language as property, follow-up

[Rankin, Robert L]

Mark,

Yeah, I know of several cases of this sort ot thing. Actually, as you no
doubt know, this is an old story in Americanist linguistics, going back a
century or more.  A lot of the Berkeley linguists especially began to think
of languages as "their" languages.  It was both selfish and paternalistic.
I've always lectured my students against such proprietary thoughts; it takes
a whole team of good linguists to document a language thoroughly. I don't
think that one person working alone could ever do it justice.

There are amusing stories of the infamous John P. Harrington hiding his
notes away in peoples attics so that Franz Boas couldn't get his hands on
them.  If you have never read  the book "Encounter with an Angry God", you
really ought to.  It is about Harrington (a very talented linguist, but
paranoid) written by his ex-wife, Carobeth Laird.

Nowadays, of course, the proprietary notions all come under the guise of
"political correctness", but it sure smells like the same old dead rat to
me. :-)

By the way, maybe I should clarify my position.  I think things like
stories, songs, particular prayers or rituals, etc. can certainly be
intellectual property (although I expect it would be difficult to determine
whose a lot of the time).  There've been many cases where such things have
been ripped off, but I know that among Dhegiha speakers many songs are
property of a particular family or clan.  I certainly have no argument with
that, but I'm glad I don't have to sort it all out!

Sounds to me like you've picked a really interesting and current topic.
I'll look forward to reading it sometime when you've finished.

Best,

Bob



Bob:
Yes, a common (although not exclusive) theme running through these
situations seems to be the role of self-serving outsiders. I have not been
able to sort out the exact beginning or catalyst for the example I posted.
However, it clearly has one or more non-community/non-Tribal-type folks
sitting in the background.

I posed several questions to the community member "writer" of the draft
resolution about such things as unenforcability of the proposed law,
academic cooling towards the community, disfranchisement of unenrolled
members, the divisive impact it would have on the community, and the
potential for extreme political manipulation of the language. The responses
given made it clear that the person either 1) just had not thought out much
of the details of the possible impact of the resolution, or 2) the "writer"
was just fronting something instigated elsewhere. Whatever the case, it will
require some more investigation on my part.

best
uthixide

-----Original Message-----
From: Rankin, Robert L < rankin at ku.edu <mailto:rankin at ku.edu> >
To: 'siouan at lists.colorado.edu' <mailto:'siouan at lists.colorado.edu'>  <
siouan at lists.colorado.edu <mailto:siouan at lists.colorado.edu> >
Date: Wednesday, July 11, 2001 12:56 PM
Subject: RE: language as property, follow-up


Mark and others,

I just returned from the SSILA meetings in Santa Barbara and was talking
about this question with some other linguists. I think there is one more
interesting point to be made. It has to do with, yes, lawyers. It seems
that, at least in the Southwest, there are law firms that have caught on to
this movement and are going from tribe to tribe soliciting business (and of
course high fees) for "helping them copyright the language". It has
apparently become something of a racket -- a kind of ethnographic ambulance
chasing. It seems to me that copyright lawyers must already know what the
chances of copyrighting nouns and verb conjugations are and are simply
milking naive clients for every penny they can get. If words were
copyrightable, I suspect that mobile home firm wouldn't be selling Winnebago
RV's any more. Just one more scam for tribes to watch out for.

Bob


I just wanted to acknowledge all of the fine thoughts you shared on the
topic of language as property. Your comments did not fall into a black hole.
It has given me some more grist for the dissertation mill.


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