forward: gender and lg article in J of American Folklore

[Mary Bucholtz]

I'm forwarding the following message on behalf of the Journal of American 
Folklore.

-------------------
Dear List Members,

The Journal of American Folklore has recently published an article that
may be of interest to members of the GALA discussion list:

"The Cave-Dwellers’ Treasure: Folktales, Morality, and Gender in a Nahua
Community in Mexico."  Journal of American Folklore 120(478): 401-44.


Abstract:

In Nahua communities, both men and women may act as storytellers, but
female storytellers are fewer and perform in more intimate contexts. As
a result, there is to date no analysis of female Nahua storytelling. In
this article, the author compares two cognate folktales and underlines
how each storyteller, a woman and a man, deal with essential concepts
related to morality and supernatural beings. Recent studies on women's
folklore point out that women's discourse often takes place in a private
context and uses ambiguity as an expressive strategy; this ambiguity, in
turn, is linked to the immorality or illegitimacy attributed to women's
words by many societies. The Nahua case, however, suggests that Nahua
female storytellers, although performing privately, prefer a discourse
that stresses themes of morality, while some publicly renowned male
storytellers may express ambiguous and amoral feelings. Ultimately, this
disparity can be tied to the ambivalent opinion Nahuas hold toward the
Hispanic world and to recent changes in female identity.


The article is available through the print journal, and also in full
text at Project Muse:
http://muse.jhu.edu/login?uri=/journals/journal_of_american_folklore/v120/1
20.478raby.html


The Journal of American Folklore is the journal of the American Folklore
Society.  Information about JAF can be found at:
http://www.afsnet.org/publications/jaf.cfm.

---------- End Forwarded Message ----------



**************************************************
Mary Bucholtz, Associate Professor
Department of Linguistics
3607 South Hall
University of California
Santa Barbara, CA 93106-3100
phone: (805) 893-5415
fax: (805) 893-7769
http://www.linguistics.ucsb.edu/faculty/bucholtz/
**************************************************