Spring 2009

ANT 393 • Language and Power

Course Description

This course explores notions of power as they emerge and are constructed in language in interaction, ways in which linguistic exchanges can express relations of power, and the role that power can play in the structure of human communicative interaction. Readings include both ethnographic studies and theoretical work about language and power across a range of disciplines and cultures. Early on in the course students will collect language data from a context of their choice, and this data will be analyzed both collaboratively and individually in terms of the concepts and issues examined in the readings and in class discussions.

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