Sara Trechter

Queerly Phrased: Language, Gender, and Sexuality

Queerly Phrased is a groundbreaking collection of previously unpublished essays that examine the relationship between language and the construction of gender and sexuality. Bridging the gap between sociolinguistics and gay studies, the contributors draw on traditional models of language anaylsis of well as recent developments in gender theory to show how language plays a crucial role in the creation of culture and its representation.

ROXY HARRIS AND BEN RAMPTON (eds.), The language, ethnicity and race reader

Roxy Harris and Ben Rampton (eds.), The language, ethnicity and race reader . London & New York: Routledge, 2003. Pp. x, 357. Pb

Variation in Native Languages of North America

38.98. Harris & Ramptons collection of 25 classic and current articles on language and ethnicity is a welcome tool for the undergraduate-level instructor who requires an astute collection with diverse theoretical and historical perspectives. The introduction guides teachers and students toward theoretical implications of the articles and offers a number of organizational suggestions for how to “read.” The book is first organized into three sections: “Colonialism, imperialism, and global process,” “Nation states and minorities,” and “Language discourse and ethnic style.” In turn, each of the sections proceeds historically along a continuum: premodern → modern → postmodern. For pedagogical purposes, the editors supply a table locating each of the excerpts in its place along this continuum – “a gross oversimplification” to spark debate, for which they hope the readers will take them to task (p. 6).

White Noise: Bringing Language into Whiteness Studies

This article addresses language variation in Native North America as it is broadly defined. It includes phonological, lexical, and syntactic methods of survey to differentiate languages from regional dialects or identify their place within dialect continua. New types of variation arise through language attrition and revitalization efforts as speakers lose some stylistic abilities or develop new and variable structures in learning an ancestral language. Personal characteristics of speakers and addressees such as age, gender, or unusual characteristics indexed by variation and the stylistic variations in different registers and genres of speech are described for a number of languages.