25.1539, Let's Welcome Our Next Featured Linguist for 2014: Joel Sherzer

Tue Apr 1 16:35:21 UTC 2014

LINGUIST List: Vol-25-1539. Tue Apr 01 2014. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 25.1539, Let's Welcome Our Next Featured Linguist for 2014: Joel Sherzer

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Date: Tue, 01 Apr 2014 12:34:16
From: LINGUIST List [linguist at linguistlist.org]
Subject: TraveLING Along with Featured Linguist Joel Sherzer

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Today we are continuing to update you on the most inspiring stories from
scholars all over the world. Please welcome our Featured Linguist Joel Sherzer
who is sharing his story with our readers and subscribers. Take a look below!

How I Became a Linguist by Joel Sherzer 

My contribution to linguistics has been to analyze language in cultural and
social contexts. I have used this approach to my study of the language and
culture of the Kuna of Panama, the work I am best known for. Many students and
scholars who have worked with Latin American indigenous languages and peoples
have been influenced by my work.

It all started in Central High School in Philadelphia. Four years of high
school Spanish kindled my interest in languages other than English and in
grammar. Oberlin College was a decisive experience. I studied French, Spanish,
Latin, and Russian, as well as a smattering of linguistics. In the summers I
participated in Oberlin programs in France and Mexico. I also took part in a
Princeton program in Paris where I sold books in the department store Au
Printemps.

After I graduated Oberlin I had a Fulbright fellowship in Mexico that enabled
me to study Nahuatl, one of many people who cut their linguistic teeth on this
fascinating language. I became part of a group of fascinating anthropologists,
linguists, and artists. They worked with Morris Swadesh on Mexican indigenous
languages and cultures, including an effort to decipher Mayan hieroglyphs, and
volunteered their expertise for the linguistics section of the then new museum
of anthropology in Chapultepec park.

With a Woodrow Wilson fellowship I began graduate work in linguistics at the
University of Pennsylvania in 1965. There I was fortunate to study and
interact with a creative, dynamic, and pioneering group of people in various
departments. The work of my Penn teachers has remained with me all of my
scholarly life. Along with others, I frequently crossed the street between the
anthropology and linguistic departments.
Henry Hoenigswald stressed areal and typological approaches to language change
and history.
Dell Hymes trained me in ethnographic approaches to language.
David Sapir, like his father Edward, used texts to reveal grammatical and
cultural patterning in his research in Africa.
Erving Goffman focused on structure and pattern in everyday interaction. Bill
Labov elaborated fieldwork techniques and studied variation in language use.
My dissertation, which I rewrote as a book, dealt with areal-typological
patterns in indigenous languages north of Mexico.

After grad school I was offered a position at the University of Texas in the
Anthropology and Linguistics departments. I developed a program in linguistic
anthropology, along with wonderful colleagues, Richard Bauman, Greg Urban, and
Tony Woodbury. In my first year at Texas I edited Morris Swadesh’s book on the
origin and diversification of language. This was a labor of love, as Swadesh
had become a good friend before his untimely death. Another person I became
close to over the years was William Bright, with whom I shared interests in
areal-typological linguistics and verbal art.

While at Texas I began many years of fieldwork among the Kuna of Panama. My
Kuna research involved close collaboration with individuals who do not read or
write but who shared with me their remarkable linguistic and cultural
knowledge, expressed in their conversations, stories, myths, chants, and
songs. In addition, I have over the years become friends with and collaborated
with many people who study various aspects of Kuna life.

My approach to Kuna language and culture led me to develop, along with
colleagues Greg Urban and Tony Woodbury, what has come to be called the
discourse centered approach to language and culture. We organized a series of
conferences at Texas where people presented their work on different forms of
discourse found in indigenous America. The tape recordings were transcribed
and translated and stored in published form and/or in libraries. With the
availability of the Internet, along with Christine Beier, Heidi Johnson, Lev
Michael, and Tony Woodbury, I founded and now direct AILLA, The Archive of the
Indigenous Languages of Latin America, whose purpose is to preserve indigenous
languages by archiving them in digital form. AILLA has been very successful.
Up to now over 250 languages have been archived, and AILLA will no doubt
continue to grow.

Within linguistics and linguistic anthropology, two foci have come to
characterize my work, speech play and verbal art. These foci have taken me to
various places in the world, including Panama, Mexico, France, and Bali.

Joel Sherzer 

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LINGUIST List: Vol-25-1539	
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