projects

Number Norms: English Style Guides and the Writing of Numerals, 1800-2000 (closed)

Faculty Profile

Professor
dz6179@wayne.edu

Department

Anthropology

Office

3019 F/AB

Biography

My name is Dr. Stephen Chrisomalis, and I am a linguistic anthropologist who specializes in the anthropology of mathematics and the interaction of language, cognition, and culture. My four-field anthropological training includes work in cultural, cognitive, archaeological and linguistic anthropology.

My new book, Reckonings: Numerals, Cognition, and History, published by MIT Press in 2020, investigates numbers and mathematics as both sociocultural and cognitive phenomena. Numbers are not just mathematical objects - they are ways of representing, understanding, and manipulating aspects of the world. My previous book, Numerical Notation: A Comparative History, published by Cambridge University Press in 2010, is a cross-cultural cognitive analysis of written numerals over the past 5000 years. I investigate the relationship between individual cognition and broader social, political, and economic processes. Understanding how number words and number symbols interact in specific contexts - how they are used rather than simply how they are structured - helps us to rethink assumptions such as the widely-held belief that we are now at the 'end of history' of numbers. I also publish and supervise work on cross-cultural methods and theories in anthropology, the anthropology of writing, literacy, and numeracy, and the history of anthropology. I am the author of the academic blog, Glossographia .

Since 2008, I have been undertaking linguistic and ethnographic research with the Math Corps at WSU, aiming to understand how Detroit middle school students acquire and use mathematical concepts. I am working under a National Science Foundation grant to support this research along with colleagues at four institutions. My other new research projects include a sociolinguistic investigation of changes in the English numeral system since 1800.

Selected publications

2023 Embodying measurement. Science Embodying measurement. Science, 380(6648), 894-895. science.org/stoken/author-tokens/ST-1223/full
2021 The scope of linguistic relativity in graphic and lexical numeration. Language & Communication 76(1): 1-12. doi.org/10.1016/j.langcom.2020.09.006
2020 Reckonings: Numerals, Cognition, and History. MIT Press
2018 The writing of numbers: recounting and recomposing numerical notations. Terrain: anthropologie et sciences humaines 70 (Oct 2018). http://journals.openedition.org/terrain/17506 ; DOI : 10.4000/terrain.17506
2018 Beller, Sieghard; Bender, Andrea; Chrisomalis, Stephen; Jordan, Fiona; Overmann, Karenleigh; Saxe, Geoffrey; Schlimm, Dirk. The cultural challenge in mathematical cognition. Journal of Numerical Cognition 4(2): 448–463. dx.doi.org/10.5964/jnc.v4i2.137
2017 Re-evaluating merit: Multiple overlapping factors explain the evolution of numerical notation. Writing Systems Research. dx.doi.org/10.1080/17586801.2016.1227688
2016 Umpteen reflections on indefinite hyperbolic numerals. American Speech 91(1): 1-31. dx.doi.org/10.1215/00031283-3509480
2015 Constraint, cognition, and written numeration. Pragmatics and Cognition 21(3): 552-572. dx.doi.org/10.1075/pc.21.3.08chr
2015 What’s so improper about fractions?: Prescriptivism and language socialization at Math Corps. Language in Society 44(1): 63-85. doi.org/10.1017/S0047404514000748
2013 Greatness in the Math Corps family: integrating ethnographic and corpus-based approaches to a conceptual metaphor. Language and Communication 33(3): 155-166
2013. Human Expeditions: Inspired by Bruce Trigger (ed., with Andre Costopoulos). University of Toronto Press
2010. Numerical Notation: A Comparative History. Cambridge University Press

Research Description

I am a linguistic anthropologist who specializes in the anthropology of mathematics and the interaction of language, cognition and culture. My four-field anthropological training includes work in cultural, cognitive, archaeological, and linguistic anthropology. My book, Numerical Notation: A Comparative History, published by Cambridge University Press in 2010, is a cross-cultural cognitive analysis of systems of written numerals as used over the past 5000 years. My work focuses on the relationship between individual cognition and broader social, political, and economic processes. Understanding how systems of number words and number symbols interact in specific contexts - how they are used rather than simply how they are structured - helps us to rethink assumptions such as the widely-held belief that we are now at the 'end of history' of number systems.

In addition to this work, I publish and supervise work on cross-cultural methods and theories in anthropology, the relationship between linguistic and archaeological anthropology, the anthropology of literacy and writing systems, and the history of anthropology. I am also the author of the academic blog, Glossographia.

Since 2008, I have been undertaking linguistic and ethnographic research with the Math Corps at WSU, aiming to understand the social and cognitive processes by which Detroit middle school students acquire and use mathematical concepts. I am also the director of the Stop: Toutes Directions project, which looks at language ideologies in the city of Montreal, Quebec, Canada through its stop signs, which are important objects of linguistic and political discourse. My new research projects include a sociolinguistic investigation of changes in the English numeral system since 1800, and a multidisciplinary project on quantification and uncertainty in prostate cancer diagnosis.

I am interested in working with students who are interested in the anthropology of science and mathematics, cognitive anthropology, linguistic anthropology, cross-cultural comparison, or writing and literacy.

Affiliated Departments

Anthropology

Stephen Chrisomalis