Linguistic Anthropology of Education

ANRV355-AN37-03 ARI 13 August 2008 20:19

Linguistic Anthropologyof EducationStanton WorthamGraduate School of Education, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia,Pennsylvania 19104-6216; email: [email protected]

Annu. Rev. Anthropol. 2008. 37:37–51

First published online as a Review in Advance onMay 29, 2008

The Annual Review of Anthropology is online atanthro.annualreviews.org

This article’s doi:10.1146/annurev.anthro.36.081406.094401

Copyright c© 2008 by Annual Reviews.All rights reserved

0084-6570/08/1021-0037$20.00

Key Words

schooling, communicative practice, semiotics, pragmatics, languageideology

AbstractLinguistic anthropological theories and methods have enriched our un-derstanding of education. Almost all education is mediated by language,and linguistic anthropologists use both precise linguistic analyses andpowerful anthropological theories to describe how educational languageuse establishes important social relations. Because educational insti-tutions influence processes of concern to anthropologists—includingthe production of differentially valued identities, the circulation andtransformation of cultural models, and nation states’ establishment ofofficial peoples—linguistic anthropological research on education alsocontributes to cultural and linguistic anthropology more generally. Thisarticle defines linguistic anthropology through its focus on languageform, use, ideology, and domain, and it reviews linguistic anthropolog-ical research that focuses on these four aspects of educational languageuse.

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INTRODUCTIONLinguistic anthropologists study how languageuse both presupposes and creates social rela-tions in cultural context (Agha 2007, Duranti1997, Silverstein 1976). Theories and meth-ods from linguistic anthropology have beenproductively applied to educational processesfor the past four decades (Cazden et al. 1972,Collins 1996, Gumperz 1986, Heath 1983,Wortham & Rymes 2003). This article makestwo interrelated arguments about the applica-tion of linguistic anthropological theories andmethods to educational phenomena. First, ed-ucational language use and linguistic anthropo-logical concerns illuminate each other. Linguis-tic anthropological approaches to language usehave enriched our accounts of educational pro-cesses. The reverse is also true: Educational in-stitutions make important contributions to so-cial, cultural, and linguistic processes that are ofcentral concern to both linguistic and culturalanthropologists (Hall 1999, Levinson 1999),and linguistic anthropological study of educa-tional institutions has illuminated these pro-cesses. Second, linguistic anthropological ap-proaches are concerned with four aspects oflanguage use in cultural context, comprisingwhat Silverstein (1985) calls “the total linguisticfact”: form, use, ideology, and domain. Success-ful analyses of socially and culturally situatedlanguage use must attend to all four aspects, al-though individual projects often emphasize oneor another.

After presenting introductory sections thatdefine “linguistic anthropology,” “linguistic an-thropology of education,” and “the total lin-guistic fact,” this article reviews work in the lin-guistic anthropology of education that focuseson form, use, ideology, and then domain. Eachsection describes how linguistic anthropologi-cal approaches to that aspect of language illu-minate educational processes and suggests thatstudy of educational institutions can illuminatesocial and cultural processes of broad interest toanthropologists. Despite having a noun phrasefor a title, this article is not intended to describean entity—a research territory over which bat-tles can be fought and careers built. Instead it

describes a process. Linguistic anthropologicaland educational research are increasingly over-lapping, and this overlap enriches both fields.

LINGUISTIC ANTHROPOLOGY

Linguistic anthropologists study language useas social action. Despite prevalent folk ideolo-gies, written and spoken language do more thanrefer and predicate. They also constitute actionsthat both presuppose and create social relationsin cultural context. Most important social andcultural processes are mediated in significantpart by language, and systematic study of lan-guage use enriches our understanding of them.

The main historical line of linguistic anthro-pology runs through Boas (1911), Sapir (1921),and Whorf (1956), to Gumperz (1982), Hymes(1964), and Silverstein (1976). Linguistic an-thropology is also an interdisciplinary field. Itis one of the four subfields of American anthro-pology, but it draws on socially oriented lin-guistics ( Jakobson 1960, Labov 1972, Levinson1983), qualitative sociology (Goffman 1981),philosophy of language (Peirce 1955, Putnam1975), social theory (Bourdieu 1972), and cul-tural anthropology (Urban 1996). Exemplarywork focuses on the ethnography of commu-nication (Gumperz & Hymes 1964), interac-tional sociolinguistics (Gumperz 1982), semi-otic mediation (Mertz & Parmentier 1985, Hill& Irvine 1993), performance (Bauman & Briggs1990), metapragmatic discourse (Lucy 1993,Silverstein & Urban 1996), language ideology(Schieffelin et al. 1998), and interevent semio-sis (Agha & Wortham 2005). Duranti (1997),Hanks (1996), Mertz (2007), and Parmentier(1997) provide overviews of the field.

Linguistic anthropology distinguishes itselffrom linguistics in two ways: It focuses on lan-guage use, not language form, and it empha-sizes the language user’s point of view. Duranti(1997), Hymes (1972), and Silverstein (1985)describe how linguistic anthropology takes ad-vantage of linguists’ discoveries about phonol-ogy and grammar, but only to study howlanguage users deploy linguistic resources toaccomplish social action in practice. More

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contemporary linguistic anthropology takeswhat Mertz (2007) and Rymes (2007) call a“semiotic” approach to language use, empha-sizing the flexible use of language to createsometimes-unexpected relations instead of fo-cusing on stable norms of appropriate use.Linguistic anthropologists also do ethnogra-phy, emphasizing language users’ points of viewand insisting that people themselves explic-itly or tacitly recognize the categories that weuse to describe their communicative practices(Erickson 2004).

LINGUISTIC ANTHROPOLOGYOF EDUCATION

Linguistic anthropology has made significantcontributions to our understanding of educa-tional processes because almost all educationis mediated by language use. When educa-tors and students speak and write, they sig-nal things not only about the subject matterthey are learning but also about their affilia-tions with social groups both inside and out-side the speech event. These affiliations, someof which are created in educational events andinstitutions, can both influence how studentslearn subject matter and shape their life tra-jectories. Educational researchers need to un-derstand how educational language use pre-supposes and transforms social relations andhow educational actions are influenced by ide-ologies about language and social personhood.Linguistic anthropologists provide theories andmethods for studying these processes, and lin-guistic anthropological studies have illuminatededucational phenomena for decades (Cazdenet al. 1972, Cook-Gumperz 1986, Wortham &Rymes 2003).

Educational institutions also play centralroles in society and culture. Study of educa-tional institutions, and the language use thatmediates them, can illuminate social, cultural,and linguistic processes of interest to many an-thropologists (Hall 1999, Levinson 1999). Forinstance, educational institutions play centralroles in authorizing and circulating ideologiesof language through which “educated” and “un-

educated” language use are associated with dif-ferentially valued types of people (Gonzalez &Arnot-Hopffer 2003, Zentella 1997). School-ing focused on language and literature, in par-ticular, contributes to standardization and thehierarchical ordering of languages and dialects(Lo 2004, Moore 1999, Warriner 2007). Na-tion states use schools to enforce their views oflanguages and dialects, often establishing “peo-ples” associated with official and vernacular lan-guages (Hornberger 2002, Jaffe 1999, Magga& Skutnabb-Kangas 2003). Schools also housecomplex and sustained interactions among di-verse students, and these interactions often es-tablish characteristic, hierarchically organizedidentities for students (O’Connor 2001, Rex &Green 2008, Rymes 2003, Wortham 1992). Ed-ucational language use and school-based ide-ologies of language thus play essential roles insocial processes such as the production of dom-inant and subordinate identities (Collins & Blot2003, Varenne & McDermott 1998), the so-cialization of individuals (Howard 2007, Mertz1996, Ochs & Schieffelin 2007, Wortham &Jackson 2008), and the formation of nationstates, transnational groups, and publics thatinclude colonizer and colonized, “native,” and“immigrant” (Lempert 2006, 2007; Rampton2005, 2006; Reyes 2002, 2005).

This review focuses on events and pro-cesses that happen in and around educa-tional institutions, not on informal education.Out-of-school processes make essential con-tributions to learning, identity, and culturalproduction, and linguistic anthropological ap-proaches have been productively applied tothem (Heath & McLaughlin 1993, Hull &Shultz 2002, Pelissier 1991, Schieffelin & Ochs1986, Varenne 2007). But informal education isso widespread—taking place in families, work-places, communities, and other settings—thata short review cannot cover it all. Schools con-tribute significantly to the creation of importantrelations, and it is productive to consider howlanguage is used in educational institutions todo this social work.

Three related traditions overlap the lin-guistic anthropology of education. Language

www.annualreviews.org • Linguistic Anthropology of Education 39

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socialization research uses linguistic anthropo-logical theories and methods to explore so-cialization both in and out of school (Duff &Hornberger 2007, Garrett & Baquedano-Lopez 2002, Riley 2008, Schieffelin & Ochs1986). Linguistic ethnography draws on Amer-ican linguistic anthropology as well as appliedlinguistics and social theory to explore languageuse and language learning in contemporaryEurope (Rampton 2007). Educational linguis-tics uses linguistic, sociological, and anthro-pological approaches to study language learn-ing and language policy (Hornberger & Hult2006, Spolsky & Hult 2008). In this article Idefine linguistic anthropology of education asresearch on educational institutions and school-related practices that employs a linguistic an-thropological approach focused on form, use,ideology, and domain. Much work in languagesocialization, linguistic ethnography, and edu-cational linguistics falls within this definition,and some of this research is reviewed below.Other work in these traditions follows whatRymes (2007) calls an “ethnographic” as op-posed to a “semiotic” approach—focusing onstable “norms of communication,” not on howlinguistic “forms are deployed flexibly in inter-action to create new forms of culturally relevantaction” (p. 31). Because such ethnographic workdoes not fully explore language use—how lin-guistic signs come to have meaning in context,across both interactional and historical time—itdoes not fall within the body of work reviewedhere.

THE TOTAL LINGUISTIC FACT

This article reviews linguistic anthropologicalwork that has examined educational institutionsand school-related practices organized aroundthe four aspects of what Silverstein (1985) callsthe “total linguistic fact”: form, use, ideology,and domain. Linguistic anthropologists use lin-guists’ accounts of phonological and grammat-ical categories, thus studying language form,but they are not primarily interested in howlinguistic forms have meaning apart from con-texts of use. Instead, they study how linguistic

signs come to have both referential and rela-tional meaning as they are used in social andcultural contexts (Duranti 1997, Hymes 1964,Silverstein 1976). The meaning of any linguis-tic sign in use cannot be determined by decon-textualized rules, whether phonological, gram-matical, or cultural. No matter how robust therelevant regularities, language users often de-ploy signs in unexpected yet meaningful ways(Goffman 1981, Silverstein 1992). Linguisticanthropologists study how language comes tohave sometimes-unexpected meanings in inter-action. As important as local contexts are, how-ever, the meaning of any linguistic sign cannotbe understood without also attending to morewidely circulating models of the social world.Linguistic anthropologists often construe thesemodels as language ideologies—models of lin-guistic signs and the people who characteris-tically use them, which others employ to un-derstand the social relations signaled throughlanguage use (Schieffelin et al. 1998, Silverstein1979). These ideologies are not evenly dis-tributed across social space. They have adomain—the set of people who recognize theindexical link between a type of sign and the rel-evant ideology (Agha 2007). Linguistic anthro-pologists study how linguistic signs and mod-els of language and social relations move fromevent to event, across time and across socialspace, and how such movement contributes tohistorical change.

This article uses the four aspects of form,use, ideology, and domain as an organizingprinciple to explore linguistic anthropologicalwork that has enriched our understanding ofeducational phenomena and to show how lin-guistic anthropological work on education canilluminate processes of broad concern to an-thropologists. In practice the four aspects can-not be separated—all language use involveslinguistic forms, in use, as construed by ide-ologies, located within the historical movementof forms and ideologies across events. Any ad-equate analysis takes into account all four as-pects, and ignoring or overemphasizing any oneaspect can distort our understanding of howlanguage comes to have meaning in practice.

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But many analyses focus on one or two aspectswithout losing sight of the others.

FORM

A linguistic sign receives part of its meaningfrom the systematic distribution of the signwith respect to other signs. Linguists describethese distributional patterns in terms of phono-logical regularities and grammatical categories.“Form” refers to this fraction of meaning,which applies independent of context. System-atic attention to linguistic form has helped lin-guistic anthropologists illuminate various edu-cational phenomena.

Eckert (2000) presents both an ethno-graphic and a quantitative sociolinguistic studyof students in one suburban high school. Herstatistical analyses show how gender and socio-economic class correlate with the use of phono-logical variants. By tracing the intersectionbetween gender- and class-based variants andstudents’ peer groups, she explains how sys-tematic differences in phonology help constructthe school version of a middle-class/working-class split—the “jock”/“burnout” distinction—as well as gendered models of personhood thatinvolve “sluttiness,” aggressive masculinity, andother features. Eckert also shows how individ-ual students use these phonological regularitiesin practice to navigate relationships and con-struct identities, and she connects her accountto broader analyses of phonological changestaking place across the United States (Labovet al. 2006).

Mendoza-Denton (2007) describes the com-plex multimodal signs that Latina youth gangmembers use to distinguish themselves frommainstream peers. She attends to systematicvariation in linguistic form, together withother modalities such as paralinguistic features,dress, tattoos, and bodily presentation, as shedescribes youth positioning themselves bothwithin and against the larger society. Alim(2004) describes style shifting done by blackyouth as they adjust phonological variants,grammatical categories, and discourse mark-ers according to their interlocutors’ social po-

sitions. He explores how black youth use suchforms to navigate prevalent models of race andchanging socioeconomic conditions in gentri-fying areas.

Eckert, Mendoza-Denton, and Alim ex-tend Labov’s (1972) variationist sociolinguis-tics, embedding systematic study of phono-logical regularities and grammatical categorieswithin ethnographies and exploring the creativepositioning that youth do through language andother sign systems. They show how secondaryschool youth play important roles in linguisticinnovation and how language use in and aroundschools plays an important role in group iden-tification and social stratification. Systematicinvestigation of linguistic variation and innova-tion can help anthropologists study the devel-opment of youth culture and the production ofracialized, gendered, and class-based identitiesthat organize both school-based and broadersocial relations.

Viechnicki & Kuipers (2006, Viechnicki2008) describe grammatical and discursive re-sources through which middle-school studentsand their teachers objectify experience as sci-entific fact. The process of transforming ex-perience into evidence is complex, as scien-tists and science students turn ordinary eventsinto warrants for decontextualizable entitiesand authoritative laws. Viechnicki & Kuipersdescribe how science teachers and students usetense and aspect shifts, syntactic parallelism,and nominalization to remove experiences fromtheir immediate circumstances and recontextu-alize them in an epistemologically authoritativescientific framework, moving from concreteexperiences to universal, experience-distantformulations. Their analyses both illumi-nate science education and describe an im-portant process through which authoritativeknowledge is produced in modern societies(Bazerman 1999, Halliday 2004).

USE

Phonological and grammatical regularities arecrucial tools for linguistic anthropological anal-yses, but rules of grammatically correct (or


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culturally appropriate) usage do not sufficeto explain how people use language to cre-ate meaningful action in practice. Analyses oflanguage use often err by using as their keytools decontextualized grammatical, pragmatic,or cultural patterns, disregarding how linguis-tic signs come to have sometimes-unexpectedmeanings in particular contexts. Silverstein(1992; Silverstein & Urban 1996) provides asystematic account of how signs presuppose andcreate social relations in context. “Context” isindefinitely large, and language use only makessense as participants and analysts identify rele-vant context. They rely on two processes thatSilverstein calls “contextualization”—throughwhich signs come to have meaning as theyindex relevant aspects of the context—and“entextualization”—through which segmentsof interaction emerge and cohere as recogniz-able events. Cultural knowledge is crucial to in-terpreting language use, but we can interpretlinguistic signs only by examining how utter-ances are contextualized in practice.

Erickson & Shultz (1982) study the “or-ganized improvisation” that occurs in con-versations between academic counselors andstudents from nonmainstream backgrounds.Erickson & Shultz do not argue simply thatnonmainstream students and mainstream coun-selors experience a mismatch of styles, resultingin counselors’ misjudgments about students.They show how counselors and students usevarious resources to create, override, resist, anddefuse such mismatches. Nonmainstream stu-dents are often disadvantaged by their non-standard habits of speaking and by mainstreamcounselors’ assumptions about what they some-times construe as deficits, but such disadvan-tage does not happen simply through a clashof monolithic styles. Erickson and Shultz findthat “situationally emergent identity” explainsmore about the outcome of a gatekeeping en-counter than does demographically fixed iden-tity, and they analyze how speakers use socialand cultural resources both to reproduce andto overcome disadvantage. Such work goes be-yond simple reproductionist accounts to illumi-nate the more complex improvisations through

which educational institutions both create andrestrict social mobility (Erickson 2004).

Rampton (2005) focuses on the hybrid,emergent identities created as students navigatesocial relations. He describes language “cross-ing” in urban, multiethnic groups of adolescentsin the United Kingdom, as white, South Asian,and Caribbean youth mix features of Panjabi,Caribbean Creole, and Stylized Asian English.Crossing involves sprinkling words or linguis-tic features from other languages into speechthat takes place in a predominant language.Rampton does not argue simply that minoritylanguages are devalued and used to stigmatizenonmainstream youth nor that such youth usetheir home languages to resist such discrimi-nation. Both of these processes do occur, butRampton studies how these and other social ef-fects are achieved in practice. Crossing is a dis-cursive strategy in which diverse youth contestand create relations around race, ethnicity, andyouth culture. The uses of minority languagesinvolve contestation, teasing, resistance, irony,and other stances with respect to the social is-sues surrounding minority identities in Britain.Like Erickson (2004, Erickson & Shultz 1982),Rampton (2005, 2006) wants to understand andmitigate the disadvantages faced by minorityyouth, and he describes the larger social andpolitical forces regimenting language and iden-tity in the United Kingdom. But he does notreduce disadvantage to predictable patterns inwhich signs of identity routinely signal nega-tive stereotypes. He shows instead how youthuse language to navigate among the conflictingforms of solidarity and resistance available tothem in multiethnic Britain.

Much other work in the linguistic an-thropology of education attends closely tocreativity and indeterminacy in language use(Duff 2002, 2003; He 2003; Kamberelis 2001;Kumpulainen & Mutanen 1999; Leander 2002;McDermott & Varenne 1995; Rymes 2001;Sawyer 2004; Wortham 2003, 2006). He (2003),for instance, shows how Chinese heritage lan-guage teachers often use three-part “moral-ized directives” to control disruptive behav-ior, but she also analyzes how teachers and

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students sometimes transform these directivesas they construct particular stances in con-text. Rymes (2001) describes typical “droppingout” and “dropping in” autobiographical sto-ries through which academically marginal stu-dents construct senses of self and reject orembrace formal education, but she also showshow these “at-risk” students reproduce, con-test, ridicule and otherwise rework typical sto-ries. All this work shows that, to study the socialrelations established through educational lan-guage use, we must attend to the sometimes-unexpected ways that educators and studentsposition themselves with respect to both estab-lished and emerging models of identity. Becauseeducational institutions are important sites forthe reproduction and transformation of socialidentities, this linguistic anthropological workon creative educational language use addressesbroader anthropological concerns about howboth established and unexpected social reg-ularities emerge in practice (Bourdieu 1972,Holland & Lave 2001).

IDEOLOGY

Two types of cultural and linguistic knowledgework together to produce meaningful languageuse in practice. Participants and analysts mustknow what linguistic and paralinguistic signs in-dex, and they must be familiar with types ofevents and the types of people who character-istically participate in them (Gumperz 1982;Silverstein 1992, 2003; Silverstein & Urban1996). All work on language in use attends,explicitly or tacitly, to the second type ofknowledge—to more widely distributed socialand cultural patterns that form the backgroundagainst which both routine and innovative usageoccurs. Language users rely on models that linktypes of linguistic forms with the types of peo-ple who stereotypically use them, even when themodel is deployed in unexpected ways or trans-formed in practice. Silverstein (1979) describesthese models of typical language use as “linguis-tic ideologies,” although they have also beencalled “language ideologies” (Schieffelin et al.1998) and “metapragmatic” (Silverstein 1976),

“metadiscursive” (Urban 1996), “metacultural”(Urban 2001), or “metasemiotic” (Agha 2007)models. Any adequate account of language usemust include language ideologies and describehow they become salient in practice.

Language ideologies systematically asso-ciate types of language use with socially locatedtypes of people, and the concept allows linguis-tic anthropologists to explore relations betweenthe emergent meanings of signs in use and moreenduring social structures. Language ideologyhas been an important topic for the linguisticanthropology of education because schools areimportant sites for establishing associations be-tween “educated” and “uneducated,” “sophis-ticated” and “unsophisticated,” “official” and“vernacular” language use and types of stu-dents. Language ideologies thus help explainhow schools move students toward diverse so-cial locations, and linguistic anthropologicalwork on these processes helps show how socialindividuals are produced.

Jaffe (1999) uses the concept of languageideology to trace the policies and practices in-volved in the recent revitalization of Corsican.She describes one essentialist ideology that val-ues French as the language of logic and civi-lization and another essentialist ideology thatvalues Corsican as the language of national-ism and ethnic pride, as well as a less essential-ist ideology that embraces the use of multiplelanguages and multiple identities. Her analysesshow how schools are a central site of strug-gle among these ideologies—with some tryingto maintain the centrality of French in the cur-riculum, some favoring Corsican language re-vitalization, and others wanting some Corsicanin the schools but resisting a new standardCorsican as the language of schooling. Jaffe ex-plores both predictable sociohistorical patterns,such as the struggle of a colonized people tovalue their own language, and less familiar onessuch as the celebration of “authentic” Corsicanby “natives” who cannot speak the languagewell.

Bucholtz (2001) and Kiesling (2001) use theconcept of language ideology to explore peerrelations and ethnic stereotypes among white


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Americans. Bucholtz (2001) shows how manywhite high-school students adopt aspects ofBlack English Vernacular (BEV) and therebymark themselves as “cool.” She describes how“nerds” reject coolness and mark this rejectionby refusing to adopt any features of BEV. Nerdseven use what Bucholtz calls “superstandard”English, which includes careful attention toschooled articulation, grammar, and lexis evenwhen most people speak less formally. Bucholtzdescribes ideologies that associate types of lan-guage use—using superstandard, borrowing afew features of BEV, speaking mostly BEV—with types of people—nerds who reject cool-ness, white students trying to be cool, and whitestudents who go too far toward a racializedother. Kiesling (2001) describes the speech ofwhite middle-class fraternity brothers, explor-ing how racially linked features of their speechserve interactional functions and reproduce so-cial hierarchies. He shows how fraternity mem-bers assert intellectual or economic superior-ity over each other by marking interlocutorsas metaphorically “black.” He also shows howthey assert physical prowess over each other byspeaking like black men themselves and inhab-iting a stereotype of physical masculinity. Asthey jockey for position in everyday life, thefraternity brothers use and reinforce ideologiesof BEV speakers as less rational, economicallydistressed, and physically imposing.

Stocker (2003), Bokhorst-Heng (1999), andBerkley (2001) apply the concept of languageideology to educational situations outside ofEurope and North America. Stocker (2003) de-scribes a monolingual Spanish-speaking groupin Costa Rica that is believed to speak a stig-matized dialect—despite the fact that theirspeech is not linguistically distinguishablefrom their neighbors’—because they live onan artificially bounded “reservation” and areperceived as “indigenous.” She shows howhigh-school language instruction reinforcesthis ideology. Bokhorst-Heng (1999; see alsoWee 2006) describes how Singapore usedschools to make Mandarin the mother tongue ofethnically Chinese Singaporeans. In 1957, lessthan 0.1% of ethnically Chinese Singaporeans

spoke Mandarin as their home dialect, but in the1970s the government selected Malay, Tamil,and Mandarin as the mother tongues of allSingaporeans. The government created an im-age of Singapore as a multicultural state com-posed of three homogeneous subgroups andtied this image to the three home languagesthat students were to use in school. Berkley(2001) describes adult Mayan speakers at schoollearning to write authentic local stories in theirlanguage. He shows how this brought two ide-ologies into conflict: an ideology of literacy ascognitive skill that emphasized the authority ofthe young female teacher, and a traditional ide-ology that presented older men as empoweredto tell stories on behalf of others. Berkley showshow the teacher and elders creatively navigatedthis conflict, with older men telling stories thatyounger people learned to write down.

Some linguistic anthropologists of educa-tion use the concept of language ideology tostudy broader power relations. Insofar as thiswork loses touch with the total linguistic fact—most often by failing to attend to the work ofproducing social relations through flexible lan-guage use in and across events—it does notmaintain a linguistic anthropological approach.But Blommaert (2005) argues that linguistic an-thropological work can both analyze languageuse in practice and explore enduring power rela-tions that are themselves created partly throughlanguage. He focuses on “structural inequalitieswithin the world system” (p. 57) that are bothconstituted by and yield differential abilitiesto have voice in educational and other institu-tional settings. Related linguistic anthropologi-cal work describes various ways in which educa-tional institutions establish or reinforce powerrelations (Harris & Rampton 2003, Macbeth2003, Varenne & McDermott 1998, Wortham1992).

Heller (1999) and Blommaert (1999) de-scribe language planning and education withinmultilingual nation states. They analyze howstate and institutional language policies dif-ferentially position diverse populations. Heller(1999) studies how French Canadians’ argu-ments for ethnic and linguistic legitimacy have

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shifted over the past few decades. Beforeglobalization, French Canadians proclaimedthe authenticity of their culture and assertedtheir rights as a minority group in Canada. Inrecent years, however, they emphasize the ben-efit of French as an international language. Thisshift in models of “Frenchness” has changedthe value of various French Canadians, withbilinguals now valued more than monolingualsand Standard French valued more than vernac-ulars. Heller explores how a French-languagehigh-school in Anglophone Ontario handlesthe resulting tensions between standard andvernacular French and between French andEnglish. Blommaert (1999) describes how theTanzanian state has used language planning fornation building, trying to make a common na-tion out of a multilingual society by establishingSwahili as the primary language of governmentand education. In the process, language plan-ners both deliberately and inadvertently created“symbolic hierarchies,” making some types ofspeakers sound more authoritative.

Other linguistic anthropological work oneducation and power has addressed literacy(Barton & Hamilton 1998, Blommaert et al.2006, Bloome et al. 2004, Collins & Blot2003, Hicks 1996, Kamberelis & Scott 2004,Street 1984). Street (1984) distinguishes be-tween a theory of literacy as “autonomous”—which casts it as a cognitive skill independentof cultural contexts—and theories that empha-size the diverse cultural contexts and activitiesin which writing is used. He shows how gov-ernments and educational institutions favor theautonomous view and how this disadvantages“less literate” peoples and students with non-mainstream literacy practices. Collins & Blot(2003) follow Street in exploring literacy andpower, but they also describe how local prac-tices are embedded in global processes suchas colonialism and neo-liberalism. They ana-lyze interdependencies between local uses ofliteracy and larger sociohistorical movements,describing the hegemony of the literate stan-dard and how this has provided cultural capi-tal to some groups while disadvantaging others.They argue against the common assumption

that schooled literacy always provides intellec-tual and economic salvation for the “less devel-oped,” and they show how this assumption de-values nonstandard literacies and has been usedto justify exploitation.

Many other linguistic anthropologists haveexplored how educational institutions create so-cial relations as they employ and transform lan-guage ideologies (McGroarty 2008, Wortham& Berkley 2001), showing how schools dif-ferentially value students from certain groups(Lemke 2002, Warriner 2004), how schoolsmaintain authorized accounts of appropriateand inappropriate speech ( Jackson 2008), howgovernments use school systems to establish vi-sions of national language and identity (Hult2005), how academic ideologies shape languagerevitalization efforts (Collins 1998), and howindividuals draw on schooled language ideolo-gies to identify others and value them differ-entially (Baquedano-Lopez 1997). Linguisticanthropological work on educational languageideologies thus helps describe the importantrole schools play in producing differentially val-ued social groups.

DOMAIN

Work on language ideology shows how lan-guage in use both shapes and is shapedby more enduring social relations. We mustnot, however, cast this as a simple two-partprocess—sometimes called the “micro-macrodialectic”—in which events create structuresand structures are created in events (Bourdieu1972, Holland & Lave 2001, Wortham 2006).Agha (2007, Agha & Wortham 2005) providesa useful alternative conceptualization. He ar-gues that all language ideologies, all modelsthat link linguistic features with typificationsof people and events, have a domain. They arerecognized only by a subset of any linguisticcommunity, and this subset changes as signsand models move across space and time. Thereis no one “macro” set of models or ideolo-gies universal to a group. Instead, there aremodels that move across domains ranging frompairs, to local groups, all the way up to global


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language communities. In analyzing languageand social life, we must describe various relevantresources—models drawn from different spa-tial and temporal scales—that facilitate a phe-nomenon of interest, and we must describe howmodels move across events (Agha 2007; Agha& Wortham 2005; Wortham 2005, 2006). In-stead of focusing only on speech events, or sim-ply connecting microlevel events to macrolevelstructures, we must investigate the many scalesof social organization relevant to understandinglanguage in use. We must also, as Agha (2007),Leander & McKim (2003), and Wortham(2005, 2006) argue, follow the chains or trajec-tories across which individuals, signs, and ide-ologies move.

In their study of “untracking” as an edu-cational reform, Mehan et al. (1996) go be-yond a simple combination of local events and“macro” patterns. They explore various realmsthat influence at-risk students’ school success—ranging from properties of the student him-or herself to parents, family, the classroom,the school, peer groups, the local community,as well as to national educational policy andbroader socioeconomic constraints. Instead ofdescribing micro and macro, Mehan and hiscolleagues describe how resources from manyspatial and temporal scales facilitate or impedestudents’ academic success. They give a morecomplex account of how intelligence, educa-tional success, and other aspects of identityare constructed in practice, describing how re-sources from various layers of social contexttogether facilitate a student’s path. Similarly,Barton & Hamilton (2005) and Barton &Tusting (2005) attend to various “middle” scalesthat exist between micro and macro, exploringthe multiple, changing groups relevant to lan-guage and social identities and following thetrajectories that individuals and texts take acrosscontexts.

Wortham (2006) describes months-longtrajectories across which students’ identitiesemerge in one ninth-grade urban classroom.He traces the development of local models forseveral types of student one might be in thisclassroom, showing the distinctive gendered

models that emerge. These local models bothdraw on and transform more widely circulat-ing models, and they are used in sometimes-unexpected ways in particular classroom events.The analysis follows two students across theacademic year, showing how their identitiesemerge as speakers transform widely circu-lating models of race and gender into localmodels of appropriate and inappropriate stu-denthood and as teachers and students con-test these identities in particular interactions.Bartlett (2007) follows one immigrant student’strajectory across several classroom contexts andover many months, exploring how she posi-tions herself with respect to local models ofschool success. Bartlett describes how the stu-dent’s local identity stabilized as she kept herselffrom being acquired by the deficit model oftenapplied to language minority students and in-stead became “successful” in the school’s terms.Rogers (2003) also follows an individual stu-dent’s trajectory across two years as the stu-dent and her family negotiate with authoritiesabout whether she is “disabled.” Rogers showshow both institutionalized and local modelsand practices facilitate the transformation ofthis student from “low achieving” to “disabled,”and she follows the links among official texts,conferences, tests, family conversations, andother events that helped constitute this stu-dent’s movement toward disability.

Systematic work on what Agha (2007) callsdomain, and on the trajectories across whichsigns and ideologies move, has emerged onlyrecently. In contrast, research on form, use,and ideology—aspects of the total linguistic factthat allow us to treat the speech event as thefocal unit of analysis—has been occurring fordecades. It has become clear, however, that wecannot fully understand how language consti-tutes social relations unless we move beyondthe lone speech event and attend to domainsand trajectories. Even the most sophisticatedanalyses of linguistic forms, in use, with re-spect to ideologies, fail to capture how waysof speaking, models of language and sociallife, and individual identities emerge acrossevents. New linguistic anthropological work on

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domains and trajectories in educational insti-tutions will show how schools play importantroles in the emergence of social relations acrossvarious timescales.

CONCLUSIONS

Linguistic anthropologists study linguisticforms, in use, as construed by ideologies, asthose forms and language ideologies moveacross speech events. Linguistic anthropolog-

ical research on education illuminates educa-tional processes and shows how language andeducation contribute to processes of broad an-thropological concern. Educational languageuse produces social groups, sanctions officialidentities, differentially values those groups andidentities, and sometimes creates hybrid identi-ties and unexpected social types. Linguistic an-thropological accounts of how these processesoccur can enrich both educational and anthro-pological research.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

The author is not aware of any biases that might be perceived as affecting the objectivity of thisreview.

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AR355-FM ARI 14 August 2008 14:6

Annual Review ofAnthropology

Volume 37, 2008Contents

Prefatory Chapter

The Human Brain Evolving: A Personal RetrospectiveRalph L. Holloway � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 1

Archaeology

Evolution in ArchaeologyStephen Shennan � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � �75

The Archaeology of ChildhoodJane Eva Baxter � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 159

The Archaeological Evidence for Social EvolutionJoyce Marcus � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 251

Sexuality Studies in ArchaeologyBarbara L. Voss � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 317

Biological Anthropology

The Effects of Kin on Primate Life HistoriesKaren B. Strier � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � �21

Evolutionary Models of Women’s Reproductive FunctioningVirginia J. Vitzthum � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � �53

Detecting the Genetic Signature of Natural Selection in HumanPopulations: Models, Methods, and DataAngela M. Hancock and Anna Di Rienzo � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 197

Linguistics and Communicative Practices

Linguistic Anthropology of EducationStanton Wortham � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � �37

A Historical Appraisal of Clicks: A Linguistic and Genetic PopulationPerspectiveTom Guldemann and Mark Stoneking � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � �93

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Linguistic Diversity in the CaucasusBernard Comrie � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 131

Evolutionary LinguisticsWilliam Croft � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 219

Reproduction and Preservation of Linguistic Knowledge: Linguistics’Response to Language EndangermentNikolaus P. Himmelmann � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 337

Sociocultural Anthropology

Evolutionary Perspectives on ReligionPascal Boyer and Brian Bergstrom � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 111

Reproduction and Inheritance: Goody RevisitedChris Hann � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 145

Assisted Reproductive Technologies and Culture ChangeMarcia C. Inhorn and Daphna Birenbaum-Carmeli � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 177

Post-Post-Transition Theories: Walking on Multiple PathsManduhai Buyandelgeriyn � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 235

From Resilience to Resistance: Political Ecological Lessons fromAntibiotic and Pesticide ResistanceKathryn M. Orzech and Mark Nichter � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 267

Violence, Gender, and SubjectivityVeena Das � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 283

Demographic Transitions and ModernityJennifer Johnson-Hanks � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 301

The Anthropology of Crime and CriminalizationJane Schneider and Peter Schneider � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 351

Alternative Kinship, Marriage, and ReproductionNancy E. Levine � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 375

Theme 1: Evolution in Anthropology

Evolutionary Models of Women’s Reproductive FunctioningVirginia J. Vitzthum � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � �53

Evolution in ArchaeologyStephen Shennan � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � �75

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A Historical Appraisal of Clicks: A Linguistic and Genetic PopulationPerspectiveTom Guldemann and Mark Stoneking � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � �93

Evolutionary Perspectives on ReligionPascal Boyer and Brian Bergstrom � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 111

Detecting the Genetic Signature of Natural Selection in HumanPopulations: Models, Methods, and DataAngela M. Hancock and Anna Di Rienzo � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 197

Evolutionary LinguisticsWilliam Croft � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 219

Post-Post-Transition Theories: Walking on Multiple PathsManduhai Buyandelgeriyn � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 235

The Archaeological Evidence for Social EvolutionJoyce Marcus � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 251

From Resilience to Resistance: Political Ecological Lessons fromAntibiotic and Pesticide ResistanceKathryn M. Orzech and Mark Nichter � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 267

Theme 2: Reproduction

The Effects of Kin on Primate Life HistoriesKaren B. Strier � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � �21

Reproduction and Inheritance: Goody RevisitedChris Hann � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 145

The Archaeology of ChildhoodJane Eva Baxter � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 159

Assisted Reproductive Technologies and Culture ChangeMarcia C. Inhorn and Daphna Birenbaum-Carmeli � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 177

Demographic Transitions and ModernityJennifer Johnson-Hanks � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 301

Sexuality Studies in ArchaeologyBarbara L. Voss � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 317

Reproduction and Preservation of Linguistic Knowledge: Linguistics’Response to Language EndangermentNikolaus P. Himmelmann � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 337

Alternative Kinship, Marriage, and ReproductionNancy E. Levine � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 375

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Documents

Linguistic Anthropology of Education