele Worlds
An anthropologist recounts a magical moment of songwriting collaboration between Diné (Navajo) and Ndebele artists gathered for the WOMAD Festival in South Africa.
What Commentators Get Wrong (and Right) About North Korea
An anthropologist argues that unfair portrayals of North Korea as a hopelessly irrational hermit state has huge implications for policy and security.
View All in Preservation
![In a science lab, a masked person wearing a white hazmat suit, face shield, and bouffant cap holds small objects under the glass hood of a silver metal workstation.]()
![Four people, one wearing a red baseball cap and another a blue shirt, ride a boat on a khaki-colored river surrounded by dense forest.]()
![Shrouded in darkness, a round stone structure on the photo’s right side is illuminated by a light installed on the left side.]()
![A large furry, horned animal stands on grassy terrain with a forest behind and airborne dust surrounding it.]()
![Behind a red carpet, a large poster features a person in a brown brimmed hat holding up a whip over a cluster of other people. A pillared building lies in the background opposite yellow and orange text that reads, “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. It is flanked by display cases, one holding a bronze time dial.]()
![Lying on their side, a person with a blonde ponytail wears a blue shirt and black jeans and points a camera at a gravestone.]()
The Hidden Ancestry Extracted From an Ancient Pendant
An anthropologist explains how new forensics tools offer unprecedented answers to questions about who likely held or wore Stone Age objects.
Writing Indigenous Oral Tradition to Fight a Dam
In the northern Philippines, the Isnag are documenting their Traditional Stories to sustain their culture and fight a legal battle against dams that would inundate their homelands.
Piecing Together the Puzzle of Oman’s Ancient Towers
In recent years, the Omani government has invested in archaeology and heritage tourism to boost its economy—renewing interest in mysterious 4,000-year-old towers that dot the Southeastern Arabian landscape.
Why Store 41,000 Bison Bones?
An archaeologist explains why a museum keeps so many bones from the Jones-Miller site, an ice age bison kill on the North American plains.
What Indiana Jones Gets Right About Archaeology
As Dr. Jones returns to the big screen, a real archaeologist acknowledges the movie franchise's shortcomings while espousing its merits.
Can Digitizing Gravestones Save History?
An anthropologist is digitizing gravestones at Burial Hill, a historic cemetery in Plymouth, Massachusetts, that holds the remains of some of the first Pilgrims. Documenting these unique records and making them accessible also provokes necessary questions about preserving colonial histories.
Professor Talking Points
- Linguistic anthropology studies the role of language in creating, sustaining, and changing cultures and societies.
- Linguistic anthropological work allows for a deeper understanding of how language provides a framework for making sense of who we are in relation to others and how collective identities are formed and defined in part by the languages people speak and the way they speak them.
Academic Articles
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Bailey, Benjamin. 2008. “The Language of Multiple Identities Among Dominican Americans.” Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 10 (2): 190–223.
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Benor, Sarah Bunin. 2011. “Mensch, Bentsh, and Balagan: Variation in the American Jewish Linguistic Repertoire.” Language and Communication 31 (2): 141–154.
Student Discussion Questions
- What do the four articles tell us about why language is an important keystone of identity? How do the four examples differ from one another?
- What kinds of power dynamics are in play where language and identity are concerned?
- How do people who belong to the same overarching group show that they are different from others through their use of language?
- What role does technology play in keeping languages alive today? What are some potential pros and cons of using apps to keep languages alive?
Activities
- Ask the students to write a one-page essay on how their everyday language both reflects and shapes their identities.
Additional Resources
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Article: The Conversation’s “How the Loss of Native American Languages Affects Our Understanding of the Natural World”
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TED Talk: Sheikha Al Mayassa’s “Globalizing the Local, Localizing the Global”
Unit By
Eshe Lewis (2020)
Teaching
Linguistic Anthropology
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Unit 2
Language and Diversity
