Language, Expressivity, and Power

This course explores what we do with language and other modes of expression and how these modes shape our communicative capacities. How do we decide what communication is appropriate face-to-face or via text or email? Why do we gossip? What informs our beliefs about civility and obscenity? How do we decide what credible speech is? What happens when a culturally rooted expressive form is taken up for other aesthetic and political ends? We will explore such questions by studying theories and ethnographies of a range of phenomena: dance, gossip, poetry, asylum appeals, advertisements, protest speech, and more.