[Linganth] AAA CFP: Linguistic Anthropology as Pedagogy

[Conley Riner, Robin]

Hello all,

We are seeking 1-2 more papers for our panel on linguistic anthropology and education. Please see the preliminary title and abstract below. If you’re interested in participating, please send me an email by this Friday, April 6, with a brief description of what your paper would address.

Best,
Robin


Linguistic Anthropology as Pedagogy: Understanding and critiquing the cultural competence movement in higher education ​

This panel uses linguistic anthropological theories and methods to critically evaluate and facilitate particular classroom practices. Recently, there has been a wave of pedagogical initiatives promoted in higher education aimed at achieving cultural sensitivity and open discourse within the classroom. This has included efforts to develop classroom practices such as “civil discourse” and “intercultural communication.” Many of these initiatives are being developed by administrative bodies without critical discussion of their situatedness within culturally specific histories and ideologies. For instance, they tend to rest on essentialist ideas about culture and ethnicity, ignoring variation within groups and among everyday practices of their members (Heath 1997). Such a perspective can actually undermine the very goals these initiatives aim to achieve. In addition, attempts to promote “civil discourse” often approach it as an abstract, universal concept, rather than one that has roots in particular, privileged trajectories (Vora 2015). Administrative movements such as these, moreover, seem to lack insight into what specific interactional strategies can be used to facilitate the practices they encourage.

Linguistic anthropology has a long tradition of examining how specific types of sociolinguistic practices operate in the classroom (e.g., Heath 1982, Philips 1972), but much of this knowledge does not seem to be reaching those in higher education who are spearheading pedagogical movements, even those geared towards cultural understanding and communication. This panel would use linguistic anthropology as a critical lens both to problematize some of these initiatives, as well as understand how they could be implemented in socially and culturally responsible ways. Ethnographic perspectives and detailed attention to interactional detail can provide us with nuanced understandings of how cultural difference is constructed through particular practices in and outside the classroom, rather than using it and related concepts as universal guideposts for pedagogical intervention.


Robin Conley Riner, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Anthropology
Department of Sociology & Anthropology
Marshall University
One John Marshall Drive
Huntington, WV 25755-2678
Phone: 304-696-2788
Email: conleyr at marshall.edu<mailto:conleyr at marshall.edu>
Office: Smith Hall 740B
Website: http://muwww-new.marshall.edu/dosa/faculty/conley/


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