Language and the City
Saturday 22 October 2005; 7:30-9:00p
Sociolinguistics has always been intimately concerned with multicultural and multilinguistic contact, especially in large urban centers. Research spanning the globe, from New York to Cairo to Beijing to Nassau, has investigated the ways in which communities come in contact with one another, and in so doing affect their sociolinguistic heritages. Notwithstanding this substantive body of research, sociolinguistics has been slow to critically conceive of the very sites in which so much of its research is conducted: the modern city. Cities themselves are complex sites of contestation and negotiation. We offer that what sociolinguistics needs now is to more rigorously examine the multitudes of cultural, ideological and linguistic issues that arise in urban centers by taking into account the urban center itself as an object of study. To this end, this panel brings together scholars from anthropology, education, sociology and linguistics to interrogate our conceptualizations of the city, whether as an unscrutinized background for our research or a situated sociopolitical construct in its own right. Through this panel, we hope to engage a discussion in which the city, which already figures prominently in sociolinguistics, can begin to figure critically as well.
Panel Members:
Anne Charity is Assistant Professor and founder of the Linguistics Laboratory at the College of William and Mary. Her research concerns regional variation in African-American English and the relationship between language variation and educational practices and policies. She is also currently a Ford Fellow and a National Science Foundation Minority Postdoctoral Fellow and is embarking on a two-year research project entitled "Teacher Judgments of African-American English: Assessment of Linguistic System and Social Stigma."
Harvey Molotch is Professor of Sociology and Director of the Metropolitan Studies Program at New York University. His research focuses on urban development and political economy, as well as the sociology of architecture, design and consumption. He is the author of the (2003) Where Stuff Comes From: How toasters, toilets, cars, computers and many other things come to be as they are, among many other monographs and journal articles. Professor Molotch was a recipient of the Lifetime Career Achievement Award from the American Sociological Association in 2003.
Pedro Noguera is Professor of Teaching and Learning in the Steinhardt School of Education at New York University. An urban sociologist, Noguera's scholarship and research focuses on the ways in which schools are influenced by social and economic conditions in the urban environment. Noguera has served as an advisor and engaged in collaborative research with several large urban school districts throughout the United States. He has also done research on issues related to education and economic and social development in the Caribbean, Latin America and other regions throughout the world.
Lok Siu is Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Asian/Pacific/American Studies at New York University. She is currently completing her book, Memories of a Future Home: Transnational Belonging and Chinese in Panama, and working on another project titled "Gender, Cultural Citizenship, and Transnationalism." Her work has been published in Social Text and Amerasia Journal, as well as in Encounters: People of Asian Descent in the Americas. Her areas of interest include: Diaspora, transnationalism, cultural citizenship, gender and race, identity and community formation, and Asians in the Americas.
