Anthropology 213
‘Language in the Wild' Analysis Paper
the course Moodle under the ‘Language in the Wild' Paper Submissions assignment module. Word .doc or .pdf file formats only.
Format: 3-5 pages expected length (7 pages maximum), double-spaced, 1 inch margins, 12 point font. The paper should be well- organized, free of excessive errors, and formal in tone and use a consistent citation and bibliographic style according to the APA style guide*.
Support your arguments with references to your transcript (and perhaps other examples of language in use, if needed) and quotes (cited and clearly marked as such) from course texts.
The Assignment
Having found an example of language in use (an utterance, section of dialogue or other speech act or speech event), which was Step One, your task has two parts:
Step Two: Describe the situation, providing the information that will be relevant and necessary to your analysis. Your description should take up 1-2 paragraphs and use clear, plain language. It should include at least some of these features:
a. Participant Structures: who is speaking? Who is being spoken to? What social roles do the participants occupy (e.g. mother, teacher, peer, friend, etc.) and what is their relationship to each other (if known)? Are other people present/listening? What languages do the participants speak? What linguistic backgrounds and attitudes do they have?
b. Where and whenand under what conditions is this speech act/event taking place? This question may be directly linked to the next one:
c. Label or Definition of the Speech Act or Event: In ordinary, conversational terms, what would we call this interaction? What is the social situation here? (e.g. a formal lecture, chit-chat, mother-child playtime, etc.)
d. What was said before (or after) that is required to make sense of the section of talk you have chosen?
e. What is the general speech environment or language ecology in which the act or event takes place (if relevant).
f. What are the actors are doing or trying to do in this interaction? This may involve making reasonable inferences based on what we know about the type of interaction or general cultural context of the speech act/event. This question gets us closest to the analysis stage of the paper.
Your task is here is to determine what information is relevant and necessary to understand your analysis. Aim to give neither too much nor too little information so that someone who has not witnessed the speech act/event can understand what is going on.
Step Three: analyze your example using vocabulary, concepts and theoretical frameworksfrom the course so far.
How to carry out your analysis:
1) What readings from the course so far are most relevant to the type of speech act or event you have chosen? This will depend on how you have defined the situation (c. above).
2) Use whatever technical vocabulary and concepts from the readings is applicable to label what is going on in the interaction: the type of speech act/event (e.g. "literacy event"); the participants and participant structure (e.g. "dyadic caregiver-child interaction"; the wider context (e.g. "multilingual or monolingual speech environment")
3) You may want to think about the emic (not just the etic) aspects of your example: in other words, what ideas, concepts, feelings, or experiences are most important or central to the participants themselves? What words or other features of language do they use to express these. How can we relate this emic perspective to our etic perspective as outsiders and researchers?
4) What would a linguistic anthropologist have to say about this example? Building off of the interpretations given in the relevant readings, offer an explanation for:
a. how your example of language in use fits into broader socio-cultural patterns (does it match or not match these patterns, and in what ways).
b. how your example may be evidence of broader social patterns of behavior or of cause and affect (e.g. cultural patterns of language socialization; linguistic discrimination, the negotiation of linguistic identities, or processes of language shift or language loss).
*Example of APA citation style:
Author, A. A., & Author, B. B. (Year of publication). Title of chapter. In A. A. Editor & B. B. Editor (Eds.), Title of book (pages of chapter). Location: Publisher.
Attachment:- language_in_the_wild_.rar