Elinor Ochs

About

Elinor Ochs is a Distinguished Research Professor in the UCLA Department of Anthropology. Her primary research interests include the role of language and culture in lifespan human development and learning across social groups. Her work with children and their caregivers in Samoa, along with collaborative efforts with anthropologist B. Schieffelin, helped to develop the field of language socialization, which examines how sociocultural knowledge and cognitive skills are transmitted through language and social interactions. Currently, Professor Ochs directs the UCLA Center on Everyday Lives of Families, a Sloan Center on Working Families. This center conducts ethnographic research on how middle-class working families create home life through culturally and situationally organized social interactions, develops digital archives of family activities, and fosters scholarly apprenticeship and public dialogue on family and community relationships. Her ethnographic projects also include the Ethnography of Autism, which provides detailed accounts of the everyday lives of high-functioning children with autistic spectrum disorders, focusing on social interactions, inclusion, and social rule socialization. Her extensive publication record encompasses books, journal articles, and edited volumes on discourse structures, language acquisition, socialization, and autism, contributing significantly to the fields of linguistic anthropology and sociocultural studies.

Research topics

• Sociology
• Political Science
• Social Science
• Anthropology
• Humanities
• Art
• Political economy
• Psychology
• Ethnology
• Law

Selected publications

• Invited Forum: Bridging the “Language Gap”

  Journal of Linguistic Anthropology · 2015-05-01 · 224 citations

  articleCorresponding

  This Forum provides a range of voices on the Language Gap, as our aim is to shed light on the need for more critical dialogue to accompany the proliferation of political initiatives, policymaking, educational programs, and media coverage. We highlight some relevant background on the Language Gap and describe some of the research used to support the concept. The diverse slate of Forum contributions that we have assembled approach the Language Gap topic from a range of linguistic anthropological p…

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• Language Socialization: An Historical Overview

  2017-01-01 · 108 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
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• How Postindustrial Families Talk

  Annual Review of Anthropology · 2015-07-25 · 88 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  The nuclear family is both crucible and product of capitalism and modernity, carried forth and modified across generations through ordinary communicative and other social practices. Focusing on postindustrial middle-class families, this review analyzes key discursive practices that promote “the entrepreneurial child” who can display creative language and problem-solving skills requisite to enter the globalized knowledge class as adults. It also considers how the entrepreneurial thrust, including…

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• Acquiring conversational competence

  2016-11-18 · 73 citations

  book1st authorCorresponding

  First published in 1983, this book represents a substantial body of detailed research on children’s language and communication, and more generally on the nature of interactive spoken discourse. It looks at areas of competence often examined in young children’s speech have that have not been described for adults — leading to insights not only in the character of adult conversation but also the process of acquiring this competence. The authors set forward strategies for conversing at different sta…

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• Language Socialization: An Historical Overview

  2017-01-01 · 57 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
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Frequent coauthors

• Lisa Capps

  28 shared

• Bambi B. Schieffelin

  22 shared

• Alessandro Duranti

  University of California, Los Angeles

  11 shared

• Carolyn E. Taylor

  University of Utah

  10 shared

• Tamar Kremer‐Sadlik

  9 shared

• Sally Jacoby

  7 shared

• Ruth C. Smith

  6 shared

• Olga Solomon

  6 shared

Awards & honors

• UCLA Center on Everyday Lives of Families support from Sloan…
• UCLA Ethnography of Autism Project supported by the Spencer…

Similar researchers at University of California, Los Angeles

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• Philippe Bourgoish-55
• Thomas S Weisnerh-51