citation/quotation conventions for list?

Wed Apr 30 14:41:11 UTC 2014

Aho WagaqthoN,
That is what I was looking for but the chemo-brain had kept me for formulating the question properly.
UdoN, ebthegoN.
WagoNze Uthixide

From: Siouan Linguistics [mailto:SIOUAN at listserv.unl.edu] On Behalf Of Rory Larson
Sent: Wednesday, April 30, 2014 8:50 AM
To: SIOUAN at LISTSERV.UNL.EDU
Subject: Re: citation/quotation conventions for list?

Alright, we need to fill in the blank here.  I think what Mark was asking was: What is the proper scholarly format for citing postings from the Siouan list?

So, if I want to quote Catherine for my dissertation, what does it look like?  Would it be:

                “George -- Good idea!” (Rudin, Catherine.  Re: citation/quotation conventions for list?.  SIOUAN at listserv.unl.edu<mailto:SIOUAN at listserv.unl.edu>.  April 29, 2014 6:52 PM.)

Or what?  Does it vary according to different styles and venues?  We need to figure this out before we can append that message.

Rory

From: Siouan Linguistics [mailto:SIOUAN at listserv.unl.edu] On Behalf Of Catherine Rudin
Sent: Tuesday, April 29, 2014 6:52 PM
To: SIOUAN at LISTSERV.UNL.EDU<mailto:SIOUAN at LISTSERV.UNL.EDU>
Subject: Re: citation/quotation conventions for list?

George -- Good idea!

>>> George Wilmes 04/29/14 6:38 PM >>>
Whatever decision the group arrives at, I wonder if the listserv can be programmed to automatically append something to every message, such as "To cite this posting, …" followed by a short sample citation?

It would be even better if it could be programmed to generate the actual citation that should be used, but that might be asking too much.

On Tue, Apr 29, 2014 at 12:11 PM, bruce Ingham <shokoohbanou at yahoo.co.uk<mailto:shokoohbanou at yahoo.co.uk>> wrote:
I think that Bryan's ideas on the subject are very sensible practical and will encourage non-academics to participate.

Bruce

On 29 Apr 2014, at 02:53, Bryan James Gordon <linguist at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU<mailto:linguist at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU>> wrote:

Conference gáthaⁿdi witáⁿbe-mázhi-tʰe íⁿtha-mázhi Mark, thigíni údaⁿ maⁿníⁿ kaⁿbthégaⁿ.

Mark raises a very important point about non-academics' access. I agree that we should give this some detailed attention at the conference, but I want us to keep non-academic audiences, especially non-linguists in Native communities, in mind. Us academics have rules to follow, and our citation practices are interwoven with ideologies of due credit, verifiability and (!!!!) intellectual property. We enforce these rules on each other, but personally I don't believe we have any business enforcing them on Native communities (many of whom have objected to linguists' complicity in the "theft" of their languages and are fighting back along lines of intellectual property), nice as it may be to be properly cited. I know that my reasoning may sound a bit harsh to some of my fellow academics, but I hope that we can abstain from demanding citation practices from non-academics nonetheless.

Bryan

2014-04-28 9:05 GMT-07:00 Mark Awakuni-Swetland <mawakuni-swetland2 at unl.edu<mailto:mawakuni-swetland2 at unl.edu>>:
Aloha all,
I am just now catching up with this timely conversation regarding quotation/citation conventions.
While I will be unable to travel to this year’s SCLConf, can I encourage you all to brainstorm some protocols for how to cite the SIOUANList?

I recognize that the List is a resource for both academic and community folks.

I do not want to burden or hinder non-academics from using the List and Archives. However a set of examples for how to cite List sources would be helpful to those wanting to cite sources as expected by journal and book publishers, MA & PhD committees, and other senior faculty.

Several of you have already provided some approaches on this topic.

Would someone be willing to spearhead a discussion on this at the conference?

Many thanks for considering this request.

Mark Awakuni-Swetland

Mark Awakuni-Swetland, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Anthropology & Ethnic Studies
Native American Studies
University of Nebraska
Oldfather Hall 841
Lincoln, NE 68588-0368

Office: 402-472-3455<tel:402-472-3455>
FAX: 402-472-9642<tel:402-472-9642>
http://omahalanguage.unl.edu<http://omahalanguage.unl.edu/>
http://omahaponca.unl.edu<http://omahaponca.unl.edu/>

“Tenixa uqpatha egoN”, a biama winisi akHa.

Lincoln Gem and Mineral Club, Inc.
Post Office Box 5342
Lincoln, NE 68505-0342

From: Siouan Linguistics [mailto:SIOUAN at listserv.unl.edu<mailto:SIOUAN at listserv.unl.edu>] On Behalf Of Catherine Rudin
Sent: Thursday, April 24, 2014 9:22 PM
To: SIOUAN at LISTSERV.UNL.EDU<mailto:SIOUAN at LISTSERV.UNL.EDU>

Subject: Re: citation/quotation conventions for list?

I also have cited List messages on occasion, though I think only in pretty informal contexts like conference presentations. As you point out, Saul, it is a public text, and I think it's legit to cite it the same way you would cite any online resource.

Perhaps it's good for us all to remind ourselves that everything we write to the List IS not only public but permanently archived...

C.

>>> Bryan James Gordon 04/24/14 5:59 PM >>>

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<mailto: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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Joint PhD Program in Linguistics and Anthropology
University of Arizona
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Joint PhD Program in Linguistics and Anthropology
University of Arizona
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