Bambi B. Schieffelin

2007 Langage et lieu dans l’univers de l’enfance. Anthropologie et Sociétés, 31, 1:15-37.

Found in translating: Reflexive language across time and texts. In Consequences of Contact: Language Ideologies and Sociocultural Transformations in Pacific Societies, ed. M. Makihara and B. B. Schieffelin. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 140-165.

Cultural processes and linguistic mediations: Pacific explorations. In Consequences of Contact: Language Ideologies and Sociocultural Transformations in Pacific Societies, ed. M. Makihara and B. B. Schieffelin. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 3-29. (with M. Makihara).

2008 Speaking only your own mind: Reflections on confession, gossip, and intentionality in Bosavi (PNG). Anthropological Quarterly 81,2:431-441.

Tok bokis, tok piksa: Translating parables in Papua New Guinea. In Social Lives in Language: Sociolinguistics and Multilingual Speech Communities, ed. M. Meyerhoff & N. Nagy. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp. 111-134.

2009 Enquoting voices, accomplishing talk: Uses of be + like in Instant Messaging. Language & Communication 29,1:77-113. (with G. Jones).

Talking text and talking back: “My bff Jill?” from boob tube to YouTube. Journal of Computer Mediated Communication, 14, 4: 1050-1079. (with G. Jones).

2010 Anthropological linguistics/Linguistic anthropology: An introduction. In Anthropological Linguistics: Critical Concepts in Language Studies, Volumes I-V, ed. B. B. Schieffelin and P. Garrett. London: Routledge (with P. Garrett), pp 1-10.

2011 When friends who talk together stalk together: Online gossip as metacommunication.  In Digital Discourse: Language in the New Media, ed. C. Thurlow & K. Mroczek. Oxford:  Oxford University Press, pp. 26-47. (with G. Jones & R. Smith).

2012 The theory of language socialization. In The Handbook of Language Socialization, ed. A, Duranti, E. Ochs, and B. B. Schieffelin. Malden, MA: Wiley- Blackwell, pp 1-21. (with E. Ochs).

2013 The acquisition of ergative marking in Kaluli, Ku Waru and Duna (Trans New Guinea). In The Acquisition of Ergativity. ed. E. Bavin & S. Stoll. Amsterdam/ Philadelphia: John Benjamins, pp. 133-182. (with A. Rumsey, L. San Roque).

2014 Evangelical conversion and the transformation of the self in Amazonia and Melanesia: Christianity and the revival of anthropological comparison. Comparative Studies in Society and History, 56, 3:559-590. (with J. Robbins, A. Vilaca).

2014 Christianizing language and the dis-placement of culture in Bosavi, PNG. Current Anthropology, 55, S226-237.

2015 The ethnography of inscriptive speech. In eFieldnotes: Makings of Anthropology in a Digital World. R. Sanjek & S. Tratner, eds. Pp. 210-228. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. (with G. Jones).

2017 Learning how to know: Egophoricity and the grammar of Kaluli (Bosavi), with special reference to child language. In Egophoricity: The Grammar of Knowledge Asymmetries. S. Floyd, E. Norcliffe, and L. San Roque, eds. Pp 435-469. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. (with L. San Roque).

2018 Language socialization and making sense of place. In The Sociolinguistics of Place and Belonging: Perspectives from the Margins, L. Cornips & V. de Rooij, eds. Pp 29-55. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 

2019 Perception verbs in context: Perspectives from Kaluli (Bosavi) child-caregiver interaction. In Perception Metaphors. L. Speed, C. O’Meara, L. San Roque, & A. Majid, eds. Pp 347-368. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. (with L. San Roque).

2020 Rencontres interculturelles et trajectoires langagières dans les sociétés du Pacifique. In Créoles, Pidgins, et Idéologies linguistiques dans le Pacifiique, L. Vandeputte et V, Fillol, eds. Paris: L’Harmattan. (with M. Makihara).

In press  Language socialization in the Papuan context. In The Oxford Guide to the Papuan Languages. N. Evans and S. Fedden, eds. Oxford: Oxford University Press. (with L. San Roque).

Dictionaries

1998 Bosavi-English-Tok Pisin Dictionary, B. B. Schieffelin and S. Feld. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.

Edited Volumes

2007 Consequences of Contact: Language Ideologies and Sociocultural Transformations in Pacific Societies, ed. M. Makihara and B. B. Schieffelin. New York: Oxford University Press.

2010 Anthropological Linguistics: Critical Concepts in Language Studies, Volumes I-V, ed. B. B. Schieffelin and P. Garrett. London: Routledge.

2011 The Handbook of Language Socialization, ed. A. Duranti, E. Ochs, and B. B. Schieffelin. Malden, MA: Wiley- Blackwell.

Updated July 2015
Questions about the intertwined dynamics of cultural and linguistic change, and the various factors that motivate such change, e.g., developmental, generational, and/or sociohistorical, continue to guide my research projects and publications. Several comparative projects, which were done collaboratively with scholars who inhabit different continents and time zones, have appeared in print. The research has been synergistic and dialogic, and has made me appreciate modern communication technologies more than ever.  

Two publications focus on child language socialization and acquisition. The first, “The acquisition of ergative marking in Kaluli, Ku Waru and Duna (Trans New Guinea)” (2013) with Alan Rumsey (Australian National University) and Lila San Roque (Max Planck Institute/Radboud University), investigates young children’s acquisition of ergative case markings in three Papua New Guinea communities. Ergative languages are ones in which the subject of an intransitive verb behaves like the object of a transitive verb, and differently from the agent of a transitive verb. Drawing on our respective ethnographic and linguistic fieldwork data on children’s everyday speech practices, we analyze how young children in these societies acquire and use the morphological, syntactic, and pragmatic resources of their respective languages to differentiate and mark key categories: agents, subjects and objects. This was followed by a three way cross-linguistic comparisons to determine patterns of similarity and difference across these languages. Our findings contribute to broader conversations among linguists and psycholinguists interested in cross-linguistic patterns of language acquisition across typologically diverse languages, and what such patterns suggest about children’s linguistic expression of transitivity and agency, and as well as the intersection of language structure, sociality, and cognition.

A second chapter, “Learning how to know: Egophoricity and the grammar of Kaluli (Bosavi), with special reference to child language” (in press) with Lila San Roque, analyses the forms and functions of various expressions of evidentiality and epistemic stance in the Bosavi language, and offers insights from ethnographically grounded language socialization and acquisition research to complement comparative scholarship by language typologists.

I have also continued my scholarship in the anthropology of Christianity. During my visiting professorship in Social Anthropology at the National Museum, Rio de Janeiro (2010), I had the opportunity to work with cultural anthropologists Aparecida Vilaça (National Museum, Rio de Janeiro) and Joel Robbins (University of Cambridge). Our article, “Evangelical conversion and the transformation of the self in Amazonia and Melanesia: Christianity and the revival of anthropological comparison,” (2014) is anchored in our respective social and linguistic investigations of the introduction of Christianity and first generation Christians in Bosavi, Urapmin and among the Wari’.A second publication, “Christianizing language and the dis-placement of culture in Bosavi, Papua New Guinea” (2014) analyzes how, as a consequence of the introduction of Christianity, Bosavi people also reformulated notions of place, a central construct in how they remember, as well as think and talk about themselves and others.

Finally, I confess to being unable to keep away from the world of virtual/digital communication. The chapter, “The ethnography of inscriptive speech” written with Graham Jones, will appear late in the year as part of R. Sanjek & S. Tratner’s edited book, eFieldnotes: The Makings of Anthropology in the Digital World, published by the University of Pennsylvania Press.

Currently, I am creating a Bosavi language socialization archive that will consist of the transcriptions and translations of the audio recordings that I made in Bosavi from 1975-77 of family interaction. Work on my book project under contract with University of California Press for the series, Anthropology of Christianity, continues.  Based on ethnographic and sociolinguistic research in Papua New Guinea, the book analyses the impact of fundamentalist Christian missionization on the linguistic and cultural lives of Bosavi people.