citation/quotation conventions for list?

Tue Apr 29 23:52:25 UTC 2014

George -- Good idea!

>>> George Wilmes  04/29/14 6:38 PM >>>
Whatever decision the group arrives at, I wonder if the listserv can be
programmed to automatically append something to every message, such as
"To cite this posting, …" followed by a short sample citation?

It would be even better if it could be programmed to generate the actual
citation that should be used, but that might be asking too much.

On Tue, Apr 29, 2014 at 12:11 PM, bruce Ingham
<shokoohbanou at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
I think that Bryan's ideas on the subject are very sensible practical
and will encourage non-academics to participate.

Bruce
On 29 Apr 2014, at 02:53, Bryan James Gordon
<linguist at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU> wrote:

Conference gáthaⁿdi witáⁿbe-mázhi-tʰe íⁿtha-mázhi Mark, thigíni údaⁿ
maⁿníⁿ kaⁿbthégaⁿ.

Mark raises a very important point about non-academics' access. I agree
that we should give this some detailed attention at the conference, but
I want us to keep non-academic audiences, especially non-linguists in
Native communities, in mind. Us academics have rules to follow, and our
citation practices are interwoven with ideologies of due credit,
verifiability and (!!!!) intellectual property. We enforce these rules
on each other, but personally I don't believe we have any business
enforcing them on Native communities (many of whom have objected to
linguists' complicity in the "theft" of their languages and are fighting
back along lines of intellectual property), nice as it may be to be
properly cited. I know that my reasoning may sound a bit harsh to some
of my fellow academics, but I hope that we can abstain from demanding
citation practices from non-academics nonetheless.

Bryan

2014-04-28 9:05 GMT-07:00 Mark Awakuni-Swetland
<mawakuni-swetland2 at unl.edu>:
Aloha all,
I am just now catching up with this timely conversation regarding
quotation/citation conventions.
While I will be unable to travel to this year’s SCLConf, can I encourage
you all to brainstorm some protocols for how to cite the SIOUANList?

I recognize that the List is a resource for both academic and community
folks.

I do not want to burden or hinder non-academics from using the List and
Archives. However a set of examples for how to cite List sources would
be helpful to those wanting to cite sources as expected by journal and
book publishers, MA & PhD committees, and other senior faculty.

Several of you have already provided some approaches on this topic.

Would someone be willing to spearhead a discussion on this at the
conference?

Many thanks for considering this request.

Mark Awakuni-Swetland

Mark Awakuni-Swetland, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Anthropology & Ethnic Studies
Native American Studies
University of Nebraska
Oldfather Hall 841
Lincoln, NE 68588-0368

Office: 402-472-3455
FAX: 402-472-9642
http://omahalanguage.unl.edu
http://omahaponca.unl.edu

“Tenixa uqpatha egoN”, a biama winisi akHa.

Lincoln Gem and Mineral Club, Inc.
Post Office Box 5342
Lincoln, NE 68505-0342

From: Siouan Linguistics [mailto:SIOUAN at listserv.unl.edu]On Behalf Of
Catherine Rudin
Sent: Thursday, April 24, 2014 9:22 PM
To: SIOUAN at LISTSERV.UNL.EDU

Subject: Re: citation/quotation conventions for list?

I also have cited List messages on occasion, though I think only in
pretty informal contexts like conference presentations. As you point
out, Saul, it is a public text, and I think it's legit to cite it the
same way you would cite any online resource.  

Perhaps it's good for us all to remind ourselves that everything we
write to the List IS not only public but permanently archived...

C.

>>> Bryan James Gordon 04/24/14 5:59 PM >>>

Hi Saul,

I've cited Siouan List messages a few times before, often because the
List is the only place I can find the relevant claims or data in an
easily accessible form. I certainly welcome having my own List messages
cited. That being said, for academic venues we the List is not peer-reviewed in the ordinary sense, and it's hard to
know how on- or off-the-record things are. I'd like to continue your
conversation about the relationship between language and culture (and
also take part more actively in other Siouan stuff like helping out with
edited volumes), but right now I'm frantically trying to finish my
comprehensive exams so I'll have to put that off until the conference.
Keep up the good work!

Bryan

2014-04-24 15:27 GMT-07:00 Saul Schwartz <sschwart at princeton.edu>:
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” fromAlice 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 conflinteractional 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 gameHalo. 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
whatHalo 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
withHotanke, 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
fromAlice 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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Bryan James Gordon, MA
Joint PhD Program in Linguistics and Anthropology
University of Arizona
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Joint PhD Program in Linguistics and Anthropology
University of Arizona
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