For those of you that have no idea what im doing after leaving NY to head to the midwest for grad school, i present you with my thesis question(s)/statement. for those that care its from a linguistic anthropology standpoint, basically orienting myself within the interaction between language and culture.

What functions do poetry slams serve in indexing relations to marginalized groups while building a sense of community? In what ways do poets manipulate and utilize different paralinguistic features and performative tools to engage an audience? How do these events serve to educate the public, specifically the younger generation about social issues, interpersonal relations, identity and the nature of poetry itself? These questions will form the basis for gaining an understanding of the cultural phenomenon that is poetry slam, or more descriptively, competitive performance poetry.