Language, Identity and Justice: The Anthropolitical Worlds of Ana Celia Zentella

With linguistic and cultural diversity increasingly under attack, Ana Celia Zentella’s work becomes more and more poignant

Now more than ever, questions of the interplay and interdependency between academic work and activism are crucial. This book traces these questions through the work of one thinker, Ana Celia Zentella, who has made important contributions to the development of both linguistics and anthropology over the course of her career. The book presents key pieces of her anthropolitical work, the lived experience of language use, and activism. It traces how her thinking has evolved and how her activism has informed her academic work, and vice versa. The book will be both a valuable introduction to her work for new students, and an accessible selection of reading for scholars wishing to trace the development of key current debates in linguistics and anthropology. 

Ana Celia Zentella is Professor Emerita, UC San Diego, USA. A central figure in what she has named "anthropolitical linguistics,” she has studied varieties of Spanish and English, Spanglish, language socialization in U.S. Latin@ families, and linguistic intolerance facilitated by English-only laws and anti- bilingual education legislation.

Adam Schwartz is an Associate Professor at Oregon State University, USA, and is a critical applied linguist.

Bonnie Urciuoli is Emerita Professor of Anthropology at Hamilton College, USA. Her areas of interest are linguistic, semiotic, and cultural anthropology.

Cristian Aquino-Sterling is Associate Professor of Bi-/multilingual Education in the College of Education at Texas Tech University, USA. He is co-founder and director of the International Bilingual Education Research Group (www.icberg.org).