Ways to overcome barriers to intercultural communication in China
Bridging the Gap by Catherine Hua Xiang is aimed at anyone doing business in or with China and examines the complexities of intercultural communication with Chinese people. Covering…
Bridging the Gap by Catherine Hua Xiang is aimed at anyone doing business in or with China and examines the complexities of intercultural communication with Chinese people. Covering…
A linguistic anthropologist explores the queer Ballroom scene in San Juan—and how performers are incorporating critiques of colonialism into the art form. “READING” ABOUT HER FASHION I look…
Utterances like “um,” “wow,” and “mm-hmm” aren’t garbage, they keep conversations flowing. This article was originally published at Knowable Magazine and has been republished under Creative Commons. …
The speaker of a poem refuses linguistic erasure, passing secret notes with untranslated lines in Korean—keeping the language alive during Japanese occupation. “Passing Notes” is part of the…
Ross Perlin‘s Language City explores the global crisis of endangered languages by focusing on the extraordinary linguistic diversity of New York City. Weaving history and linguistics with human…
A language scientist delves into historic and current efforts to catalog the planet’s 7,000-plus languages, uncovering colorful tales and Herculean challenges. ✽ As a scientist who has researched…
By Anja Hofer – Bojan sits opposite me, playing nervously with his water bottle when he tells me: “Our son, Krastio, was in a bilingual daycare but he…
Hey Adam! “In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. Dear brothers and sisters, today I would […] The post The Imam Chatbot: A Digital…
A free online webinar by SAPIENS Editor-in-Chief Chip Colwell to learn about how to write for the magazine and its peer publications. Ask SAPIENS is a series that…
In two poems, an anthropologist speaks to the timelessness and constant change of the minority language Griko in the Italian landscape. ✽ The story of the minority language…
An anthropologist sets out to better understand the experience of a deaf migrant. Why do people migrate from one country to another, leaving behind friends, family, and familiarity…
https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/H/bo210361609.html Danilyn Rutherford: I’m so excited to see Home Signs in print. We found out about each other a couple years ago and have b…
Natsuko Tsujimura. Food, Language, and Society: Communication in Japanese Foodways. Lexington Books. New York. 2023. ISBN: 9781498571333. pp. 287. Richard Zimmer (Sonoma State Universi…
In Global Language Justice, Lydia H. Liu and Anupama Rao bring together contributions at the intersection of language, justice and technology, exploring topics including ecolinguistics, colonial legac…
A scholar from Nagaland in India offers visceral, familial insights on language and culture loss in her Indigenous tribal community. ✽ My poem “Speaking in Tongues” explores the…
Introduction: Understanding as Resonance Aja Smith and Anne Line Dalsgård In this third section of the thread, Understanding as Resonance, the essays explore that which happens when words…
In a reflection of and paying respect to the collective nature of thinking, we have chosen to cite central aspects of the reviewers comments in each section. We…
An anthropologist uses explicit insults to get students thinking about gender and power in everyday language. Plus, a brief explainer on the slang term “sus.” ✽ “Insult me,”…
Anyone who spends time in Mexico City will spend much of it in traffic. One of the most clogged cities in the world, residents will lose on average…
SAPIENS offers a curated collection of poems and stories that center Indigenous values, worldviews, and insights, creatively reimagining anthropology and the human experience. ✽ Anthropology’s fraugh…
In a year of continuing global conflagrations, anthropologists investigated a wide range of pressing and curious questions about humanity’s past, present, and future. Here are the editors’ picks…
An anthropologist recounts a magical moment of songwriting collaboration between Diné (Navajo) and Ndebele artists gathered for the WOMAD Festival in South Africa. ✽ In October, I traveled…
An anthropologist argues that unfair portrayals of North Korea as a hopelessly irrational hermit state has huge implications for policy and security. ✽ This month, North Korea tested…
Linguistic anthropologists study language in context, revealing how people’s ways of communicating and expressing themselves interact with human culture, history, politics, identity, and much more. W…