I imagine wherever patriarchalism has been forceful and domineering,<br>we have a raw-nervy sensitivity to gender issues that won't be felt within a culture<br>that has not had the gender dominance problems "western culture" has had.<br>
It might even be that some understandings of "fairness" are going to vary from culture to culture.<br>Some might be content where we would be uncomfortable...or even outraged.<br><br>its always enlightening to discover cultures that have much less gender inequalities. <br>
1000 year sustainable cultures really need a lot more serious investigation!!<br><br>-Richard<br><br><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Tue, May 8, 2012 at 3:51 PM, Mark Sicoli <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:msicoli@alaska.edu" target="_blank">msicoli@alaska.edu</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">Tammy, It's actually this article by Barbra Meek that I was thinking of:
<br>
<br>
<p class="MsoNormal">Barbra Meek "Respecting the
language of elders: Ideological Shift and Linguistic Discontinuity in a
Northern Athapascan Community" Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 2007, 17(1) 23-43<br></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br>
</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="color:rgb(153,102,51)">"According to the Kaska
Tribal Council (1997), there are approximately nine dialects. Defining a
family’s dialect is complicated. In most cases, the family dialect is
the one spoken by the mother, following a matrilineal pattern. A woman’s
husband often speaks his wife’s own dialect along with his own mother’s
family dialect (or language), and the children are exposed to both
parents’ linguistic varieties." p26</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br>
</p>
She wasn't making the point that men don't speak correctly but was
rather reporting on criticisms community members were making on the speech
features students were learning in the school. For example, a student
learns to speak like a teacher who has different dialect features than
his/her own mother/grandmother:<br>
<br>
<span style="color:rgb(153,102,51)">"There were instances of correction as well, mostly directed at a
person’s word choice or pronunciation. Given that word choice and
pronunciation were the most salient indices of family dialects, an act
of correction signaled that a person hadn’t spoken in an appropriate
ancestral variety. This sociolinguistic correspondence also emerged in
discussions about the public schools’ Kaska language curriculum, where
children were not always being taught their own family’s dialect.
Unsurprisingly, students were taught the dialect of their teacher, and
this caused some parents to complain to the administration. Correction
also appeared when a person spoke a non-familial variety." p27</span><br><br>
I think this is interestingly relevant to your original question, though the thread has turned in other directions that I think are less productive. Surely it varies from community to community and situation to situation who is involved with/motivated to work for language maintenance and revitalization.<br>
<br>Best wishes, <br>Mark<div class="HOEnZb"><div class="h5"><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Tue, May 8, 2012 at 11:24 AM, Mark Sicoli <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:msicoli@alaska.edu" target="_blank">msicoli@alaska.edu</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
Hi Tammy, <br><br>Take a look at Barbra Meek's book <i>We are our language: An ethnography of language revitalization in a Northern Athabaskan community. </i>Working with Kaska Athabaskans in the Yukon, she describes (in part) dialect features that are matrilineal with "correct" speech for one (male of female) being their mother's and grandmother's way of speaking.<br>
<br>All the best, <br>Mark<span><font color="#888888"><br><br>-- <br>Dr. Mark Sicoli<br>Assistant Professor<br>University of Alaska, Fairbanks<br><br>Department of Anthropology<br>310 Eielson Building<br>P.O. Box 757720<br>
Fairbanks, AK 99775-7720<br>
U.S.A.<br>Phone: <a href="tel:%28907%29%20474-6884" value="+19074746884" target="_blank">(907) 474-6884</a><br>Fax: <a href="tel:%28907%29%20474-7453" value="+19074747453" target="_blank">(907) 474-7453</a></font></span><div>
<div><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Tue, May 8, 2012 at 11:13 AM, Tammy DeCoteau <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:tdc.aaia@verizon.net" target="_blank">tdc.aaia@verizon.net</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">Does anyone know of any writing that talks about women being the keepers of the language and it being the mothers and grandmothers that pass language down? There is a mother's day event at which they are asking for our program to have a booth and I would like to create a handout and hope to quote something.<span><font color="#888888"><br>
<br>Tammy DeCoteau<br>AAIA Native Language Program
</font></span></blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><br><br><br>
</div></div></blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><br>-- <br>Dr. Mark Sicoli<br>Assistant Professor<br>University of Alaska, Fairbanks<br><br>Department of Anthropology<br>310 Eielson Building<br>P.O. Box 757720<br>Fairbanks, AK 99775-7720<br>
U.S.A.<br>Phone: (907) 474-6884<br>Fax: (907) 474-7453<br><br>
</div></div></blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><br>-- <br><div><div><span style="font-size:x-small"><i><span style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px;font-style:normal;line-height:19px;border-collapse:collapse"><p style="margin-top:0px;margin-right:0px;margin-bottom:0px;margin-left:0px;padding-top:10px;padding-right:10px;padding-bottom:0px;padding-left:10px;font-style:italic">
</p><div><div><div>
<p style="margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-autospace:none"><span style="font-family:Arial"><span style="font-size:small"><i>"Think
not forever of yourselves... nor of your own generation. </i></span></span></p><p style="margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-autospace:none"><span style="font-family:Arial"><span style="font-size:small"><i>Think of
continuing generations of our families, </i></span></span></p><p style="margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-autospace:none"><span style="font-family:Arial"><span style="font-size:small"><i>think of our grandchildren and of those
yet unborn, </i></span></span></p><p style="margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-autospace:none"><b><span style="font-family:Arial"><span style="font-size:small"><i><span style="font-weight:normal">whose faces are coming from beneath the ground." </span></i><span style="font-weight:normal"> The Peacemaker</span></span><span style="color:white"><span style="font-size:small"><span style="font-weight:normal">,</span> </span></span></span></b></p>
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