Is it "just words" when a lawyer cross-examines a rape victim in the hopes of getting her to admit an interest in her attacker? Is it "just words" when the Supreme Court hands down a decision or when business people draw up a contract? In tackling the question of how an abstract entity exerts concrete power, Just Words focuses on what has become the central issue in law and language research: what language reveals about the nature of legal power.John M. Conley, William M. O...

For a moment, the world stood still……but our people were forced to stand alone.And in the midst of this darkness, one Colorado group decided to use art to heal broken hearts.As mandatory stay-at-home orders continued, it became clear that the Coronavirus pandemic would not surrender anytime soon. Feelings of trepidation and sadness spread like wildfire, and our people grew weary and afraid.That's when the Graduate Program in Creative Writing at Western Color...

Provides an expansive view of the full field of linguistic anthropology, featuring an all-new team of contributing authors representing diverse new perspectivesA New Companion to Linguistic Anthropology provides a timely and authoritative overview of the field of study that explores how language influences society and culture. Bringing together more than 30 original essays by an interdisciplinary panel of renowned scholars and younger researchers, this com...

Confronting the Death Penalty: How Language Influences Jurors in Capital Cases probes how jurors make the ultimate decision about whether another human being should live or die. Drawing on ethnographic and qualitative linguistic methods, this book explores the means through which language helps to make death penalty decisions possible - how specific linguistic choices mediate and restrict jurors', attorneys', and judges' actions and experiences while serving and reflecting on capi...

From bilingual education and racial epithets to gendered pronouns and immigration discourses, language is a central concern in contemporary conversations and controversies surrounding social inequality. Developed as a collaborative effort by members of the American Anthropological Association’s Language and Social Justice Task Force, this innovative volume synthesizes scholarly insights on the relationship between patterns of communication and the creation of more just societies. Using cas...