Jacqueline Urla

Deviant bodies : critical perspectives on difference in science and popular culture

Introduction: Mapping Embodied Deviance N Jennifer Terry and Jacqueline Urla Gender, Race and Nation: The Comparative Anatomy of OHottentotO Women in Europe, 1815ETH1817 N Anne Fausto-Sterling Framed: The Deaf in the Harem N Nicholas Mirzoeff Colonizing and Transforming the Criminal Tribesman: The Salvation Army in British India N Rachel Tolen This Norm Which Is Not One: Reading the Female Body in LombrosoOs Anthropology N David G. Horn Anxious Slippages between OUsO and OThemO: A Brief History of the Scientific Search for Homosexual Bodies N Jennifer Terry The Destruction of OLives Not Worth LivingO NRobert N. Proctor Domesticity in the Federal Indian Schools: The Power of Authority Over Mind and Body N K. Tsianina Lomawaima Nymphomania: The Historical Construction of Female Sexuality N Carol Groneman Theatres of Madness N Susan Jahoda The Anthropometry of Barbie: Unsettling Ideals of the Feminine Body in Popular Culture N Jacqueline Urla and Alan Swedlund Regulated Passions: The Invention of Inhibited Sexual Desire and Sexual Addiction N Janice Irvine Between Innocence and Safety: Epidemiologic and Popular Constructions of Young PeopleOs Need for Safe Sex N Cindy Patton The Hen That CanOt Lay an Egg (OBu Xia Dan De Mu JiO): Concepts of Female Infertility in Modern China N Lisa Handwerker The Media-fed Gene: Stories of Gender and Race N Dorothy Nelkin and M. Susan Lindee Notes on Contributors Index

Linguistic identity among new speakers of Basque

Abstract The increase in Basque speakers in the last 30 years has been due in large part to ‘new speakers’ or euskaldunberri, a term that will be used here to refer to those who have learned the language by means other than family transmission. While very significant in numbers, to date this group has not been the object of much study. Little is known about their attitudes and motivations, how they perceive themselves as Basque speakers, or their language use and transmission patterns. Acquiring answers to these questions is of strategic importance for developing an effective evidence-based language policy for the future. This article presents the results of a qualitative study of new speakers. Drawing on data from focus groups and interviews, the central goal of the article is to examine how new speakers of differing profiles perceive and locate themselves with respect to the popularly used labels for “new” and “native” Basque speakers and the ideologies of authenticity and legitimacy that seem to shape these perceptions. The analysis shows that learning the language alone, even to a high degree of competence, does not guarantee a view of themselves as true and genuine speakers of Basque.

Catalan in the twenty-first century

The revitalization of minoritized languages in Europe today faces an interesting new century. While such movements were until recently typically presented as efforts to recover a lost or marginalized language, they were always very much about social change and producing a new sociolinguistic future. Minority language policies have sought, among other things, to expand the traditional spheres of usage, introduce the language into new realms, expand access to learning the language, change the demographics of speakers, and reconfigure its prestige and economic value. Some of the changes that have resulted have been deliberate. Others may be less so; there are always the unintended effects, opportunities, and constraints exercised by external factors, socioeconomic conditions, and political climate to which language revival efforts have had to adapt and respond. This special issue devoted to Catalonia one of the most successful and longstanding language movements in Europe gives us a unique opportunity to understand some of these complex social dynamics engendered as language revival unfolds and to appreciate the value of in-depth interviewing, focus groups, and ethnographic work in making sometimes subtle change-in-progress visible. With 30 plus years of proactive language planning behind it, Catalonia is a living laboratory for exploring the social dynamics and ideological transformations set in motion by language normalization projects. For the nearby Basque language advocates with whom I work, the strong institutional support language revival has enjoyed along with the extensive immersion schooling program (now under some attack), has been a source of envy not easily reproducible in their own context. Nevertheless there are many parallels between the dynamics described for Catalonia and the Basque Autonomous Community. In my commentary to the papers by Pujolar and Gonzàlez, Soler, and Frekko in this issue, I will note some of the parallels but focus more generally on the lessons these studies hold for scholarship on minority language revitalization projects in general. Lessons that have to do with the value of ethnographic work on language ideology; the importance of class as a factor in language revitalization; the challenges of cross national comparison; and the necessity for refining our ways of categorizing speakers.

The Basque Street Survey: Two Decades of Assessing Language Use in Public Spaces

Abstract Assessing the vitality of minority languages is a concern for many small language advocates and language planners. To date, most quantitative data for measuring the social presence of a language have been limited to reported language competency and use. In this article, a Basque language researcher and U.S. anthropologist collaborate to describe a novel instrument developed in the Basque Country called the Kale Neurketa or Basque Street Survey. Developed by Basque language researchers, the Street Survey is unique in offering a quantitative measure of observed, rather than reported, language use. We describe the origins of the survey in grassroots language advocacy, the knowledge gap it has sought to address, its methodology and evolution over time, and some of its key findings in the Basque context. We conclude assessing the strengths and weakness that this method of direct observation of language use offers to scholars and advocates of minoritized languages.

Counting matters: quantifying the vitality and value of Basque

Abstract Scholars of language policy and politics have increasingly come to appreciate that there is much insight to be gained by scrutinizing data collection practices and the debates around them. What is (or is not) counted and how counting is done has consequence, but in ways that are not always self-evident. Taking the Basque Autonomous Community (BAC) in Spain as a case study, this article examines the historical context in which census and other statistical surveys of language emerged and what the changing forms of quantification can tell us about the evolution of language advocacy discourse and politics more generally. We will look at how concerns with tracking marginalization led minority language advocates to experiment with measures of oral use and linguistic landscapes in the public sphere. The final section examines how economistic and quality management techniques have gained traction in recent efforts to quantify Basque value and vitality today. We conclude with a consideration of the insights to be gained by looking at quantification efforts from the point of view of minority language advocacy.

BAMBI SCHIEFFELIN, KATHRYN WOOLARD, & PAUL KROSKRITY (eds.), Language ideologies: Practice and theory . (Oxford studies in anthropological linguistics, 16.) Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. Pp. xiii, 338. Hb

This volume makes available to us a revised and expanded collection of essays originally published in 1992 as a special issue of the journal Pragmatics . In a masterful and greatly expanded introduction to the volume, Kathryn Woolard establishes the parameters of a field that seeks to advance the goal of linking work on language structure with that on language politics, as well as with linguistic and social theory more generally.