Anna Babel
Biographic Data
| ID | 213858 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Anna Babel |
| GIVEN NAMES | Anna |
| FAMILY NAME | Babel |
| SIGNATURE | BABEL A |
| AFFILIATIONS | The Ohio State University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-3819-7190 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 19 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 77 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 19 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2009 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Finding our Role: How and why to reframe essentialist approaches to language
Voice and Nation in Plurinational Bolivia: Aymara Radio and Song in an Age of Pachakuti
A Semiotic Approach to Social Meaning in Language
Linguistic awareness is a complex and multi-layered set of processes, existing in different forms of consciousness or knowledge. Social meaning resides in the ways that people perceive linguistic behavior as patterned and predictable, depending on their experience with, stereotypes about, and understanding of different groups. Ample evidence from experimental and ethnographic work indicates that sociolinguistic processes are actively engaged in t…
Introduction to the Thematic Issue
The topics of awareness and control have been investigated for decades in sociolinguistics, but they have been approached in different ways, both theoretically and methodologically, in different corners of the subdiscipline. This has resulted in confusing and sometimes contradictory terminology, as well as divergent theoretical perspectives on what, exactly, is meant by these terms. As our understanding of the relationships between various social…
Decentering the colonial native speaker
In this article, we advocate a speakerhood studies approach as part of an effort to decenter the 'native speaker' in linguistics. Recent critiques of native-speakerhood problematize this construct's links to essentializing discourses born of ethnolinguistic nationalism and colonialism and advocate for more specific and less reductionist approaches to describing speakers in linguistics (e.g. Babel & Grammon 2021, Birkeland et al. 2024, Cheng et al…
The Sweet Land: Manufacturing "Tradition" in Small-Town Bolivia
Chronotopes have been described as "envelopes" of time and space that provide the setting for the circulation of particular types of characters or personae (Silverstein 2005, Agha 2007, Bakhtin 1981, 1986). In this article, I investigate how these narratives of time and space are used to produce meaning in conjunction with structured relationships between groups of social categories, particularly discourses of tradition and modernity. Specificall…
Perceiving isn't believing: Divergence in levels of sociolinguistic awareness
The influence of social knowledge on speech perception is a question of interest to a range of disciplines of language research. This study combines experimental and qualitative approaches to investigate whether the various methodological and disciplinary threads of research on this topic are truly investigating the same phenomenon to provide converging evidence in our understanding of social listening. This study investigates listeners' percepti…
Between the Andes and the Amazon: Language and Social Meaning in Bolivia
The Invisible Walls of the Whisper Network
Aspirates and ejectives in Quechua-influenced Spanish
This article describes the use of aspirates and ejectives in a variety of Spanish with significant Quechua contact influence that is spoken in the Santa Cruz valleys of central Bolivia. Aspirates and ejectives occur primarily on Quechua loanwords, making these ‘intermediate phonological relationships’ ( Hall 2013 ) that are hard to categorize with respect to their status as phonetic vs. phonological features. Results from a small-scale perception…
Linguistic Anthropology at the Women's Marches
SLA Business Meeting Report
Run, Hide, Fight
Affective motivations for borrowing: Performing local identity through loan phonology
Negotiating one position: Switzerland at the Global Forum on Migration and Development
The paper explores intra-governmental processes in migration policy-making, using the example of Switzerland and examining its preparations for chairing the Global Forum on Migration and Development 2011. Switzerland's “one joint position”, presented at the forum, required intensive negotiations and cooperation between different Swiss federal offices. The paper highlights how and why Switzerland achieved this joint position. It analyses the intra…
Time and reminiscence in contact: Dynamism and stasis in contact-induced change
The question of how and why change occurs is a persistent theme in research on language contact and sociolinguistics. In this article, I investigate the role of social context in producing change and maintenance in a contact variety of Andean Spanish. Two generations of speakers in a Quechua-Spanish contact zone in central Bolivia interpret stress shift on the first person imperfect past tense as a marker of the “reminiscent past.” An emergent bu…
Stereotypes versus experience: Indexing regional identity in Bolivian Valley Spanish
Stereotypes of highland and lowland identity categories in the Santa Cruz valleys of Bolivia are linked to phonetic variation in the Spanish discourse marker pues . Highlanders are believed to say [pwes] or [ps] while lowlanders are believed to say [pweh] or [pwe]. However, these beliefs erase two types of differences. First, they erase a distinction among highlanders. While highlanders from the Potosí‐Oruro area pronounce pues as they are believ…
Why Don't All Contact Features Act Alike? Contact Features as Enregistered Features
It has been widely observed that speakers of Andean Spanish use features that are borrowed or calqued from Quechua (de Granda 2001; Pfänder 2009). In this article, I demonstrate that these features are not evenly distributed over contexts of language use; rather, most contact features occur significantly more frequently in conversations than in formal contexts such as meetings. However, some contact features behave differently: they are more like…
Dizque, evidentiality, and stance in Valley Spanish
While information sources have largely been treated as transparent categories in the literature on evidentiality, understandings of information source can be culturally and situationally variable. This article proposes that the strictly linguistic information encoded in reportative evidentials cannot be cleanly separated from social influences. Defining an information source, especially when referring to information reported by another person, se…
Between the Andes and the Amazon: Language and Social Meaning in Bolivia
Perceiving isn't believing: Divergence in levels of sociolinguistic awareness
The influence of social knowledge on speech perception is a question of interest to a range of disciplines of language research. This study combines experimental and qualitative approaches to investigate whether the various methodological and disciplinary threads of research on this topic are truly investigating the same phenomenon to provide converging evidence in our understanding of social listening. This study investigates listeners' percepti…
Dizque, evidentiality, and stance in Valley Spanish
While information sources have largely been treated as transparent categories in the literature on evidentiality, understandings of information source can be culturally and situationally variable. This article proposes that the strictly linguistic information encoded in reportative evidentials cannot be cleanly separated from social influences. Defining an information source, especially when referring to information reported by another person, se…
Stereotypes versus experience: Indexing regional identity in Bolivian Valley Spanish
Stereotypes of highland and lowland identity categories in the Santa Cruz valleys of Bolivia are linked to phonetic variation in the Spanish discourse marker pues . Highlanders are believed to say [pwes] or [ps] while lowlanders are believed to say [pweh] or [pwe]. However, these beliefs erase two types of differences. First, they erase a distinction among highlanders. While highlanders from the Potosí‐Oruro area pronounce pues as they are believ…
Why Don't All Contact Features Act Alike? Contact Features as Enregistered Features
It has been widely observed that speakers of Andean Spanish use features that are borrowed or calqued from Quechua (de Granda 2001; Pfänder 2009). In this article, I demonstrate that these features are not evenly distributed over contexts of language use; rather, most contact features occur significantly more frequently in conversations than in formal contexts such as meetings. However, some contact features behave differently: they are more like…
A Semiotic Approach to Social Meaning in Language
Linguistic awareness is a complex and multi-layered set of processes, existing in different forms of consciousness or knowledge. Social meaning resides in the ways that people perceive linguistic behavior as patterned and predictable, depending on their experience with, stereotypes about, and understanding of different groups. Ample evidence from experimental and ethnographic work indicates that sociolinguistic processes are actively engaged in t…
Decentering the colonial native speaker
In this article, we advocate a speakerhood studies approach as part of an effort to decenter the 'native speaker' in linguistics. Recent critiques of native-speakerhood problematize this construct's links to essentializing discourses born of ethnolinguistic nationalism and colonialism and advocate for more specific and less reductionist approaches to describing speakers in linguistics (e.g. Babel & Grammon 2021, Birkeland et al. 2024, Cheng et al…
The Sweet Land: Manufacturing "Tradition" in Small-Town Bolivia
Chronotopes have been described as "envelopes" of time and space that provide the setting for the circulation of particular types of characters or personae (Silverstein 2005, Agha 2007, Bakhtin 1981, 1986). In this article, I investigate how these narratives of time and space are used to produce meaning in conjunction with structured relationships between groups of social categories, particularly discourses of tradition and modernity. Specificall…
Affective motivations for borrowing: Performing local identity through loan phonology
Introduction to the Thematic Issue
The topics of awareness and control have been investigated for decades in sociolinguistics, but they have been approached in different ways, both theoretically and methodologically, in different corners of the subdiscipline. This has resulted in confusing and sometimes contradictory terminology, as well as divergent theoretical perspectives on what, exactly, is meant by these terms. As our understanding of the relationships between various social…
The Invisible Walls of the Whisper Network
Run, Hide, Fight
Dizque, evidentiality, and stance in Valley Spanish
While information sources have largely been treated as transparent categories in the literature on evidentiality, understandings of information source can be culturally and situationally variable. This article proposes that the strictly linguistic information encoded in reportative evidentials cannot be cleanly separated from social influences. Defining an information source, especially when referring to information reported by another person, se…
Why Don't All Contact Features Act Alike? Contact Features as Enregistered Features
It has been widely observed that speakers of Andean Spanish use features that are borrowed or calqued from Quechua (de Granda 2001; Pfänder 2009). In this article, I demonstrate that these features are not evenly distributed over contexts of language use; rather, most contact features occur significantly more frequently in conversations than in formal contexts such as meetings. However, some contact features behave differently: they are more like…
Time and reminiscence in contact: Dynamism and stasis in contact-induced change
The question of how and why change occurs is a persistent theme in research on language contact and sociolinguistics. In this article, I investigate the role of social context in producing change and maintenance in a contact variety of Andean Spanish. Two generations of speakers in a Quechua-Spanish contact zone in central Bolivia interpret stress shift on the first person imperfect past tense as a marker of the “reminiscent past.” An emergent bu…
Stereotypes versus experience: Indexing regional identity in Bolivian Valley Spanish
Stereotypes of highland and lowland identity categories in the Santa Cruz valleys of Bolivia are linked to phonetic variation in the Spanish discourse marker pues . Highlanders are believed to say [pwes] or [ps] while lowlanders are believed to say [pweh] or [pwe]. However, these beliefs erase two types of differences. First, they erase a distinction among highlanders. While highlanders from the Potosí‐Oruro area pronounce pues as they are believ…
Negotiating one position: Switzerland at the Global Forum on Migration and Development
The paper explores intra-governmental processes in migration policy-making, using the example of Switzerland and examining its preparations for chairing the Global Forum on Migration and Development 2011. Switzerland's “one joint position”, presented at the forum, required intensive negotiations and cooperation between different Swiss federal offices. The paper highlights how and why Switzerland achieved this joint position. It analyses the intra…
SLA Business Meeting Report
Run, Hide, Fight
Affective motivations for borrowing: Performing local identity through loan phonology
Aspirates and ejectives in Quechua-influenced Spanish
This article describes the use of aspirates and ejectives in a variety of Spanish with significant Quechua contact influence that is spoken in the Santa Cruz valleys of central Bolivia. Aspirates and ejectives occur primarily on Quechua loanwords, making these ‘intermediate phonological relationships’ ( Hall 2013 ) that are hard to categorize with respect to their status as phonetic vs. phonological features. Results from a small-scale perception…
Linguistic Anthropology at the Women's Marches
Between the Andes and the Amazon: Language and Social Meaning in Bolivia
The Invisible Walls of the Whisper Network
Perceiving isn't believing: Divergence in levels of sociolinguistic awareness
The influence of social knowledge on speech perception is a question of interest to a range of disciplines of language research. This study combines experimental and qualitative approaches to investigate whether the various methodological and disciplinary threads of research on this topic are truly investigating the same phenomenon to provide converging evidence in our understanding of social listening. This study investigates listeners' percepti…
The Sweet Land: Manufacturing "Tradition" in Small-Town Bolivia
Chronotopes have been described as "envelopes" of time and space that provide the setting for the circulation of particular types of characters or personae (Silverstein 2005, Agha 2007, Bakhtin 1981, 1986). In this article, I investigate how these narratives of time and space are used to produce meaning in conjunction with structured relationships between groups of social categories, particularly discourses of tradition and modernity. Specificall…
Decentering the colonial native speaker
In this article, we advocate a speakerhood studies approach as part of an effort to decenter the 'native speaker' in linguistics. Recent critiques of native-speakerhood problematize this construct's links to essentializing discourses born of ethnolinguistic nationalism and colonialism and advocate for more specific and less reductionist approaches to describing speakers in linguistics (e.g. Babel & Grammon 2021, Birkeland et al. 2024, Cheng et al…
Voice and Nation in Plurinational Bolivia: Aymara Radio and Song in an Age of Pachakuti
A Semiotic Approach to Social Meaning in Language
Linguistic awareness is a complex and multi-layered set of processes, existing in different forms of consciousness or knowledge. Social meaning resides in the ways that people perceive linguistic behavior as patterned and predictable, depending on their experience with, stereotypes about, and understanding of different groups. Ample evidence from experimental and ethnographic work indicates that sociolinguistic processes are actively engaged in t…
Introduction to the Thematic Issue
The topics of awareness and control have been investigated for decades in sociolinguistics, but they have been approached in different ways, both theoretically and methodologically, in different corners of the subdiscipline. This has resulted in confusing and sometimes contradictory terminology, as well as divergent theoretical perspectives on what, exactly, is meant by these terms. As our understanding of the relationships between various social…
Finding our Role: How and why to reframe essentialist approaches to language
Multilingual Education and Policy (12 works) · Linguistic Variation and Morphology (11 works) · Linguistics (11 works) · Sociology (10 works) · Computer Science (9 works) · Philosophy (8 works) · History (6 works) · Psychology (6 works) · Citation (4 works) · Communication (4 works)