LIN Seminar Series

Linguistics seminar series: Ashley Stinnett

Ashley Stinnett

Ashley Stinnett, is an assistant professor in the Department of Folk Studies and Anthropology at Western Kentucky University. She received her Ph.D. from the School of Anthropology at the University of Arizona. Her areas of specialization are linguistic anthropology with a sub-specialty in applied visual ethnography and educational documentary filmmaking. Her research primarily concerns the sociocultural and linguistic processes in which locally centered, historical and traditional knowledge specific to food are realized and put into daily practice. Ashley researches language production in communities of practice in occupational settings and community driven efforts, specifically related to food production. Additionally, she partners with local community organizations utilizing applied anthropological approaches while synchronously incorporating visual anthropology methodologies in both the practice and the production of visual media materials. Her primary research focuses on language practices of heritage butchers in the Southwestern United States. Her most recent project utilizes linguistic and sensory ethnography in a focus on food fermentation.

Date:
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Location:
Niles Gallery, Lucille Little Library

Growing Your Elative: Linguistic Seminar Series

A number of comparative, superlative, and elative suffixes are longer than they would be if
they had simply undergone regular sound changes, e.g. the Latin superlative/elative sux
-issimus. Closer inspection reveals that they have developed in a parallel fashion. The
development involves the analogical extension of a longer sound pattern from a small class
of forms to a large one. I suggest how we might relate this to the semantics of adjective
gradation.
 
Date:
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Location:
233 Gatton College

Talking Place, Speaking Race: African Americans, Their Englishes, and Local Identity

Sociolinguists, long concerned with the connections between language and localness, have shown that the ways in which speakers use features of ethnoracially or locally marked varieties are highly salient in their construction of identities of place. In the urban U.S., place identity is enmeshed with identities of class and identities of race: to be from a place is to embody its racial makeup and class delineations just as much as its physical locale.  
 
This present study combines quantitative analysis and discourse analysis to analyze the speech of middle- and upper-class African American residents of a rapidly-gentrifying neighborhood in Washington, D.C. The data show that drawing upon an ethnolinguistic repertoire (Benor 2010) which combines features of African American English style as well as features of prestige white varieties of English allows speakers to reinforce racial identities which align them with the neighborhood's rich African American identity even while their class identity might better align them with the outsiders. Ultimately, I argue that the linguistic expression of class and place identity is not an add-on to the enactment of racial identities, but that language is in fact the primary site wherein these intersecting identities are negotiated.
Date:
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Location:
WTY Library 2-34a (Active Learning Classroom)
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