Bambi Schieffelin

  Bambi Schieffelin is an anthropological linguist in the Department of Anthropology at New York University.  

During his undergraduate degree at Columbia University, Bambi had the opportunity to travel to Bolivia, the country where not only his curiosity about the different ways of life of certain cultures increases, but also, at that moment in his life, he develops a passion for the study of language in an everyday context. He would understand that language is the past, the present and the future. After this revealing experience, he would travel to Papua New Guinea and be in contact with the Kaluli community and their language. On his return to New York he decides to study his postgraduate degree in Anthropology; however, he discovers that academic discussions are not properly focused on language and its use. Fortunately, at that time many women such as Dr. Lois Bloom were working in the field of developmental psycholinguistics, which would motivate Bambi to keep up. Therefore, he decides to return to Papua New Guinea to explore the acquisition of the language of the Kaluli community as a first language. There, Bambi investigated how people use language, how they innovate in order to create social meaning. In turn, in 1974, he met Elinor Ochs at a conference in Mexico. Elinor presented a study on the repetition of the speech of infants. From that precise moment, Bambi and Elionor begin a history of camaraderie which would bring with it the realization of extensive works together. One of them was the well-known project of language socialization (Language socialization) that would be taken as a reference in the field of study of the acquisition of a first and second language. Working together was a motivation to go against the dominant paradigm in academia that was especially Eurocentric. Another project in which Bambi participated was in the study of Asian Creole focused on the perceptions that its speakers had about their own language. In other words, how the linguistic ideology positively or negatively affects people's lives. Researching on this topic, she meets two great women, Susan Gal and Kathryn A. Woolard, who lead a research group mainly made up of women, and in which Bambi decides to take part. Today, Bambi believes that women have taken on a strong leadership role and now it is they who publish, receive awards and are in charge of many academic institutions. These achievements motivate more women to continue to stand out in different fields of the academy, making visible their work that has been ignored and handled primarily by men throughout history.