▪ Abstract Because of their deafness, deaf people have been marked as different and treated problematically by their hearing societies. Until 25 years ago, academic literature addressing deafness typically described deafness as pathology, focusing on cures or mitigation of the perceived handicap. In ethnographic accounts, interactions involving deaf people are sometimes presented as examples of how communities treat atypical members. Recently, studies of deafness have adopted more complex sociocultural perspectives, raising issues of community identity, formation and maintenance, and language ideology. Anthropological researchers have approached the study of d/Deaf communities from at least three useful angles. The first, focusing on the history of these communities, demonstrates that the current issues have roots in the past, including the central role of education in the creation and maintenance of communities. A second approach centers on emic perspectives, drawing on the voices of community members themselves and accounts of ethnographers. A third perspective studies linguistic issues and how particular linguistic issues involving deaf people articulate with those of their hearing societies. To use a cultural definition is not only to assert a new frame of reference, but to consciously reject an older one…. But the cultural definition continues to perplex many. If Deaf people are indeed a cultural group, why then don't they seem more like the Pennan of the island of Borneo, or the Huichol of Mexico? Carol Padden (1996a)
In 2010, scholars of language and culture developed broader and more dynamic ways to understand traditional approaches in the anthropological study of language, reframed our analyses of communicative events, created new ways to understand the co-construction of languages and social organizations from the family to the nation-state, and forged activist partnerships with the communities we worked with on issues including social justice, language revitalization, and education. In this review article, I reflect on 2010 work in journals, books, and conference papers within the field of linguistic anthropology and in associated disciplines. [2010, linguistic anthropology, year in review, history, activism] NOTES Acknowledgments. Many thanks to Michael Silverstein for his invitation to do this piece and his warm and very useful support throughout the process, Tom Boellstorff for his advice and quick responses to questions, Mayumi Shimose for her kindness and keen editorial eye, of the Linganth E-Mail List for answering questions, reading excerpts, and providing information with great grace and patience. Apologies as well to those whose words ended up on the virtual cutting-room floor. Thanks also to
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