Ethnolinguistics

• The study of the relationship between language and culture; subset of linguistic anthropology
• (Gonzales, “Chapter 4: Language,” p. 85)

Language Changes Constantly

• lol or lolololol or lollllll
• WWWW warai Japan
• (Gonzales, “Chapter 4: Language,” p. 91)

7000 languages are currently spoken

Indigenous Languages

• 70 distinct Indigenous languages [2016]
• This is in the reading for next week (Pulling Together, p. 5)

Endangered Languages

• 2000 are ‘in danger’
• Fewer than 100,000 speakers
• (Gonzales, p. 92)

Language Revitalization

• First Peoples’ Cultural Council of British Columbia www.firstvoices.com
• Google using Cherokee characters
• 100 indigenous language keyboard interfaces
• (Gonzales, p. 93)

Language Commissioner of Nunavut uses the word ikiaqqivik for Internet which means ‘traveling through layers’ which shamans do

Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis: linguistic relativity principle from Benjamin Lee Whorf and Edward Sapir in 1930s (Gonzales, p. 85 )

Untitled Slide

Bonilla, Yarimar, and Rosa Jonathan. “#Ferguson: Digital Protest, Hashtag Ethnography, and the Racial Politics of Social Media in the United States.” 2015.

We can think about the “hashtag as a field site” from an “in-group”
(p. 6)

“[I]s hashtag ethnography the next logical step in an anthropology of the 21st century…? (p. 5)

Ferguson, Missouri

What place does this event hold in the social imagination? (p. 5)

Or....what political work does this 'place' do?

Purposes of #

• # as an indexing system, a way of marking the conversation (p. 5),
• purposefully hashtagging to make a trending topic (p.7),
• providing emergent information and a commenting on the incidence through emergent ‘scripts’ (p. 6),

continued....

• provides a “sense of individual responses to mediatized events”
• creates a “unique feeling of direct participation” (p.7)
• and “’generat[es]’ new forms of social community” (p. 10)

New 'publics'

• “new mediatized publics” (p. 5)
• ‘ad hoc publics’ (p. 6)
• creates ‘public time’ (p. 7)

Other hashtags like #HandsUpDontShoot or #HoodiesUp also highlight problematic ways in which blackness is perceived as a threat (p. 8) and how groups can be “vulnerable to misrepresentation” demonstrating concern with “state-sanctioned violence” (p. 9)

Agency: “With these creative acts, they seek to document, contest, and ultimately transform their quotidian [everyday, mundane] experiences”
(p. 9)

“It allow[s] a message to get out, call[s] global attention to a small corner of the world, and attempt[s] to bring visibility and accountability to repressive forces.” (p.7)

Wardell, S., & Robinson, E. 2021. Threshold Concepts in Social Anthropology: Literature and Pedagogical Applications in a Bridging Project. Teaching and Learning Anthropology, 4(2): 1-26. [read only 1-3, 6-9 – charts only, 14-17]

Threshold Concepts

• Threshold concepts: “unique and transformative ways of thinking that are situated in, and fundamental to, specific disciplines” (p. 2)

Threshold Concepts

• act as keystones
• and once they fall into place students are attuned to a discipline’s way of seeing, being, interpreting, and creating knowledge (p.2)

Student account: “After my first year, I felt as if a blindfold had been lifted. My whole worldview had shifted. It was both wonderful and unsettling.” (p. 1)

[T]hreshold concepts can also be described as troublesome, disorienting (p. 3)

Hidden curriculum: empathy, open-mindedness, appreciate of diversity (p. 14)

Threshold concepts relate to social thresholds and liminality (Victor Turner) (p. 2); limen = Latin for threshold

Untitled Slide

ft. nt. 1. “At present, it remains an open question to what extent Twitter posts should be treated like confidential ‘data’ obtained from human subjects or like quotations from published texts. …. We have used real names of Twitter users when discussing tweets that went ‘viral’ or were featured in mainstream media reports. However, when quoting or paraphrasing from unreported tweets, we have chosen not to reproduce the username of the author – erring on the site of privacy at the expense of offering proper attribution. Legally speaking, Twitter users have agree to publish their posts by accepting the platform’s ‘terms of service.’ …. Many argue that researchers should not depend on corporate user agreements and should instead obtain informed consent from individual users…” (p. 12)