Marcia Farr

Marcia Farr studies how different cultural groups use oral language and literacy in their daily lives. Such apparently superficial sociolinguistic differences, however, construct distinct cultural identities and ideologies that can conflict with the identities and ideologies taught with academic literacy. This research, then, has important implications for modern schooling.

She has a Ph.D. in linguistics from Georgetown University and directed the funding of research on writing at the National Institute of Education from 1976-1982. She edited a research series, Written Language, first for Ablex and then Hampton Press, and she has served on numerous Advisory and Editorial Boards.

Her research has been funded by the National Science Foundation (Linguistics Program), the Spencer Foundation, the U.S. Bureau of the Census, and the Fulbright Foundation. She recently completed a long-term ethnographic study of language and culture among a transnational social network of Mexican families in Chicago and in their village-of-origin in Michoacán, Mexico: Rancheros in Chicagoacán: Language and Identity in a Transnational Community (University of Texas Press, 2006). Two recent edited books explore language and/or literacy practices in a variety of Chicago communities: Ethnolinguistic Chicago: Language and Literacy in the City’s Neighborhoods (Erlbaum, 2004) and Latino Language and Literacy in Ethnolinguistic Chicago (Erlbaum, 2005).

Two other books are forthcoming: 

M. Farr & L. Moore. Forthcoming. Linguistics for Literacy Education: A Sociocultural Approach. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

M. Farr, L. Seloni & J. Song (eds.). Forthcoming, 2009. Ethnolinguistic Diversity and Education: Language, Literacy, and Culture. London: Routledge.

Current research explores parental narratives and other oral genres within transnational Mexican families that socialize children both implicitly and explicitly. An analysis, with Maria Alejandra Leon Garcia, of such narratives that focus on ethnicity and food is in progress and will be presented at the American Anthropological Association’s annual meeting in December, 2009.