Music related to Linguistics & Lx-Anthro?

[Mary Bucholtz]

My partial playlist for my Language in Society class includes:

"I'm Like Yeah, But She's All No" (Mr. T. Experience)
"Ebonics"  (Big L)
"Valley Girl" (Moon Unit and Frank Zappa)
"Himno Nuestro (Spanish National Anthem)" (Wyclef Jean et al.)
"Bilingual Girl" (Yerba Buena)
"Redneck Woman" (Gretchen Wilson)

And some more that I can't seem to find right now....

Mary

On Feb 2, 2010, at 5:50 PM, Richard J Senghas wrote:

> Hey LingAnthers,
> 
> I am looking for music (popular, obscure, whatever) that plays with linguistic (& especially anthropological) topics.
> 
> I am now teaching a somewhat large (~70 students) undergraduate, lower division Introduction to Linguistic Anthropology course.  It hits us at that just-before-and-going-into dinner hour, when students, even those interested in the topics, begin to fade as their blood sugar-levels drop, and the daylight begins to fade (especially now).  When I taught my Intro to Cultural Anthro course, I found that playing relevant, especially upbeat, music just before class started helped up the energy for the class session, and I would like to use this trick again in this course.  I also found that many of the students started to pick up on the anthropological themes I planted in these selections.  By the end of the semester, students started asking me for my sources, often asking me if they had indeed figured out the thematic connections.  (In a very real sense, this became a not-grade-related extra credit opportunity.)
> 
> I plan to start with some more obvious choices (e.g., Laurie Anderson's "Language is a Virus" from her "Home of the Brave" album), but I'm looking for other pieces for later this semester.  Do you have any tracks you'd recommend?  If the topic is obscure, I wouldn't mind being given hints at the reason for your choices, though we could make it a game for this list if you choose to respond on-list.  And energetic music is preferred; we're looking to juice them up!
> 
> Best regards,
> 
> -RJS
> ======================================================================
> Richard J. Senghas, Professor            | Sonoma State University
> Department of Anthropology               | 1801 East Cotati Avenue
> Human Development Program                | Rohnert Park, CA 94928-3609
> Richard.Senghas[at]sonoma.edu            | 707-664-3920 (fax)

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Mary Bucholtz, Professor
Department of Linguistics
3607 South Hall
University of California, Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara, CA 93106-3100

http://www.linguistics.ucsb.edu/faculty/bucholtz/
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