language

Over the years Cultural Anthropology has published a wide range of essays by linguistic and cultural anthropologists in the language ideology framework. This framework explores how social differences—divisions of gender, class, race, and other culturally significant distinctions—are produced, indexed, and rationalized through language. Ideology can be located in linguistic practice, in metalinguistic discourse, and in metapragmatics.

Over the years, Cultural Anthropology has published a wide range of essays that deal with the related themes of narrative, discourse, and rhetoric. Addressing subjects as seemingly far-flung as conspiracy theories, folklore, discursive regimes, and the constitution of publics, this body of work investigates the relation between modes of story-telling and the politics of everyday life and interrogates the changing social and technological conditions that mediate linguistic communication.