Visiting Lecturer, AY 2007-2009
Department of Anthropology
University of California, Los Angeles
341 Haines Hall
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1553
310-825-2055
suzanne (at) suzanne wertheim (dot) com
Welcome to my latest internet-based representation! I am currently on research leave from my position as an Assistant Research Scientist at the University of Maryland in order to spend time as visiting faculty at UCLA's Department of Anthropology. I'm teaching some classes and getting work done on my book manuscript, The Language of Minority Nation Building. For more information on me and my work, see the below sections. If there's an article I haven't posted in downloadable form or additional information you're looking for, please feel free to e-mail me at the below address.
- Linguistic Anthropology and Sociolinguistics
- Language Contact and Language Contraction
- Post-Soviet Studies
- Turkic Linguistics
- Language and Gender
- Discourse/Pragmatics
My work explores the dialectic between language as a cultural practice and language as a grammatical system, with a particular focus on contracting languages undergoing multigenerational shift. How do the social, cultural, and political backgrounds of minority-language speakers affect the way that they speak? What factors contribute to the choice of some speakers of minority languages to stop transmitting the language to their children, or limit the domains of its usage? And how does language as a social practice influence language as a system, such that, for example, a minority language becomes more like the dominant language with which it is in contact? These are the major questions that inform my research, much of which focuses on the specific case of Tatar in post-Soviet Tatarstan.
I am using linguistic and cultural anthropology to reconsider historical linguistics, in particular the nature and mechanisms of contact-induced structural innovations. In addition, I am examining the relationship between linguistic purism and other ideologies of purism (in particular in nationalistic and post-colonial contexts) in order to analyze the effect of these ideologies on both linguistic performance and cultural production.
The courses I have taught over the years have, somewhat remarkably, always been closely related to my research interests. In Fall 2007 I taught Anthropology 204, the graduate Core Seminar in Linguistic Anthropology, and in the Winter and Spring of 2008, I taught a total of more than 350 undergraduates in the intro-level Anthropology 33, Culture and Communication. In Fall 2006 I was invited to teach Linguistics 401, General Linguistics, in Georgetown University's Department of Linguistics: this was a graduate class designed to teach structural linguistic analysis to developing sociolinguists. And in my time as a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Linguistics at Northwestern University, I taught four sociolinguistics classes, three of which met distributional requirements and thus reached a broad range of the undergraduate population. In Spring 2005 I taught Linguistics 222, Language, Politics and Identity, with a special focus on languages of the former Soviet Union. In Fall 2003 and Fall 2004, I taught Linguistics 220, an introductory linguistics course called Language and Society. Finally, in Spring 2004 I taught Linguistics 321, Bilingualism, which explored multilingualism and language contact from both a structural-linguistic and sociolinguistic perspective.
| 2003 | Ph.D. in Linguistics, University of California, Berkeley | |
| Dissertation: Linguistic purism, language shift and contact-induced change in Tatar | ||
| 1997 | M.A. in Linguistics, University of California, Berkeley | |
| 1990 | A.B. in English, Duke University |
Invited Talks
"Style and stylization: Performing at the margins." Plenary talk at the 14th annual CLIC conference, UCLA. May 22-24, 2008. Los Angeles.
"Indirect articulations of communal identity." Hunter College, March 14, 2008. New York.
"The macro-, the micro- and the morphosyntactic: Social context and influential grammar." UC Santa Barbara. February 28, 2008. Santa Barbara.
"Saying it with style." University of California, Irvine. February 26, 2008. Irvine.
"When words say too much: Linguistic form as a means of political expression." University of Arizona. January 29, 2007. Tucson.
"The ramifications of using language as the cornerstone of Tatar nation building." Georgetown University. November 28, 2006. Washington, DC.
"Institutional and individual uses of language for Tatar nation building." Temple University. November 1, 2006. Philadelphia.
"Monolingual ideologies and multilingual performances: Urban Tatar bilingualism and contact-induced change." University of Tilburg. October 19, 2006. Tilburg, The Netherlands.
Discussant for the panel "Comparing Language Politics." Association for the Study of Nationalities Annual Convention, March 23-25, 2006. New York.
"Style, context, and diachrony.” University of Chicago colloquium series. May 12, 2005. Chicago.
"Style shifting, code mixing, and contact-induced change." Center for the Advanced Study of Language, University of Maryland. March 10, 2005. College Park.
“Re-examining contact-induced change.” University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. February 28, 2005. Urbana-Champaign.
"How style shifting and identity construction can affect linguistic 'performance'." Northwestern University Language and Cognition speaker series. November 1, 2004. Evanston.
"Symbolic and political uses of post-Soviet Tatar." Invited presentation, Northwestern University Model UN Conference. April 4, 2004, Evanston.
"Linguistic reflections of nationalist ideologies." Invited presentation, Center for Language and Interaction in Culture speaker series, UCLA. March 10, 2004, Los Angeles.
"Structural consequences of oppositional identity." Symposium for Language Ecology, University of California, Berkeley. February 20-21, 2004, Berkeley.
"Cleaning up for company:
Rethinking fieldwork and data 'purity.' " University of Hawai'i. January 28, 2003, Manoa.
Conference Presentations and Other Talks “Fighting the power: ‘Inappropriate’ use of a denigrated code as resistance to the dominant cultural order. The American Anthropological Association meetings. Washington, DC, November 28-December 2, 2007. “Context, positionality, and form.” CLIC Discourse Lab, UCLA. Los Angeles, October 17, 2007. “Language shift and the linguistic repertoire of urban bilingual Tatars.” Presented at the 6th International Symposium on Bilingualism. Hamburg, May 30-June 2, 2007. “Modeling contact-induced change in contracting languages.” Presented at the workshop “Code-copying in Turkish as spoken in North-Western Europe.” University of Tilburg, March 8-10, 2007. Tilburg, the Netherlands.v
Invited participant in workshop “Possession through Turkish: A cognitive-linguistic perspective on language change and acquisition.” University of Tilburg, October 19-20, 2006. Tilburg, The Netherlands. “Reclamation, revalorization, and re-Tatarization through Tatar orthographies.” Presented at Sociolinguistics Symposium 16, University of Limerick. July 6-8, 2006. Limerick. “‘Appropriate’ uses of contracting languages.” Presented at the Georgetown University Round Table on Languages and Linguistics. March 3-5, 2006. Washington, D.C. William Rivers, Robin Dodsworth, Suzanne Wertheim, David Harrison, and Arienne Dwyer. “Beyond ontology: Data mapping for language variation.” Presented at the Linguistic Society of America annual meeting. January 5-8, 2006. Albuquerque, NM. “The linguistic consequences of presenting the fieldworker as celebrity and role model.” Presented at the American Anthropological Association meetings. November 30-December 4, 2006. Washington, D.C. " 'The
purity of a language is the purity of a nation': The language of Tatar
nationalism." Presented at the Northwestern University Linguistics
Department colloquium series. May 20, 2005, Evanston. "Gender
and the transgression of Tatar sociolinguistic conventions." Presented
at the American Ethnological Society conference. April 7-10, San Diego. " 'For
an independent government, its own alphabet': Symbolic and political uses
of Tatar orthographies." Presented at the Political Communication
and Society Workshop, University of Chicago. March 30, Chicago. "Style
shifting, code mixing, and contact-induced change." Invited presentation,
Center for the Advanced Study of Language, University of Maryland. March
10, College Park. "Re-examining
contact-induced change." Invited presentation, University of Illinois,
Urbana-Champaign. February 28, Urbana-Champaign. "Re-examining
contact-induced change." Presented at the Northwestern University
Linguistics Department colloquium series. February 27, 2004, Evanston.
"Language
mixing and style reassignment in contracting languages." Presented
at the American Anthropological Association meetings. November 19-23,
2003, Chicago. "The
de-Russification and re-Arabicization of modern Tatar." Presented
at the Central Eurasian Studies Society conference. October 2-5, 2003,
Cambridge. "Nishläp
'saf tatarcha' möhim?" (Why is 'pure Tatar' important?).
Presented in absentia at the Etnokul'tura Tatar Glazami Sovremennikh
Zarubezhnikh Issledovatelej conference. June 7, 2003, Kazan, Tatarstan. "Discourse-pragmatics
as a means of contact-induced change." Presented at the Ninth Annual
Conference on Language, Interaction, and Culture. May 8-10, 2003, University
of California, Santa Barbara. "Nationalism
and the linguistic presentation of post-Soviet Tatar identity." Presented
at the annual conference of the Berkeley Journal of Sociology. March 7,
2003, Berkeley.
Selected publications:
(in press). “Linguistic aspects of the re-Tatarization of Tatarstan.” In W. Rivers, ed. Striking a Balance: Internal and External Perspectives on Language Planning in the Former Soviet Union. Norwell, MA: Springer.
(in press) Arabic loanwords in Tatar. In K. Versteegh, ed. The Encyclopedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics. Amsterdam: Brill Academic Publishers. Here is a draft version.
(in press) Discourse pragmatics as a means of contact-induced change. Selected Proceedings of the CLIC-LISO Ninth Annual Conference on Language, Interaction, and Culture.
(forthcoming). “Who’s using who?: The fieldworker as documenter and tool of linguistic revalorization.” To be published in Language & Communication as part of the special issue Reflecting on Language and Culture Fieldwork, S. Wertheim and J. Ahlers, eds. Volume 28, No. 1.
(forthcoming). Ahlers, Jocelyn and Suzanne Wertheim. “Reflecting on language and culture fieldwork in the 21st century.” To be published in Language & Communication as part of the special issue Reflecting on Language and Culture Fieldwork, S. Wertheim and J. Ahlers, eds. Volume 28, No. 1.
(forthcoming). Boeschoten, Hendrik and Suzanne Wertheim. “The Turkic-Speaking World.” In N. Müller and M. Ball, eds. Sociolinguistics Around the World: A Handbook. New York: Routledge.
(in preparation). “Reclamation, revalorization, and re-Tatarization: Symbolic and political uses of Tatar orthographies.” To be submitted as part of book proposal for The Sociolinguistics of Orthography, S. Johnson and J. Androutsopoulos, eds.
(under review). “Gender, nationalism, and the attempted reconfiguration of sociolinguistic norms.”
2006. Cleaning up for company: Using participant roles to understand fieldworker effect. Language in Society 35(5). 707-727.
2005.
Islam and the construction of Tatar sociolinguistic identity. In J.
Johnson, M. Stepaniants and B. Forest, eds. Religion and Identity in
Modern Russia: The Revival of Orthodoxy and Islam. 106-203. 2004. “Saf tatarcha” (Pure Tatar). In R. Jemdihan, ed. Tatarskaia Etnokul’tura Glazami Sovremennykh Zarubezhnykh Issledovatelei (Tatar Culture Through the Eyes of Modern Foreign Researchers). Kazan. 2003.
Linguistic purism, language shift and contact-induced change in Tatar.
University of California, Berkeley dissertation. Now available for
download in manageable chunks: Front
matter 2003. Language
ideologies and the "purification" of post-Soviet Tatar.
Ab Imperio 1/2003. 347-369. 2003.
Rethinking the observer's paradox and data "purity." In
J. Larson and M. Paster, eds. Proceedings of the 28th Meeting of the
Berkeley Linguistics Society. Berkeley: BLS. 511-521. 2003.
Rol' iazyka v formirovanii tatarskoi identichnosti (The role of language
in the formation of Tatar identity). In M. Stepaniants, ed. Religiia
i Identichnost' v Rossii. Moskva: Vostochnaia Literatura. 255-275. 2003.
"Nishläp 'saf tatarcha' möhim?" (Why is 'pure
Tatar' important?). Published in the daily online Tatar newspaper Intertat.ru.
Chapter One
Chapter Two - Part One
Chapter Two - Part Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Bibliography
Appendices A-E
Appendix F
Räkhim itegez! Khush kildegez! Sezneng öchen berniche yazmalar häm sait bäyläneshläre bar.
Jäygä kechkenä genä tatar tele turinda mäkälä yazdim. Ani ukirga monda bas: "Nishläp 'saf tatarcha' möhim?" Gafu it, bashka mäkälälärem häm dissertatsiyam inglizchä genä. Inglizchä angliysang, alarni ukichi!
Berniche
Tatarlar öchen kizik saitlar:
1. Intertat.ru
(Tatarstan
Elektron Gazetasi)
2.
Yuldash (Tatarlar öchen berenche
tanishular sayti)
3. Azatliq Radiosi
4. Tatarstan
Respublikasining räsmi serveri
5. Tatarstan Yäshlärä
(Yäshlärneng Ijtimagiy-Säyäsi Elektron Gazetasi)
6. Mäg''rifät (Tatarstan
Mägarif Ministrliginig Atnaliq Gasetazi)
7. MTSS (Moskovskoe Tatarskoe Studencheskoe
Sobranie)
8. http://www.tatar.kz (Tatar Jäühärläre)
9. http://www.muslim.ru
10. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Tatar-Bashkir
Report (inglizchä dä, tatarcha da)