Bernard C Perley

Director of the Institute for Critical Indigenous Studies
University of British Columbia

Research Interests

  • Language revitalization
  • exploring metaphors, cognition, agency, and emergent subjectivity
  • “Zombie Linguistics” (Perley 2012a) critiques prevailing metaphors of language “death” and “extinction” as both partial and influential in promoting kinds of actions while precluding others.
  • Dr. Bernard C. Perley is an Indigenous anthropologist and scholar with expertise in linguistic anthropology, visual anthropology, and First Nations/Native American and Indigenous studies.
  • The connection between language and landscape for language revitalization has been a significant theme in his work, manifesting in his scholarly research and publications, advocacy, exhibits, and record of public engagement. His current research incorporates cognitive science, biological anthropology, narratology, and emergent languages in exploring the intersections of cognition, metaphors, narrative, and linguistic anthropology as an integrated approach to land-based experiential foundations for Indigenous language revitalization.