ANTH310 Language and Culture & Social Life Project

What is the Language and Culture Project?
The Language and Culture Project (L&C Project for short) is an ethnographic exploration that you will conduct for Anth 310. Your exploration will be first hand, that is, you will collect the information yourself, from observation or interviewing, or by reflecting on your own experiences. You do not need to do library research for this project.
What should the project topic be? Do I choose it myself or will you be giving us the topic?
I would like you to explore how language shapes and reflects social life. Linguistic anthropologists often organize their research with this basic question of how aspects of language shape or reflect aspects of social life, and then fill in more details depending on their interest. I want you to do that too, and I explain how to do that below.
In general, keep in mind that the aspect of language that a researcher might choose to focus on depends on what aspect/s of social life that researcher hopes to understand better. In this kind of research, the end goals are to understand how basic aspects of our human existence (in this case, language) can reflect (illuminate, show us something about) what it is like to live in our social worlds, and possibly even shape (impact, affect) how we live in those worlds.
How do I figure out a topic?
First, identify some aspect of your own experience in social Iife (such as migration, growing up in a family, online social networking, making friends, negotiating relationships in the workplace) that you would like to understand better,
Next, identify linguistic features of that social experience (such as vocabulary, degree from fluency, choice of registers, habits of joking, body language) that you believe might reveal something (reflect) about your social experience – if you could, like a detective, follow the language clues. At the same time, ask yourself whether there is a chance that these linguistic features could even be impacting (shaping) that social experience, not just demonstrating something about it.
Based on your brainstorming, ask yourself what you might be able to do explore this topic? For example, could you use interviews or observations to investigate these linguistic flies, and if so, how? This additional brainstorming will help you focus on the “reflect” vs. the “shape” dimension. In some cases, one kind of research focus would work better than others. You might even consider exploring both the “shape” and “reflect” dimensions. It all depends on what you are curious about exploring, and what is realistic to accomplish in the next few weeks.
What do I do after I have a topic identified, to get ready to do my exploration (i.e. my research?)
Make a plan for how you will go about your research, and then do it, keeping in mind that you will need to hand in an essay that describes your findings according to the deadlines listed in the syllabus.
Narrow your project if crunched for time and ask me for help whenever you would like. For example, in this phase you should decide whether you want to do interviews, participant observation, or both – and if interviews, whether unstructured, semi-structured or structured; and if participant observation, how much participation you plan on doing versus how much observation. A lot of these things can be planned out but reality often intervenes, so be prepared and be flexible.
Figure out a note-taking system and/or recording system for yourself. For example, for semi-structured interviews, putting one topic per index card works well – you can add informal notes to that card as you hear relevant information brought up.
Think ahead about how you’ll handle the informed consent issue – your goal is to make sure you inform the person/s you want to work with, of the topics that you intend to cover with them. You’ll also need to get their agreement to go forward.
Note that it is possible to explore your own personal experiences, in which case, you would not be interviewing yourself as much as reflecting back on social experiences in which language was featured. Check with me first if you want to take this approach because I might have some ideas for how to do that. Most of you will choose interviewing, participant observation, or a combination.
How and when do I enact my plan?
After you get the plan ready, start in! – Just do it. Conduct your interviews or participant observation, take notes, and take some time to reflect on what you have learned.
Remember that you will need to write up a Final Report of what you did and learned from your L&C Project. You should back up from that due date to identify your schedule of data collection and write-up. You should figure out when to stop your data gathering, and when to start reflecting and writing. The course plan at the end of the syllabus includes some suggestions for how to pace yourself throughout the semester.
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