Tayap is a small, previously undocumented Papuan language, spoken in a single village called Gapun, in the lower Sepik River region of Papua New Guinea. The language is an isolate, unrelated to any other in the area. Furthermore, Tayap is dying. Fewer than fifty speakers actively command it today. Based on linguistic anthropological work conducted over the course of thirty years, this book describes the grammar of the language, detailing its phonology, morphology and syntax. It devotes particular attention to verbs, which are the most elaborated area of the grammar, and which are complex, fusional and massively suppletive.The book also provides a full Tayap-English-Tok Pisin dictionary. A particularly innovative contribution is the detailed discussions of how Tayap''s grammar is dissolving in the language of young speakers. The book exemplifies how the complex structures in fluent speakers' Tayap are reduced or reanalyzed by younger speakers. This grammar and dictionary should therefore be a valuable resource for anyone interested in the mechanics of how languages disappear. The fact that it is the sole documentation of this unique Papuan language should also make it of interest to areal specialists and language typologists.

How does the sexual identity that anthropologists have in their "home" society affect the kind of sexuality they are allowed to express in other cultures? "Taboo" looks at the ethnographer and sexuality in anthropological fieldwork and considers the many roles that sexuality plays in the anthropological production of knowledge and texts.
"Taboo" looks at how the anthropologist's sexuality is perceived by the people with whom he or she does research. It looks at the frequency of sexual violence and intimidation in the field and why its existence is virtually unmentioned in anthropology. Other issues, including same-sex relationships, seduction and eroticism in the field, and traditional sex roles, are confronted. This lively book explores the influence this tabooed topic has had on the entire practice and production of anthropology. Both the seasoned anthropologist and those about to undertake fieldwork will find that "Taboo" contains engrossing articles on the types of personal and professional experiences which make up sexual life in the field.

Taboo looks at the ethnographer and sexuality in anthropological fieldwork and considers the many roles that sexuality plays in the anthropological production of knowledge and texts. How does the sexual identity that anthropologists have in their "home" society affect the kind of sexuality they are allowed to express in other cultures? How is the anthropologists' sexuality perceived by the people with whom he or she does research? How common is sexual violence and intimidation in the field and why is its existence virtually unmentioned in anthropology? These are but a few of the questions to be confronted, exploring from differing perspectives the depth of the influence this tabooed topic has on the entire practice and production of anthropology.
A long-overdue text for all students and lecturers of anthropology, many post-fieldwork readers will find a resonance of issues they have previously faced (or tried to avoid) and those who are still to undertake fieldwork will find articles that refer to other kinds of personal and professional experience as well as providing invaluable preparations for coping in the field.

This accessible book looks at how we talk about sex and why we talk about it the way we do. Drawing on examples that range from personal ads to phone sex, sado-masochistic scenes to sexual assault trials, this work provides a clear introduction to the relationship between language and sexuality. Using a broad definition of "sexuality", it encompasses not only issues surrounding sexual orientation and identity, but also questions about the discursive construction of sexuality and the verbal expression of erotic desire.

Tayap is a small, previously undocumented Papuan language, spoken in a single village called Gapun, in the lower Sepik River region of Papua New Guinea. The language is an isolate, unrelated to any other in the area. Furthermore, Tayap is dying. Fewer than fifty speakers actively command it today. Based on linguistic anthropological work conducted over the course of thirty years, this book describes the grammar of the language, detailing its phonology, morphology and syntax. It devotes particular attention to verbs, which are the most elaborated area of the grammar, and which are complex, fusional and massively suppletive.The book also provides a full Tayap-English-Tok Pisin dictionary. A particularly innovative contribution is the detailed discussions of how Tayap''s grammar is dissolving in the language of young speakers. The book exemplifies how the complex structures in fluent speakers' Tayap are reduced or reanalyzed by younger speakers. This grammar and dictionary should therefore be a valuable resource for anyone interested in the mechanics of how languages disappear. The fact that it is the sole documentation of this unique Papuan language should also make it of interest to areal specialists and language typologists.

The Language and Sexuality Reader is the first collection to bring together historical and contemporary writings from a range of academic disciplines to explore the connections between sex as a domain of human experience and the language we use to speak and write about it. The topics addressed by contributors include gay slang and gay speech styles; the language of drag performances, personal ads, Nepali love letters and Japanese schoolgirl fiction; what counts as 'having sex' and whether 'marriage' has to be heterosexual by definition; the communication of sexual desire, consent and refusal; and how heterosexuals reveal themselves in ordinary conversation.
Bringing together material from fields including anthropology, communication studies, linguistics, medicine and psychology, the text begins by guiding students through early work in the field, which focused on homosexual language-use and its difference from the heterosexual mainstream. The second part of the reader widens the focus: moving away from the generic labels 'homosexual' and 'heterosexual', it explores the diversity of linguistic and sexual practices as documented and debated among scholars from the mid-1990s to the present.
Organised in thematic sections, the Reader addresses
- The origins and development of language and sexuality research from the 1940s to the 1980s
- The use people make of language to perform sexuality and sexual identity
- How language reflects, reinforces or challenges norms defining what is 'natural' and desirable in the sphere of sex
- The verbal communication of sexual desire

The Language and Sexuality Reader is the first collection to bring together historical and contemporary writings from a range of academic disciplines to explore the connections between sex as a domain of human experience and the language we use to speak and write about it. The topics addressed by contributors include gay slang and gay speech styles; the language of drag performances, personal ads, Nepali love letters and Japanese schoolgirl fiction; what counts as 'having sex' and whether 'marriage' has to be heterosexual by definition; the communication of sexual desire, consent and refusal; and how heterosexuals reveal themselves in ordinary conversation.
Bringing together material from fields including anthropology, communication studies, linguistics, medicine and psychology, the text begins by guiding students through early work in the field, which focused on homosexual language-use and its difference from the heterosexual mainstream. The second part of the reader widens the focus: moving away from the generic labels 'homosexual' and 'heterosexual', it explores the diversity of linguistic and sexual practices as documented and debated among scholars from the mid-1990s to the present.
Organised in thematic sections, the Reader addresses
- The origins and development of language and sexuality research from the 1940s to the 1980s
- The use people make of language to perform sexuality and sexual identity
- How language reflects, reinforces or challenges norms defining what is 'natural' and desirable in the sphere of sex
- The verbal communication of sexual desire

"Perhaps the finest and most profound account of ethnographic fieldwork and discovery that has ever entered the anthropological literature." --The Wall Street Journal "If you want to experience a profoundly different culture without the exhausting travel (to say nothing of the cost), this is an excellent choice." --The Washington Post One of Time's 32 Books You Need to Read This Summer * One of National Geographic's Best Travel Books of Summer As a young anthropologist, Don Kulick went to the tiny village of Gapun in New Guinea to document the death of the native language, Tayap. He arrived knowing that you can't study a language without understanding the daily lives of the people who speak it: how they talk to their children, how they argue, how they gossip, how they joke. Over the course of thirty years, as he returned again and again to document the vanishing language, he found himself inexorably drawn into the lives and world of the Gapuners, and implicated in their destiny. In A Death in the Rainforest, Kulick takes us inside the village as he came to know it, revealing what it is like to live in a difficult-to-get-to village of two hundred people, carved out like a cleft in the middle of a tropical rainforest. And in doing so, he also gives us a brilliant interrogation of what it means to study a culture, an illuminating look at the impact of Western culture on the farthest reaches of the globe--and, ultimately, the story of why this anthropologist realized that he had to give up his study of this language and this village.

Few people these days would oppose making the public realm of space, social services and jobs accessible to women and men with disabilities. But what about access to the private realm of desire and sexuality? How can one also facilitate access to that, in ways that respect the integrity of disabled adults, and also of those people who work with and care for them? Loneliness and Its Opposite documents how two countries generally imagined to be progressive engage with these questions in very different ways. Denmark and Sweden are both liberal welfare states, but they diverge dramatically when it comes to sexuality and disability. In Denmark, the erotic lives of people with disabilities are acknowledged and facilitated. In Sweden, they are denied and blocked. Why do these differences exist, and how do both facilitation and hindrance play out in practice? Loneliness and Its Opposite charts complex boundaries between private and public, love and sex, work and intimacy, and affection and abuse. It shows how providing disabled adults with access to sexual lives is not just crucial for a life with dignity. It is an issue of fundamental social justice with far reaching consequences for everyone.

Few people these days would oppose making the public realm of space, social services and jobs accessible to women and men with disabilities. But what about access to the private realm of desire and sexuality? How can one also facilitate access to that, in ways that respect the integrity of disabled adults, and also of those people who work with and care for them? Loneliness and Its Opposite documents how two countries generally imagined to be progressive engage with these questions in very different ways. Denmark and Sweden are both liberal welfare states, but they diverge dramatically when it comes to sexuality and disability. In Denmark, the erotic lives of people with disabilities are acknowledged and facilitated. In Sweden, they are denied and blocked. Why do these differences exist, and how do both facilitation and hindrance play out in practice? Loneliness and Its Opposite charts complex boundaries between private and public, love and sex, work and intimacy, and affection and abuse. It shows how providing disabled adults with access to sexual lives is not just crucial for a life with dignity. It is an issue of fundamental social justice with far reaching consequences for everyone.

In this dramatic and compelling narrative, anthropologist Don Kulick follows the lives of a group of transgendered prostitutes (called "travestis" in Portuguese) in the Brazilian city Salvador. "Travestis" are males who, often beginning at ages as young as ten, adopt female names, clothing styles, hairstyles, and linguistic pronouns. More dramatically, they ingest massive doses of female hormones and inject up to twenty liters of industrial silicone into their bodies to create breasts, wide hips, and large thighs and buttocks. Despite such irreversible physiological changes, virtually no "travesti" identifies herself as a woman. Moreover, "travestis" regard any male who does so as mentally disturbed.
Kulick analyzes the various ways "travestis" modify their bodies, explores the motivations that lead them to choose this particular gendered identity, and examines the complex relationships that they maintain with one another, their boyfriends, and their families. Kulick also looks at how "travestis" earn their living through prostitution and discusses the reasons prostitution, for most "travestis, " is a positive and affirmative experience.
Arguing that transgenderism never occurs in a "natural" or arbitrary form, Kulick shows how it is created in specific social contexts and assumes specific social forms. Furthermore, Kulick suggests that "travestis"--far from deviating from normative gendered expectations--may in fact distill and perfect the messages that give meaning to gender throughout Brazilian society and possibly throughout much of Latin America.
Through Kulick's engaging voice and sharp analysis, this elegantly rendered account is not only a landmark study in its discipline but also a fascinating read for anyone interested in sexuality and gender.

This accessible book looks at how we talk about sex and why we talk about it the way we do. Drawing on examples that range from personal ads to phone sex, sado-masochistic scenes to sexual assault trials, this work provides a clear introduction to the relationship between language and sexuality. Using a broad definition of "sexuality", it encompasses not only issues surrounding sexual orientation and identity, but also questions about the discursive construction of sexuality and the verbal expression of erotic desire.

Language Shift and Cultural Reproduction, first published in 1992, is a fascinating anthropological study of language and cultural change among the villagers of Gapun, in the Sepik region of Papua New Guinea. Despite their strong attachment to their own language as a source of identity and as a tie to their lands, people are abandoning their vernacular in favour of Tok Pisin, the most widely spoken language in Papua New Guinea. By examining village language socialization practices and drawing on Marshall Sahlins's ideas about structure and event, Don Kulick reveals how daily interactions, attitudes towards language, children, change, and personhood, all contribute to a shift in language and culture that is beyond the villagers' understanding and control. This is the first detailed documention of the process of language shift. It places linguistic change within an interpretive framework, and treats language as a symbolic system that affects, and is affected by, the thoughts and actions of everyday life.