Book announcement: Webster 2009

[James Crippen]

New book out on Navajo discourse:

Webster, Anthony K. 2009. Explorations in Navajo Poetry and Poetics.
Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.

The publisher's blurb:

Of the nearly 300,000 people who identified themselves as Navajo in
the 2000 U.S. Census, 178,014 identified themselves as speakers of
Navajo. While these rough numbers give an impression that the Navajo
language is widely spoken, scholars continually point out that it is a
threatened language and that young Navajos are not learning the
language at a rate that will ensure its continued use. Poetry,
however, written and performed in both Navajo and English, continues
to emerge as an important voice for Navajos, providing an outlet for
recounting the past through storytelling and offering the Navajo
perspective on a wide range of issues including what it means to be
Navajo.

Linguistic anthropologist Anthony Webster began over a year of
dissertation research on contemporary Navajo poetry on the Navajo
Reservation in the spring of 2000 and returned for additional
fieldwork in the summers of 2007 and 2008. In this study he
investigates the devices found in Navajo written and oral poetic
traditions. He then explores aspects of language such as code-mixing,
punning, and ideophony (sound symbolism), often considered marginal in
linguistics literature, revealing how they are central to the study of
ethnopoetics and a discourse-centered approach to language and
culture.

http://www.unmpress.com/Book.php?id=12282422543593

Cheers,
James