citation/quotation conventions for list?

[Jan Ullrich]

Dear Saul,

 

I was intrigued by your paper and would like to make a few comments. I am not an anthropologist, so take some of my remark about culture as those of a lay person. But I have been involved with language documentation and revitalization efforts for a while and I would like to make a few comments based on my experience.

 

>>> In short, while language revitalization seeks to expand opportunities for the continued use of heritage languages by making them seem more applicable to current social conditions, there is a danger that the codes may become disassociated from the traditional cultures that motivate their revitalization in the first place.

 

It is true that learners commonly associate words from their respective heritage languages with their “modern/non-traditional” interpretations of cultural concepts. And for this reason revitalization efforts should strive to teach the language not only as a set of dry grammar rules but as a system of culturally motivated behavior, worldview and lifestyle. In this way language revitalization goes hand-in-hand with the revival of various aspects of the traditional culture. 

 

But in my experience this is often over-done because of unreasonable expectations as to the extent of the cultural revival and as to what is applicable in the contemporary tribal society. I remember about 11 years ago when we were working on the textbook and curriculum for the first grade and one of the native speakers involved said that the book should not teach classroom vocabulary (such as pen, book, computer) because these things are not a part of traditional Lakota culture. The speaker suggested that the book should introduce exclusively words for items and concepts from the traditional (i.e. pre-reservation) culture, such as words for bow, arrows, ceremonies etc. 

Such expectations are based on a very static view of culture and they result in teaching a language that cannot be used for everyday communication. Obviously, the children do not grow up in pre-reservation culture, their cultural reality is very different and they are only going to be motivated to use the language if they can use it within the context of their own reality. If they learn to speak Lakota (with a good level of understanding of the traditional meanings embedded in the language) then indeed this alone represents a major component of their Lakota identity. If not, then it would be possible to claim that, for instance, the 21st century French are not French because they have a very different lifestyle and worldview than the French in the 19th century. Indeed, the ability to speak French is a major part of French identity and there are a large number of worldviews and lifestyles among modern French people. There are probably a lot of traditional (archaic) aspects of French culture that some French people know or practice, but many others do not. Are they less French?

Similarly, contemporary members of the Native American tribes no longer live in a uniform culture (if it ever was uniform). In Lakota language classes today, there are tribal members with highly varying backgrounds (in term of their believes, lifestyles and worldviews). They all want to learn Lakota because they feel it is an important part of their heritage and identity. But the extent to which they want to adopt or participate in other aspects of traditional culture varies significantly.

 

 

>>> If what we care about is not only preserving linguistic diversity (in the sense of grammatical structures) but also preserving distinctive cultural worldviews and lifeways by maintaining heritage languages, then we have won the battle while losing the war if people are only learning and using heritage languages to participate in the practices of the dominant society.

I could be wrong, but what I am reading in your text, is that the only correct way to revitalize a Native American language is to use it exclusively in context of traditional culture. To me it is a flawed expectation. For any language to survive it has to serve the communicative needs of the society that speaks it. The language should be an important vehicle for the revitalization and preservation of various aspects of traditional culture, but the language also has to claim new territories. Your paper makes it sound as if it is an either or situation. Why can’t it be both?

 

 

I would argue that we can easily find a connection between “Go green” and traditional cultural practices. Among the Lakota there is a group of people who started a movement towards abandoning the use of Styrofoam dishes in public feasts and ceremonies, and replacing them with traditional wooden bowls that Lakota people used to carry on them wherever they went. I think this is a great example of how a modern environmental awareness can be connected with traditional practices. The reason why some traditionalists may interpret “Go green” as non-traditional is a poor translation. If we use a fitting idiomatic translation instead of a calque, the term may become more palatable or even viewed as traditional.

 

In my experience there is a discrepancy between how native speakers portray their language and its role, and how they use it in real life. In a formal setting (in an interview or before an audience) native speakers always emphasize that the language is sacred, that it cannot be used in a negative way, to hurt anyone’s feelings, that there are no vulgar words etc.

This is an important teaching about cultural values and culturally proper behavior, but the problem is that these things are attributed to the language, rather than to people’s manners. I don’t think that in societies with thriving language these values are normally attributed to a language. I can’t imagine an English (or Spanish) speaker teaching an audience about what the English language can and cannot be used for; e.g. “children, we don’t use English to say this or that because it is impolite” - instead I would expect something like “children, it is not polite to say this or that”, or “It is not nice to make such and such remarks” etc). And of course, correct behavior and language use are more often taught by example than by description.

 

Contrary to how native speakers talk about the heritage language formally, in informal settings a heritage language is used for just about any of those things we know from other languages, in all kinds of registers, using varying layers of the lexicon, in all kinds of contexts, for teasing, joking, for harmless (or harmful) gossip, for impertinent remarks or jokes and so on. 

 

To me the problem is that a good percentage of native speakers and some linguists have a tendency to idealize the language and elevate it to something almost untouchable (sacred), something that has to be kept immaculate and must not be defiled by incorrect use. The result, in my experience, is that many learners are afraid to use the language in front of their elders because they fear they will use it incorrectly. 

 

 

In my experience it is often the case that native speakers and learners spend significantly more time discussing (in English!) how the heritage language should or shouldn’t be used, instead of spending time on actually using it. Such discussions don’t contribute to language proficiency and in fact they can be counter-productive because they create unreasonable obstacles for learners.

I believe that language revitalization efforts ought to take the focus away from such discussions and replace them with effective language teaching that focuses on developing both fluency and accuracy, as well as awareness of the cultural features reflected in the language. All of this can, and should, be done in the target language.

 

It is my understanding that the various translation request you mention are almost exclusively made by people who are not active learners of the respective languages and often by people who are not even involved with language revitalization. As such, I would consider them more or less irrelevant in the discussion of language revitalization efforts.

 

Jan

 

 

 

From: Siouan Linguistics [mailto:SIOUAN at listserv.unl.edu] On Behalf Of Saul Schwartz
Sent: Friday, April 25, 2014 12:27 AM
To: SIOUAN at listserv.unl.edu
Subject: citation/quotation conventions for list?

 

Dear all,

 

I am wondering about the social conventions (stated or unstated) for citing and/or quoting material from the Siouan Listserv. On the one hand, the List is archived for anyone to view here (http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A0=SIOUAN), so it is in some sense a public text. On the other hand, there is a strong sense of community among members of the List, and I have a feeling that we sometimes forget that we’re talking to each other in what is essentially a public forum (in the sense that the public can listen in on our conversation; one has to be a member to contribute, of course). I would be interested to hear general thoughts or thoughts related to the specific case described below.

 

For example, I am currently working on an article/dissertation chapter about how the relationship between “language” and “culture” is changing for many American Indians who no longer speak their heritage languages. Specifically, I am trying point out the irony that while many people support language revitalization because they believe that “the language” is essential for “the culture,” revitalization efforts themselves often remove heritage languages from their traditional cultural contexts in an effort to make them more relevant to learners—for example, by coming up with Siouan calques for English idioms. After discussing some examples from the literature and my own experiences working with Jimm’s Ioway, Otoe-Missouria Language Project, I wanted to mention some of the reactions on the List to the recent request to translate “curiouser and curiouser” from Alice in Wonderland; specifically, I wanted to quote parts of Bryan’s, Jimm’s, and Willem’s responses. I am including an excerpt from the draft of the paper below to give some context, but the paragraph that includes information from the Siouan Listserv is the second to last one.

 

Has a convention for citation and/or quotation already been established for the List? Are posts assumed to be citable and/or quotable unless otherwise stated? Do we expect someone wanting to cite and/or quote a post to contact the poster off-list to request permission before doing so? Etc....

 

All best,

Saul

 

Ironically, while efforts to revitalize heritage languages are often motivated by a belief that “the language” is an essential part of “the culture,” language revitalization itself often ends up separating codes from their traditionally associated cultural settings. David Samuels (2006), for example, discusses how conflicts between Apache traditionalists, who believe the language is too powerful for young speakers, and Christians, who believe the language is too un-Christian for their children, have narrowed the kind of language that can be taught in the community to object identification—in other words, children are learning a version of the language stripped of its indexical associations with traditional culture practices. But, as an Apache bilingual teacher wonders, if children are only learning how to use Apache to order a cheeseburger, what’s the point? (2006:551). M. Eleanor Nevins (2004) finds language classes are controversial in another Apache community because they fail to teach communicative competence, that is, social conventions for interaction that make particular codes culturally significant means of communication.

 

Meeks reports similar developments in the Yukon, where educational routines used to teach Kaska in school settings conflict with Dene interactional conventions and language socialization ideologies. Furthermore, these educational routines “emphasiz[e] the referential aspect of language while downplaying all other indexical dimensions, and thereby diminish their sustainability as complex systems of and for communication” (2010:126).

 

In their research on Pueblo groups in the Southwest, Debenport (xxxx) and Whiteley (xxxx) also found conflicts between language revitalization and cultural priorities. Many Tewas and Hopis believe that outsiders should not have access to their languages and thus oppose revitalization efforts that decontextualize codes from community-internal interpersonal interactions and recontextualize them in forms that can circulate beyond the community (e.g., online, in books, in schools attended by Navajo or other non-Pueblo children, etc.). By refusing to support such language revitalization efforts, community members are saying in effect that keeping their language private is more important to them than maintaining the code.

 

Jocelyn Ahlers provides another example of how languages can become separated from their traditionally associated cultures in her description of how moribund languages are used to perform Native identities through memorized texts, a speech style she calls “Native Language as Identity Marker” (2006:62). She concludes that “this speech style adds to the body of evidence that language use is not indexical with cultural . . . identity, but rather performative of it” (2006:72). By this I understand her to mean that, unlike other kinds of code-switching, in this case a speaker sends a message about their identity by their code choice alone—what they are saying in the code refers to nothing outside itself (denotatively, indexically, or otherwise) because it is “code-switching, by a nonfluent speaker, to a noncomprehending audience” (2006:69). In the case of these memorized speeches, a code performs an identity without referring to anything cultural. Whiteley (2003:715) offers a similar interpretation of speeches by younger generations at Haida memorial potlatches, and the Dauenhauers note an analogous development in written Tlingit when those who have no or little knowledge of the language “use literacy for its decorative and symbolic effect or impression: for example, ‘Merry Christmas’ in Tlingit on corporate windows or Christmas cards” (1998:89).

 

To draw from my own experience, the Ioway, Otoe-Missouria Language Project (IOMLP) makes a special effort to embed language in culturally significant contexts that are also applicable to modern day life. For example, the IOMLP designed and printed a tee shirt that includes a traditional floral design, a diagram representing the shared histories of the Iowa, Otoe-Missouria, and closely related Winnebago peoples (all labeled by their Chiwere endo- or exo-nyms), an image of an elder and a child wearing traditional ceremonial dance clothes, and a sentence in Chiwere that translates, ‘The language honors our elders and teaches our children.’ Similarly, the IOMLP designed mugs that include the Chiwere phrase for ‘I love my coffee’ with the image of an Oneota-style ceramic vessel superimposed over a medicine wheel.

 

While the IOMLP makes a special effort to embed language in culturally rich contexts, the Project is all too familiar with the opposite possibility: that traditional language can be used in contexts far removed from traditional cultural practices and values. The director of the Project often receives requests to calque English idioms, for example, “Go green!” (for a tribal environmental awareness program) or “I [heart icon] boobies!” (for breast cancer awareness bracelets). He has also been asked to provide Chiwere equivalents for terms from the video game Halo. These requests are met with ambivalence since they have no connection to traditional cultural practices or can even seem antithetical to them. For example, the request for “I [heart icon] boobies!” provoked a lesson on traditional attitudes toward body parts, body functions, and sexuality. And when I explained to the IOMLP what Halo is (a first-person shooter, i.e., rather violent, video game), the director expressed reservations that Chiwere language be associated with it at all. In some cases, then, indigenous languages can be used not just for cultural practices that are seen as untraditional (ordering a cheeseburger) but also anti-traditional (ones that promote dominant society attitudes toward sex, violence, etc.).

 

This phenomenon is not limited to Chiwere, however, and many people involved in Siouan language documentation and revitalization receive similar requests. John Koontz, for example, received so many requests to translate stock English phrases as well as names for children and pets into Omaha-Ponca that he posted his general response to such questions on the FAQ section of his website. Once, he was even asked (presumably as a joke) for a Native American name for an RV; he responded in kind with Hotanke, an Anglicized spelling of the Dakotan word for ‘Winnebago’ (Winnebago is a popular brand of RV in the United States, much to the chagrin of the Winnebago Indians).

 

Recently, a request appeared on the Siouan Listserv to translate a line from Alice in Wonderland (“curiouser and curiouser, cried Alice”) into various Siouan languages for some kind of polyglot compilation. While some found the intellectual challenge of translating a Victorian neologism into Siouan languages intriguing, others were less receptive to the request because of its perceived triviality and irrelevance to Native communities: “It’s a more distinguished request than pet names and such, but it’s not the kind of translation work I would prefer to spend my time on. Why don’t people ask us to translate Microsoft Word or a K-12 curriculum or something important?” and “I have other priorities and am unclear on the need for [a translation of] the particular quote from a story which has nothing in common with Native American culture. . . . To spend time on the translation of materials that have no immediate application to the language communities is nonsensical and, for my part, a waste of time.” One linguist shared his general guidelines for responding to such requests: “One has to pick and choose. If it is short and culturally appropriate, I generally agree to it. . . . Then other requests have to be nixed, like the set of ‘Spring Break’ phrases I once was asked to translate, things like ‘I am so drunk,’ and ‘Where is the bathroom?’”

 

In short, while language revitalization seeks to expand opportunities for the continued use of heritage languages by making them seem more applicable to current social conditions, there is a danger that the codes may become disassociated from the traditional cultures that motivate their revitalization in the first place. If what we care about is not only preserving linguistic diversity (in the sense of grammatical structures) but also preserving distinctive cultural worldviews and lifeways by maintaining heritage languages, then we have won the battle while losing the war if people are only learning and using heritage languages to participate in the practices of the dominant society.

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