Joel C. Kuipers

Professor of Anthropology and International Affairs
Director, Discourse Laboratory, The George Washington University
E-mail: kuipers@gwu.edu
Office: 2112 G St., 201 / (202) 994-6545
Lab: 1922 F St. 210-211/ (202) 994-3784

Dr. Kuipers is a linguistic anthropologist interested in the role of language in the description and interpretation of social life, particularly how authoritative discourse shapes institutionally defined activities in clinics, courtrooms, classrooms and religious settings.

Research

Beginning in 1978, Dr. Kuipers began nearly three years of ethnographic and linguistic research into a distinctive style of poetic ritual speech among the Weyewa people of the eastern Indonesian island of Sumba. Through intensive recording, transcription and analysis of ritual performances, he examined how the mastery and use of a parallelistic style of ceremonial discourse established the cultural authority of individuals, lineages and sacred spaces. Beginning in 1990's, he analyzed the role of language ideologies in the rapid decline of ritual speech on Sumba, and the rise of the Indonesian national language as the language political and religious authority. Since 2000, he has carried out extensive video ethnographic analyses of the use of authoritative language in psychiatric clinics, Indonesian courtrooms, and U.S. science classrooms.

Current Research Projects

1. Video ethnographic analysis of reasoning from evidence in culturally diverse middle school science classrooms in suburban Washington, DC.
   
2. Language ideologies of Indonesian Islamic piety.

Selected Publications

To see Dr. Kuipers' complete CV, click here.

Books

2007	Kuipers, J, and R. McDermott, eds. Fine Description: The Ethnographic and Linguistic Essays of Harold C. Conklin. Yale Southeast Asia Studies Series, Monograph 56. New Haven: Yale University Press.
1998	Kuipers, J.C. Language, Identity and Marginality in Indonesia: The Changing Nature of Ritual Speech on the Island of Sumba. Studies in the Social and Cultural Foundations of Language Series, No. 18. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
1990	Kuipers, J.c. Power in Performance: The Creation of Textual Authority in Weyewa Ritual Speech. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Articles and Book Chapters

2008	Kuipers, J.C., and L. Massoud. "Objectification and the inscription of knowledge in science classrooms," Linguistics and Education 19(3): 211-224.
2008	Kuipers, J.C. "The local and the national in a diverse county: Objectification as a social and policy process," Linguistics and Education 19(3): 206-210.
2008	Kuipers, J.C. "Named speech registers and the inscription of locality in the Dutch East Indies," Language and Communication 28(3): 360-381.
2007	Kuipers, J.C. "Comments on ritual unintelligibility," Text and Talk 27: 4, 559-566.
2006	Kuipers, J.C., and G. Viechnicki. ''It's all human error!': When a school science experiment fails," Linguistics and Education 17: 107-130.

Courses Taught

Anth 004: Language in Culture and Society
Anth 161: Language, Culture, and Cognition
Anth 162: Ethnographic Analysis of Speech
Anth 174: Cultures of Southeast Asia
Anth 269: Cultural Perspectives on Language and Learning
Anth 801: Sex, Money and Magic in Southeast Asia
Anth 801: Language Endangerment and Diversity

Education

Ph.D. 1982, Yale University
M.Phil. 1978, Yale University
B.A. 1976, Calvin College