Language and Societies abstracts

Once again, the students in my senior / graduate linguistic anthropology course, Language and Societies, have written abstracts of their research papers, which I have now posted on the course blog of the same name.    As always, I am casting a wide net, looking for comments from anyone interested in these subjects.     If you have a few spare minutes, I'd really appreciate if you could take a few moments to post a comment on one or a few abstracts that interest you.  I am extremely pleased in general with the quality of insight and analysis, and I am confident that several of these papers will eventually end up as conference presentations.  Thanks!

Siobhan Gregory: “Detroit is a Blank Slate”: Metaphors in the Journalistic Discourse of Art and Entrepreneurship in the City of Detroit

Stephanie Nava: Language Loss and Maintenance in the United States: An Examination of Mexican and Japanese Immigrants and their Kin

Scott Shell: The Conversion of Scandinavia by Means of Script Transition

Sean Shadaia: Analyzing medical discourse through the lens of the non-English-speaking patient / interpreter / physician interaction

Lauren Powers: Hip-Hop Lyrics and the Defaming of Women in Hip-Hop Culture

Wendy D. Bartlo: Elderspeak: an examination of language directed at older adults

Alex Beaudin: 140 Characters

Amelia Baumgarten: “Okay, at this point you’re abusing sarcasm”: Figurative language and negative emotion in Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Sophocles Sapounas: A contemporary cross-cultural study of politeness: The universal necessity of politeness in human interaction

Nadia Maraachli: Death-related discourse in assisted living facilities

Jennifer Schechter: Grammar Nazis, prescriptivism, and snobs, oh my! Social standards and spoken language

Colleen Face: Queer Russian intersectionality

Robert A. Johnson: “Frugal or spendy?”:  public accountability in an online debt support group

Junguk Spurrier: American indifference to foreign language learning