Kathryn Woolard facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Kathryn Woolard Kathryn Woolard
Born	Kathryn Ann Woolard 1950 Wellsville, New York, U.S.
Education	B.A. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 1974 in English M.A. University of California, Berkeley, 1978 in Anthropology Ph.D. University of California, Berkeley, 1983 in Anthropology
Occupation	Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, San Diego

Kathryn Ann Woolard (born in Wellsville, New York, in 1950) is a professor of Anthropology. She teaches at the University of California, San Diego.

Professor Woolard is an expert in linguistic anthropology. This field studies how language and culture are connected. She earned her Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of California at Berkeley. From 2009 to 2011, she was the president of the Society for Linguistic Anthropology. This group is part of the American Anthropological Association.

Understanding Language and Society

What Professor Woolard Studies

Professor Woolard is very interested in how language works in society. She studies linguistic anthropology, which looks at language and culture together. Her research also covers how language relates to different groups of people. She explores bilingualism, which is when people speak two languages.

She also studies language ideology. This means the ideas people have about language. For example, why do some people think one way of speaking is "better" than another? She also looks at political talks in Catalonia, Spain, and the United States.

How Language Shapes Our World

Professor Woolard studies how people use language in their daily lives. She sees language as more than just words. It is a tool for talking, for doing things in society, and for understanding the world around us. Her work helps us see how our ideas about language show our views on society.

Other experts who study language in similar ways include Pierre Bourdieu and Mikhail Bakhtin. They also believe that our thoughts about language reflect our social beliefs.

Language in Catalonia

Professor Woolard has done a lot of research in Catalonia, Spain. She uses ethnography, which means she studies people and cultures by living among them. She looks at how people in Catalonia think about language. She focuses on ideas like authority (who decides what is correct language) and authenticity (what feels like the "real" language).

After thirty years of political autonomy (self-rule) in Catalonia, the status of the Catalan language and the Castilian language has changed. Professor Woolard studies these changes. She also looks at how the media talks about Catalonia. She notes that news often focuses on Catalonia's unique language and culture. Sometimes, this makes Catalonia seem old-fashioned.

Her research shows that the media often misses the true story of Catalan identity. It also doesn't fully explain the movement for more self-rule. She writes about this in her book, Singular and Plural: Ideologies of Linguistic Authority in 21st Century Catalonia. This book came out in 2016.

Singular and Plural Book

Main Ideas of the Book

In her book, Singular and Plural: Ideologies of Linguistic Authority in Twenty-First Century Catalonia, Professor Woolard explores what gives language its power. She then applies these ideas to the political situation in Catalonia. She uses many real-life examples to show how language use, identity, and beliefs have changed there.

As Catalonia gained more self-rule within Spain, ideas about Catalan identity and language have shifted. Professor Woolard encourages other language experts to notice how ideas about language can become very divided. She looks at how nationalism (strong pride in one's nation) and cosmopolitanism (being open to many cultures) affect language politics.

How Language Gets Authority

Professor Woolard offers a way to understand how language gets its authority. She then uses this method to study language politics in Catalonia. She also suggests how this method could be used to study language beliefs in other places.

She investigates how language and politics are connected. She builds on her past research about how language becomes powerful in public. She shows that ideas of authenticity (being true to oneself) and anonymity (being unknown) are based on natural ways of speaking. She argues that Catalan speakers are now using new ways of speaking. These new ways are different from older, more "natural" ideas about language.

Professor Woolard also examines how the United States media covers Catalonia. She finds that the media often gives an "unbalanced" picture. She explains that the media's coverage of language and politics is limited. She calls this limit "mainstream and unionist Spanish media." Her book won the Society for Linguistic Anthropology Edward Sapir Book Prize in 2017.

Selected Publications

Professor Woolard has written many important books and articles. Here are some of them:

• 1989. Double Talk: Bilingualism and the Politics of Ethnicity in Catalonia.
• 1992. Identitat i contacte de llengües a Barcelona. (This means "Identity and Language Contact in Barcelona" in Catalan).
• 1998. Language Ideologies: Practice and Theory (edited with Bambi Schieffelin and Paul V. Kroskrity).
• 2001. Languages and Publics: The Making of Authority (with Susan Gal).
• 2016. Singular and Plural: Ideologies of Linguistic Authority in 21st Century Catalonia.

See also

In Spanish: Kathryn Woolard para niños