ANT 215 - Nature of Language: Journals & Databases

Academic journals are published one or multiple times per year. Issues are grouped into volumes. (Volume 3 of a journal might contain 1-4 issues.) Articles in academic journals are peer-reviewed, meaning that they have been read by experts in the field who advised the author on how to make the article stronger, more accurate, or more helpful to readers.

Journal issues might have special themes, meaning all the articles in one issue deal with a central topic.

Many databases will contain articles and journals relevant to this course.

Below are a few databases we recommend for researching language & culture. Try searching with the same term across different databases to get a sense of the kinds of journals and articles that are contained in each one. 

Here are some relevant journals to get you started. To access these links, be sure you are logged into MyPima.

• American Anthropologist: American Anthropologist is the flagship journal of the American Anthropological Association, reaching well over 12,000 readers with each issue. The journal advances the Association mission through publishing articles that add to, integrate, synthesize, and interpret anthropological knowledge; commentaries and essays on issues of importance to the discipline; and reviews of books, films, sound recordings and exhibits.
• American Ethnologist: American Ethnologist is a quarterly journal concerned with ethnology in the broadest sense of the term. Articles published in the American Ethnologist elucidate the connections between ethnographic specificity and theoretical originality, and convey the ongoing relevance of the ethnographic imagination to the contemporary world.
• American Speech: American Speech has been one of the foremost publications in its field since its founding in 1925. The journal is concerned principally with the English language in the Western Hemisphere, although articles dealing with English in other parts of the world, the influence of other languages by or on English, and linguistic theory are also published. 
• Anthropological Linguistics: Anthropological Linguistics, a quarterly journal founded in 1959, provides a forum for the full range of scholarly study of the languages and cultures of the peoples of the world, especially the native peoples of the Americas.
• Language in Society: Language in Society is an international journal of sociolinguistics concerned with language and discourse as aspects of social life. The journal publishes empirical articles of general theoretical, comparative or methodological interest to students and scholars in sociolinguistics, linguistic anthropology, and related fields.
• Journal of Sociolinguistics: Journal of Sociolinguistics promotes sociolinguistics as a thoroughly linguistic and thoroughly social-scientific endeavour. The journal is concerned with language in all its dimensions, macro and micro, as formal features or abstract discourses, as situated talk or written text.

Confused about what goes in a citation for an academic article? Here's what to look for:

• Author: Get the full names of the authors. Some citation styles require full names, some don't - best to be prepared.
• Title: Make sure to get the whole title. Many article titles are separated by a semi-colon (:) and you need both parts.
• Journal Name: Did the article come from American Speech? Or Language in Society? Make a note of the journal's full title.
• Volume
• Issue: Sometimes the issue number will include a season, like "Fall."
• Year: Find the year the article was published by the journal. This information is usually near the volume / issue information.
• Page Numbers: Page numbers specify where in the journal your article is located. Make a note!
• URL: If the journal is an eJournal (meaning it is only published online), get the URL for the article.
• DOI: Not terribly important, but impressive! The DOI is a unique number associated with a journal article. If it's available, you can include it in the citation (and impress your friends).