Professor McKee has been elected to the Chair Line for AAAS’s Section Z (Linguistics and Language Sciences). The term includes roles as Chair Elect (2018-2019), Chair (2019-2020), and Retiring Chair (2020-2021).

Heidi Harley and Elise Bell went to a pre-K Spanish-immersion class (4-5 year olds) at the International School of Tucson to tell them what a linguistics professor does. The students learned about word order in English and Spanish, and acted the differences out. For example, in the picture below, they are showing the order of the Spanish phrase 'una manzana sucia y fria', and then they ran around to put the picture of the apple at the end for the English equivalent, 'a dirty, cold apple.' We... Read more

Joint Anthropology-Linguistics Ph.D. student Mary-Caitlyn Valentinsson was awarded a Dissertation Research Grant from the Social and Behavioral Research Institute (SBSRI) at the U of A. This award will fund fieldwork in Buenos Aires, Argentina on language use in fan communities.

Fourth year PhD student Ryan Walter Smith gave a talk presenting joint work with Ryoichiro Kobayashi (Sophia University) at Sinn und Bedeutung 22, held at the University of Potsdam in Germany from September 7th to the 9th. Their work proposes an analysis of certain particles in Japanese, -toka and -tari, which alternate between conjunctive and disjunctive readings depending on their semantic environment. SInn und Bedeutung is the premier international conference for research in semantics and... Read more

Joint PhD student William M. Cotter was recently named one of three runners up for the annual graduate student paper prize in the Society for Linguistic Anthropology. William was invited to present his paper, titled 'Voicing the farmer: Moral economies and enduring inequality in the world of specialty coffee' as part of a special session at the American Anthropological Association annual meeting for the winner of the competition and the three runners up, moderated by Miyako... Read more

Joint Anthropology & Linguistics PhD student William Cotter recently published a piece with SAPIENS, an online magazine focused on bringing anthropological research to a public audience. William's article, 'Do Military Leaflets Save Lives or Just Instill Fear?" discusses the use of Arabic in military leaflets used by the United States, Russian, Israeli and Syrian militaries, highlights how the language of military leaflets can be used to shift... Read more

Joint Anthropology & Linguistics PhD student William Cotter has recently published an article in the Journal of Linguistic Anthropology. William's article, titled 'Gaza at the Margins? Legibility and Indeterminacy in the Israel-Palestine Conflict' examines military leaflets and SMS messages disseminated by the Israeli military in the Gaza Strip. The article highlights how language use in this context is used to reinforce notions of democratic order,... Read more

University of Arizona Linguistics and Anthropology alumnus Shannon Bischoff (now Associate Professor at Indiana University Purdue University Fort Wayne), Ivy Doak (University of North Texas), Amy Fountain (UA) and software engineer John W. Ivens (UA) traveled to Plummer, Idaho in July to meet with Coeur d'Alene Language Programs Director Audra Vincent and Language Teacher Michelle Clarke to further their collaboration on the Coeur d'Alene Online Language Resource Center (COLRC). The COLRC is... Read more