“How Books Work”

As a linguistic anthropologist, I think a lot about how we relate to written language, not only in different ways from spoken, but in different ways depending on how it’s presented. We often take for granted the existence and significance of something called “books”, when of course what those are and how we read them are matters mediated by any number of cultural factors.

Now classic work by Shirley Brice Heath initiated a complex conversation about how different groups of parents socialize their children into particular relationships with the written word, as they guide them from a young age to understand books as stories, words in their written forms, and letters as representations of sound (to varying degrees of emphasis). These aren’t minor distinctions, as kids are developing understandings about what to look for in a text, and specific forms of literacy (and the types of children who use them) are later encouraged and validated in educational settings.

Every night, I read books with my 5 year old son, and I often wonder about the implications of how I’m teaching him to relate to the stories, the words, and the books-as-texts. For the past few weeks, he’s rediscovered a book we bought him a couple of years ago called The Book With No Pictures by B.J. Novak (yes, the dude from The Office). It’s become a favourite (meaning we read it every. single. night. Sometimes two or three times), and every time I come to this page:

…it awakens the latent linguistic anthropologist. Is this how books – and in particular, children’s books – work? Why? How does this relate to our Western sense of texts as authorities, instructor/teachers, or sources of knowledge? The book goes on to adopt two voices – one set of words the reader is apparently being “forced” to say (like “My head is made of blueberry pizza”) and a meta-reader who comments on how frustrated they are to have to read these preposterous phrases (“I didn’t want to say that”, “Please choose a book with pictures next time!”).

It’s a cute book, it makes my five year old crack up every time we read it (Ed: why don’t small children get tired of the same joke? Seriously.), and I’m clearly overthinking it. But there are questions worth asking in there – how do books work? How do we teach children about how books work? And is my head actually made of blueberry pizza, if the book told me to say it, and I said it out loud?

“Our” bodies

Anthropology 209 (Introduction to Biological Anthropology) labs are part of my instruction schedule every term, which means I’m constantly teaching and thinking about the human skeleton. I’m incredibly inspired by and excited about bodies; both living and dead. I consider myself to be “death positive”, a proud and vocal supporter of groups such as the Order of the Good Death, as such I finish each of my Anthropology 110 (Gender, Age, and Culture) courses with a lecture on death and dying. So what? Well, today I read this article about a woman who fought for her right to keep her foot after it had been amputated.

This is exciting. I mean who doesn’t want to keep their foot!? And that’s what I want to discuss here, kind of. While the article focuses largely on the legality of owning body parts, what I find incredibly interesting is the connection between the person and their body part.

It is significant that the woman saw her amputated foot as still being a part of herself even when no longer physically connected to her body. This really should not be surprising – we define so much of ourselves as individuals by our bodies (sex, age, stature, ability, etc.) and using our bodies (dress, tattoo, piercings, etc.).

We are an embodied species.

I find it pleasantly ironic that it was a foot she kept. Anthropologists, in part, define our species using our distinct form of bipedal locomotion. Is she now no longer human because she no longer has two feet by which to move about? Of course not, but it’s important to ask this question because who we are as a species is defined on the basis of our physical form.

This story is also significant because some but not all medically removed tissues are discarded as bio-hazardous, medical waste. Others are buried or disposed of using proscribed funerary rites and customs. What is “waste”? When does something stop being a part of our body? Do we own our bodies? When do we “lose” ownership? How a culture answers these questions is reflected in how those tissues, how our bodies are treated in life and in death.

Finally this is interesting from a teaching and collections perspective. Many biological anthropologists readily admit to keeping their children’s teeth and dental records to add to their teaching  collections. I know I would take great pleasure and delight in bringing out my very own foot, removed from my body then processed in our very own lab, to teach my students about the bones in our feet. It would be my foot, after all, and no one knows my body and my body parts better than me.

 

 

2016 really *was*, though

Every year in January, a group of linguists gets to vote on the American Dialect Society’s Word of the Year (WOTY). I inevitably follow the digital conversation on this decision with bated breath, and someday I swear I will show up to be part of the vote myself.

It’s now official, because linguists said so – 2016 really was an actual dumpster fire 🗑🔥.

Ok, that’s not actually what the WOTY designation means – the selection has more to do with the prominence and significance of the word* than its aptness or accuracy. My favourite element of this year’s decision is that the term came out of the ’emoji of the year’ nomination category, so the visual play component is recognized as central to the wordplay and the word’s meaning.

My favourite part of the WOTY discussion is rarely the winning term itself, though, as I always find the list of nominees full of rich examples of humans’ (or English speakers’, at least) creativity, hilarity, capacity for reacting to social change, and often, incredibly baffling oddness. Some categories this year were pretty heavily dominated by US election terminology and events – including “locker room banter” under euphemism of the year, and both “bigly” and “yuuuuuge” under wtf word of the year – but the list also includes some really interesting linguistic shift. A highlight for me is the recognition of a verb form of “@” under digital word of the year (as in ‘don’t @ me’, meaning ‘don’t include me in a reply [on Twitter]’). Had I been present at this year’s vote, though, I think I’d have been backing the “-exit” forms (Brexit, Grexit, Calexit), because it’s such a simple combination that ends up being so productive and applicable.

As the announcement page notes, the point of this is not to anoint these (usually new) terms with some kind of official sanction – it’s to embrace the playful and creative potential that words give us for dealing with even the largest dumpster fires. Words are awesome. Let’s give them awards.

*I’ve seen some gen pop commentary that “dumpster fire” is two words, but that question is, of course, a prescriptive interpretation of what counts as a “word”. The (metaphorical) meaning of the combined item “dumpster fire” is a thing in itself, not (just) a combination of the two source items.

Anthropology As…What?

Anthropology as action. 

Anthropology as applied. 

Anthropology as insight.

Anthropology as a tool. 

Anthropology as f**k. 

We started this blog because we teach, research, live, and breathe anthropology, and we needed more work (Ed: no, you didn’t) opportunities to share what it is and why it matters. We are anthropologists of various stripes – in terms of fields of study, regions of interest, personal backgrounds, and academic positions – based at MacEwan University in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. We are passionate about the power that anthropology has, not only as a subject in academic institutions, but as a way of understanding, explaining, critiquing, and possibly even transforming, this messed up complex world we live in.

Our name reflects our belief in this potential. Our posts will all share a theme of demonstrating “anthropology as…”. As instructors at an undergraduate teaching university, we are committed to making what we do accessible to a broad audience, including those outside the walls of academic institutions. We intend to use this site as a teaching tool in our classes, a platform for informally thinking through anthropological ideas, and as a way of starting (or continuing) conversations with folks both currently known and yet to be encountered.

A few quick caveats:

1. We make no guarantees as to timing or frequency of posts. It is reasonable to assume we might disappear during heavy grading times, and rest assured once we crawl out from under piles of papers, we will reemerge with Phoenix-like energy and passion (Ed: good luck with that).
2. While anthropology will be the unifying thread of posts here, and we are committed to a four field approach, the content reflects us as individual authors (see our “About” page for descriptions of who we are), not our department, institution, or professional organizations.
3. Following on #2, while we hope to include voices from many colleagues, the two main authors at the time of this writing share a few common features. We are both white settler women from Canada, we are both feminists (Ed: please clarify this in future posts, because feminism be complicated), and we both place a lot of emphasis on Indigenous rights and decolonization, in however imperfect our ways (Ed: you are also giant nerds).
4. We are committed to creating safe environments for discussion, including around difficult topics, which means that, should a situation arise, we will have no qualms about moderating comments that are abusive with a very heavy hand. That said, we love profanity, we will use correct anatomical terminology, and we will assume that y’all are grownups about that.

In sum, our goal is to demonstrate anthropology as a force in everyday life, and to unabashedly and unashamedly show that anthropology IS awesome.

Let’s do this, nerds.