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This text uses an analysis of gossip as political action to develop an understanding of disparate themes, including conflict, power, agency, morality, emotion and gender. It brings together two methodological traditions - microscopic analysis of unelicited interaction and macroscopic interpretation of social practice

Learning to sign -- Alphabet and numbers -- Home, family, and pets -- School -- Days of the week -- Colors -- Feelings -- Favorite foods -- Sports and hobbies -- Musical instruments -- Transportation and travel -- Animals -- Clothing -- Senses -- Holidays and religions -- Doctor's office and health -- Nature, weather, and seasons -- Practical words and question words -- Linking words -- Making sentences

Literacy continues to be a central issue in anthropology, but methods of perceiving and examining it have changed in recent years. In this 1995 study Niko Besnier analyses the transformation of Nukulaelae from a non-literate into a literate society using a contemporary perspective which emphasizes literacy as a social practice embedded in a socio-cultural context. He shows how a small and isolated Polynesian community, with no access to print technology, can become deeply steeped in literacy in little more than a century, and how literacy can take on radically divergent forms depending on the social and cultural needs and characteristics of the society in which it develops. His case study, which has implications for understanding literacy in other societies, illuminates the relationship between norm and practice, between structure and agency, and between group and individual