Interviews are ubiquitous in modern society, and they play a crucial role in social scientific research. But, as Charles Briggs convincingly argues in this book, received interviewing techniques rest on fundamental misapprehensions about the nature both of the interview as a communicative event, and of the nature of the data that it produces. Furthermore, interviewers rarely examine the compatibility of interviews as a means of acquiring information to one another. These oversights often blind interviewers to ensuing errors of interpretation, as well as to the limitations of the interview as...

In this study Niko Besnier analyzes the transformation of the Polynesian community of Nukulaelae from a nonliterate into a literate society, using a contemporary perspective that emphasizes literacy as a social practice embedded in a socio-cultural context. His case study, which has implications for understanding literacy in other societies, illuminates the relationship between norm and practice, between structure and agency, and between group and individual.

John Lucy uses original, empirical data to examine the Sapir-Whorf linguistic relativity hypothesis: the proposal that the grammar of the particular language that we speak affects the way we think about reality. The author compares the grammar of American English with that of the Yucatec Maya, an indigenous language spoken in Southeastern Mexico, focusing on differences in the number marking patterns of the two languages. He then identifies distinctive patterns of thought relating to these differences by means of a systematic assessment of memory and classification preferences among speakers...

Developing a new synthesis of literacy studies, this book explores the domain of power through questions of colonialism, modern state formation, educational systems and official versus popular literacies. James Collins and Richard Blot present a critical discussion of particular cases and discuss the role of literacies in the formation of class, gender, and ethnic identity.

Don Kulick's book is an anthropological study of language and cultural change among a small group of people living in the Sepik region of Papua New Guinea. He examines why the villagers of Gapun are abandoning their vernacular in favor of Tok Pisin, the most widely spoken language in Papua New Guinea, despite their attachment to their own language as a source of identity and as a tie to their lands. He draws on an examination of village language socialization process and on Marshall Sahlins's ideas about structure and event.

Until recently, Indonesian, the national language of a vast, plural nation state, was spoken by very few of the Javanese who live in south-central Java. But the national language is now being learned, along with a national identity, and is the key vehicle for modernity and progress in these communities. Errington has written a fascinating account of the role of language in radical social transformation.

African American language is central to the teaching of linguistics and language in the United States, and this book covers the entire field--grammar, speech, and verbal genres. It also reveals the various historical strands that must be identified in order to understand the development of African American English. These are the social and cultural history of the American South, the urban and northern black popular culture, as well as policy issues. The current heated political and educational debates about the status of the African American dialect are also addressed.

Developing a new synthesis of literacy studies, this book explores the domain of power through questions of colonialism, modern state formation, educational systems and official versus popular literacies. James Collins and Richard Blot present a critical discussion of particular cases and discuss the role of literacies in the formation of class, gender, and ethnic identity.

In this book, Elinor Ochs explores the complex interaction of socialisation and language acquisition in children.