citation/quotation conventions for list?

[Bryan James Gordon]

Hi Saul,

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is not peer-reviewed in the ordinary sense, and it's hard to know how on-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!

Bryan


2014-04-24 15:27 GMT-07:00 Saul Schwartz <sschwart at princeton.edu>:

> Dear all,
>
>
>
> 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 (
> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A0=SIOUAN), 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.
>
>
>
> 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 *Alice in
> Wonderland*; 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.
>
>
>
> 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....
>
>
>
> All best,
>
> Saul
>
>
>
> 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.
>
>
> 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).
>
>
> In their research on Pueblo groups in the Southwest, 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.
>
>
> 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).
>
>
> 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, ‘The language honors our elders and teaches our children.’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.
>
>
> 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 *Halo*. 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 *Halo* 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.).
>
>
> 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 *Hotanke*,
> 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).
>
>
> Recently, a request appeared on the Siouan Listserv to translate a line
> from *Alice in Wonderland* (“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?’”
>
>
> 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 *cultural* 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.
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-- 
***********************************************************
Bryan James Gordon, MA
Joint PhD Program in Linguistics and Anthropology
University of Arizona
***********************************************************

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