Alexandra Jaffe

Bachelor’s Degree: 1980, English and French Literature, University of Delaware.

Master’s Degree: 1983, Linguistic Anthropology, Indiana University.
Ph.D.: 1990, Linguistic Anthropology, Indiana University.

ANTH 170	Intro to linguistics
ANTH 413	Language & Culture
ANTH 498	Senior Thesis
ANTH 499	Guided Studies in Anthropology
ANTH 597	Directed Readings
ANTH 697	Directed Research

Dr. Alexandra Jaffe is a linguistic anthropologist whose primary fieldsite is the French island of Corsica, where she has studied language shift and revitalization since 1988. She has focused on issues of ideology and identity in bilingual education, minority language literacy and literature, the Corsican media, and in language policy. In addition to her work on bilingualism, multilingualism and minority languages, she has written quite widely on the sociolinguistics of orthographic choice and on the politics of nonstandard orthographies in sociolinguistic transcripts and other texts. She has co-edited a forthcoming book on the sociolinguistics of orthography with Mark Sebba and Jannis Androutsopoulos. Jaffe also works on language in the media, with a particular focus on the representation of sociolinguistic variation in documentaries, mainstream broadcasts and online fora. Both in media and educational contexts, she has made use of the concept of stance to explore how social meanings accrue to ways of speaking and their representations through the active engagement of both producers and interpreters of language and other semiotic resources. She is the incoming editor-in-chief of the Journal of Linguistic Anthropology.

2009a Entextualization, mediatization, and authentication: Orthographic choice in media transcripts. Text and Talk 29 (5): 571-594.2009b Edited volume, Stance: Sociolinguistic Perspectives, Oxford University Press.
2 Chapters:
“Introduction: The Sociolinguistics of Stance” pp. 3-28
“Stance in a Corsican School: Institutional and Ideological Orders” pp. 119-145.2009d Indeterminacy and regularization: Sociolinguistic variation and language ideologies. Sociolinguistic Studies. 3:2(229-251)2008a Parlers et Ideologies langagieres. Ethnologie Francaise 3 (11) : 517-526.2008c Language ecologies and the meaning of diversity: Corsican bilingual education and the concept of “polynomie.” In The Encyclopedia of Language and Education vol 9. Angela Creese, Peter Martin and Nancy Hornberger, eds. Frankfurt: Springer, pp. 225-237.2008e Transcription in Practice: Non-standard Orthography. Journal of Applied Linguistics 3(2): 163-183.

2007a Corsican on the airwaves: Media discourse, practice and audience in a context of minority language shift and revitalization. In Language in the Media. Sally Johnson and Astrid Ensslin, eds. Continuum Press, pp. 149-172.

2007b Minority Language Movements. In Bilingualism: A Social Approach. Monica Heller, ed., Basingstoke: Palgrave Press, pp. 50-70.

2007c Codeswitching and Stance: Issues in Interpretation. Journal of Language, Identity and Education 6(1) 1-25.

2007d Discourses of endangerment: contexts and consequences of essentializing discourses. In Discourses of Endangerment: Interests and Ideology in the Defense of Languages. Alexandre Duchene and Monica Heller, eds. London: Continuum Publishing Group, pp. 57-75.