anthropology essay

ANTH 213D

Language and Culture

Final Exam Essay

Due: By 5pm on Wednesday, December 7th. Upload to the Moodle in .doc or .pdf file format.

Format: 4-5 pages expected length (7 pages maximum), double-spaced, 1 inch margins, 12 point font. The paper should be well- organized, free of excessive errors, and formal in tone and use a consistent citation and bibliographic style according to the APA style guide*.

Assignment: Chose one of the following questions and write an essay addressing it using relevant concepts and big ideas from the course. Your paper should cite relevant ideas, examples or comparison cases from at least three readings from the syllabus (preferably not all from one topic section).

1) What do we lose when a language goes extinct? Many linguists and anthropologists—not to mention speakers of dying languages—feel that something valuable is lost when a language is no longer spoken by any community in daily life. Using concepts from throughout course, discuss at least one way in which a linguistic anthropologist might think about this question of what is lost when a language goes extinct.

2) Discuss one or more ways in which the study of language contributes to our understanding of how power and/or inequality operate in society.

3) Throughout the course we have discussed the idea that when people speak they don’t merely describe the world as it is but “do things” in the world—language is a form of action that has effects. Choose an instance of language in use that illustrates how language does things: discuss what is done or made in your example, how it is done, and what aspects of the context of the speech act make this possible.

Tips: Each of these questions could be answered in a number of different ways, using a number of different readings and starting from a number of possible course topics. You are better off not trying to cover all the possible ways of answering the question; focus on giving a thorough answer using only one or two approaches.

The most successful essays will use examples (drawn from course texts or elsewhere) to illustrate the key points, and will make correct use of relevant vocabulary and concepts from course readings. Points are awarded not for the number of examples or texts cited but for their relevance to the question you’ve chosen and for the quality of your explanation of how they support your argument

Quotations from the texts should always be marked as such with quotation marks and in-text citation, and should be used only when necessary—use your own words as much as possible.

*Author, A. A., & Author, B. B. (Year of publication). Title of chapter. In A. A. Editor & B. B. Editor (Eds.), Title of book (pages of chapter). Location: Publisher.