Call for Cooperation AAA 2004

[ehrensal at kutztown.edu]

For next year's AAA I would like to organize a panel with the (working) title of "Linguistic Anthropology and the 'Real World'"

Papers in the panel would utilize concepts drawn from linguistic anthropology (e.g., language ideology, indexicality, entextualization, relativity, etcetera) to analyze topics of public concern.  A key feature would be to examine what linguistic anthropological analysis could bring to public discourse.

For example, the idea that I am working on for a paper has the (working) title "'Habitual Thought' and the ENRON Scandal".  In brief, I am arguing that the key to understanding how a fraud of this scale was actually executed is based upon understanding how the authors of the fraud embedded their plot in the routine language of accounting and finance.  Thus for the vast majority of organizational actors (staff accountants and low level financial analysts) the true nature of the fraud was masked behind mundane labels (assets, liabilities, transfers, debits, credits....).

If you would be interested in being part of such a panel, please contact me off-list at ehrensal at kutztown.edu


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Kenneth N. Ehrensal
Associate Professor of Management
Kutztown University of Pennsylvania