<div dir="ltr">Hi Saul,<div><br></div><div>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 That being said, for academic venues we have to keep in mind that the List is not peer-reviewed in the ordinary sense, and it's hard to know how on- or off-the-record things are.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!</div>
<div><br></div><div>Bryan</div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">2014-04-24 15:27 GMT-07:00 Saul Schwartz <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:sschwart@princeton.edu" target="_blank">sschwart@princeton.edu</a>></span>:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr">
<p class="MsoNormal"><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif">Dear all,</font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif"> </font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif">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 (<a href="http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A0=SIOUAN" target="_blank">http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A0=SIOUAN</a>),
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.</font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif"> </font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif">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 <i>Alice in Wonderland</i>; 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.</font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif"> </font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif">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....</font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif"> </font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif">All best,</font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif">Saul</font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif"> </font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif">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.</font></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><br></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">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).</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><br></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">In
their research on Pueblo groups in the Southwest, <span style="color:rgb(26,26,26)">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.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><br></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">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).</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><br></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">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, <span style>‘The language honors our elders and teaches our
children.’</span> 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.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><br></span></p><p class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">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 <i>Halo</i>. 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 <i>Halo</i> 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.).</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><br></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">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 <i>Hotanke</i>, 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).</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><br></span></p><p class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">Recently,
a request appeared on the Siouan Listserv to translate a line from <i>Alice in Wonderland</i> (“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?’”</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><br></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">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 <i>cultural</i> 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.</span></p>
</div>
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</blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><div><br></div>-- <br>***********************************************************<br>Bryan James Gordon, MA<br>Joint PhD Program in Linguistics and Anthropology<br>University of Arizona<br>
***********************************************************
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