Sonia N. Das

Ph.D. 2008, M.A. 2003, Michigan; B.S. and B.A. with Honors 1999, Stanford

Linguistic Anthropology; Semiotics; Language Ideology; Language Contact; Linguistic Nationalism; Heritage Language; Colonial Linguistics; Inequality; Migration; Seafaring; Policing; Tamil Diaspora; Francophonie

Sonia Das is Associate Professor of Linguistic Anthropology at New York University and Editor-In-Chief of the flagship journal of the Society for Linguistic Anthropology, Journal of Linguistic Anthropology. She is the author of Linguistic Rivalries: Tamil Migrants and Anglo-Franco Conflicts (Oxford 2016), a study of the migration and diasporic experiences of Tamil-speaking Indians and Sri Lankans navigating language laws and political rivalries in Montréal, Québec. She received Honorable Mention for the Sapir Book Prize in 2017 from the Society for Linguistic Anthropology for this book, which demonstrates the importance of using comparative and historical methods to analyze complex sociolinguistic phenomena attributed to globalization. She has conducted archival research examining the colonial linguistic projects of mid-19^th century French India and French Guiana. Her other ethnographic research focuses on the communicative and religious practices and sociolinguistic hierarchies of commercial seafaring, exploring how these are impacted by changing human-machine relations. She also examines inequalities in police-civilian interactions during routine traffic stops in South Carolina. She is currently a Junior Fellow in the Andrew W. Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography and has received grants and fellowships from the National Science Foundation’s Programs in Cultural Anthropology and Law and Social Sciences, the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, the University of Michigan Center for South Asian Studies’ Foreign Language and Area Studies, and the Association for Canadian Studies in the United States. She was a Visiting Professor in South Asian Studies and Linguistics at the Écoles des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS).

Department of Linguistics

SouthAsia@NYU

Institute of French Studies

Editor-In-Chief, Journal of Linguistic Anthropology

2022. “Grant Writing for Projects in Linguistic Anthropology.” Research Methods in Linguistic Anthropology. Sabina Perrino and Sonya Pritzker, eds. New York: Bloomsbury Press.

2021. With Christina P. Davis and Erika Hoffmann-Dilloway. “ Judith T. Irvine and the Social Life of Scholarship .” Special Issue: Essays in Honor of Judith T. Irvine. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology. 31(3): 316-319.

2021. “Shadow Conversations and the Citational Practices of a Journal.” “Special Issue: Essays in Honor of Judith T. Irvine.” Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, 31(3): 335-339.

2020. Correctness/Incorrectness/Correction. The International Encyclopedia of Linguistic Anthropology. 

2020. “Transliteration Across Cities: The Interdiscursive Ethnohistory of a Tamil Francophonie .” “Special issue: Script in South Asia: New Media and Semiotic Mediation.” Signs and Society 8(1): 1-30.

2019. The Unsociability of Commercial Seafaring: Language Practice and Ideology in Maritime Technocracy. American Anthropologist.121(1): 62-75.

2017. Failed Legacies of Colonial Linguistics: Lessons from Tamil Books in French India and French Guiana. Comparative Studies in Society and History. 59(4): 846-883.

2016. Linguistic Rivalries: Tamil Migrants and Anglo-Franco Conflicts. New York: Oxford University Press.

2015. Une division sociale du travail linguistique: Enseigner le tamoul comme langue d’origine à Montréal, Québec. Anthropologie et Sociétés 39, no. 3: 153-172

2012. La Francophonie and beyond: Comparative methods in studies of linguistic minorities. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 22(3): 220-236.

2011. Rewriting the Past and Reimagining the Future: The Social Life of a Tamil Heritage Language Industry. American Ethnologist 38(4): 774-789.



2009. [Book Review] Little India: Diaspora, Time, and Ethnolinguistic Belonging in Hindu Mauritius.
 Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 19(2): 328-330.

2008. Between Convergence and Divergence: Reformatting Language Purism in the Montreal Tamil Diasporas. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 18(1): 1-23.

2008. The Talk of Tamils in Multilingual Montreal: A Study of Intersecting Language Ideologies in Nationalist Quebec. Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism 8(2): 230-247.   

Updated January 2023

New work on the social justice agendas and language politics of commercial cargo seafaring, co-written with Johanna Markkula, will soon appear in Language and Social Justice: Global Perspectives, edited by Kathleen Riley, Bernard Perley, and Inmaculada García-Sanchez. She is particularly interested in making linguistic anthropology accessible to K-12 and other non-specialist audiences and has written a blog essay entitled “What is Linguistic Anthropology?” with Sapiens magazine.