"Misliteracy" and language as decoration

[James Crippen]

There is an "Inland Tlingit Celebration" from July 22-28 in Teslin,
Yukon. Juneau, Alaska's Capital City Weekly has a short article on
this event.

http://www.capitalcityweekly.com/stories/070809/new_461132038.shtml

The "Celebration" that occurs biennially in Southeast Alaska is a
nontraditional festival of dancing and cultural activities involving
the Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian. It's sponsored largely by Sealaska
Inc., which is the ANCSA Native Corporation that represents the region
and the three cultures. This Inland Tlingit event seems to be in
response, and they apparently are planning to hold it in years
opposite the Alaskan "Celebration". There is also a website:
http://teslintlingitheritage.com/celebration/

The reason I brought this to the list is because of an interesting
linguistic phenomenon, which is signified by the use of what I call
"ad-hoc English" spelling for the name of the event, "Hà Kus Teyea".
The form would be in IPA /haː qʰʊstʰiːjíˑ/ (the final /í/ has variable
length), in the Canadian orthography "Hà Khustìyî" or "Hà Khustìyí",
in the Revised Popular orthography "Haa Ḵusteeyí", and in the E-mail
orthography, which is a compromise between the two, "Haa Khusteeyí".
The website says "The two ways of spelling are Inland Tlingit followed
by coastal Tlingit in Alaska. In Teslin, we use the Inland Tlingit
spelling", and gives an approximation of the Revised Popular form
(lacking the macron below signifying uvular /qʰ/) along with the
idiosyncratic one which is apparently supposed to be the "Inland
Tlingit spelling" where the Canadian orthography would be expected.

This particular instance is emblematic of the literacy situation in
the entire Tlingit community. Tlingit suffers from having four
different orthographies in publication with at the same time very few
people actually fluent in any one particular orthography. The language
is often used for decorative purposes, both by fluent speakers and
English monolinguals, though mostly the latter. Decorative use
typically shows misunderstanding of meanings and disregard for
accuracy, despite appearance in high-profile publications. Dick
Dauenhauer has discussed this issue of using the written language
largely for decoration with little care given to accuracy, and he
calls it "phatic usage" after Ron Scollon. This "misliteracy", if I
may coin a term, is of course something that concerns me greatly, so
I'm wondering whether this happens in Athabaskan communities, and what
other linguists have thought about it.

Cheers,
James

PS: The words /haː qʰʊstʰiːjíˑ/ are morphologically /haː
qʰʊ-s-tʰiː-ɰíˑ/ glossed as |1PL.POSS AREAL-CL-be-POSS| and translate
roughly as "our culture" or "our way of life". The phrase is heavily
loaded with political and social significance.