The EASA Linguistic Anthropology Network (ELAN)
ELAN’s mission is to support research and teaching in linguistic anthropology across European academic institutions and to facilitate community building among linguistic anthropologists and allied scholars who work, study, research, or are otherwise interested in Europe. The network was founded in 2018 by Dr Laura Siragusa and Dr Jenanne K Ferguson at the EASA biennial meeting in Stockholm.
Linguistic anthropology combines insights from sociolinguistics, cultural anthropology and semiotics into a broader study of language-in-use. Common topics within contemporary linguistic anthropology include work on: linguistic relativity, performance and performativity, language ideologies, linguistic landscapes, language standardization, superdiversity, language and political economy, language and gender, language and race, language and colonialism, media circulation, discourse across encounters, and so on. Although linguistic anthropology first emerged as a subdiscipline in North America in the 1970s and 80s, the field has long been in dialogue with European thinkers, from Ferdinand de Saussure to Mikhail Bakhtin. Furthermore, linguistic anthropology shares a lineage with disciplines such as critical discourse analysis and semiotics that have a longer institutional history in many European institutions. ELAN thus creates a unique space to discuss different scholarly traditions on language and society and to elaborate synergies between them. We also welcome social anthropologists hoping to incorporate new approaches to language in their work.
ELAN’s activities are member driven. At present, we coordinate a monthly online seminar in which participants read and discuss a work-in-progress shared by a colleague. All are welcome to participate. The current schedule is available here. We have also hosted online reading groups, meet-the-author book discussions, and teaching workshops. We encourage new ideas for network events. ELAN also publishes a regular newsletter featuring information on linguistic anthropology related events, job openings and publications. You can also follow us on Facebook.
We are thrilled to introduce our newly established ELAN Advisory Board!
The board is one of the measures we are taking to establish and grow our young network, founded just in 2018. With an eye to the future, we are seeking new ways to expand membership and participation in the network. The Advisory Board’s primary purposes are (1) to offer guidance and consultation to the two convenors who lead ELAN and (2) to serve as ambassadors for the network, helping to raise awareness about ELAN and its activities. To this end, we have invited a group of international scholars working in linguistic anthropology and related fields who will meet with us occasionally, offering advice for how we can grow and improve our work, and encouraging wider participation.
Below you can find the list of members and a link to their academic profiles.
We look forward to the possibilities the Advisory Board offers in bringing in new ideas and energy to the ELAN network!
ELAN Advisory Board:
Jillian Cavanaugh, CUNY Brooklyn College
James Costa, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle
Aurora Donzelli, Università di Bologna
Alexandre Duchêne, University of Fribourg
Patrick Eisenlohr, Georg August Universität Göttingen
Sue Gal, University of Chicago
Ilana Gershon, Rice University
Andrew Graan, University of Helsinki
Monica Heller, University of Toronto
Martha Karrebæk, University of Copenhagen
Don Kulick, University of Hong Kong, Uppsala University
Alaina Lemon, University of Michigan
Constantine V. Nakassis, University of Chicago
Alex Pillen, University College London
Britta Schneider, European University Viadrina
Jürgen Spitzmüller, University of Vienna
Rupert Stasch, University of Cambridge
Valentina Vapnarsky, Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS), École Pratique des Hautes Études (EPHE)
