Lynnette Arnold

Lynnette Arnold is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Her work bridges linguistic anthropology (focusing on power, inequality, media, and multimodality) and medical anthropology (centered on care, embodiment, and habitual practices). She investigates migration and transnationalism, family and kinship dynamics, and pedagogy involving community engagement and social justice, primarily in El Salvador and the United States.

• Ph.D., Department of Linguistics, University of California, Santa Barbara (2016)
• M.A., Department of Linguistics, University of California, Santa Barbara (2011)
• B.A., Women’s Studies with Honors, Mills College (2009)

Her research explores how language shapes care practices and power structures in transnational contexts, particularly through Salvadoran family networks and medical interactions. She co-directs the Demystifying Language Project, which brings language politics scholarship into public high schools, and investigates the enregisterment of care frameworks and gendered migration discourses.

Recent publications span topics such as communicative care in transnational families, data management in ethnographic research, and the intersection of language, gender, and neoliberal personhood. Her work increasingly incorporates case studies in medical anthropology and biomedical discourse analysis, indicating a growing interest in health-related linguistic practices.

Arnold’s teaching prioritizes community-engaged learning and language social justice, particularly challenging the “word gap” narrative. She has examined participation ideologies in community organizations and material-affective semiosis in language socialization, with fieldwork conducted in diverse settings including Costa Rica and Vietnam.