Exploring orientations to the language-and-culture nexus

• Introduction to the first of three methods for analyzing conversation (weeks 3-4): Schegloffian transcription and conversation analysis ("CA")
• A blog entry advocating for multi-modal conversation analysis (by a grad student)
• An applied example from the #MeToo Movement of "adjacency pairs"

•  Here 

⇾ Characteristic discourses by outsiders about indigenous languages constrain the way both communities and the public can think about these languages

⇾ These discourses are broadly translocalizing kinds of discourse, in that they make the familiar unfamiliar, and the sovereign passive or weak

⇾ These discourses include:

▫︎ the "language as a biological organism" discourse

▫︎ the "language as a code" discourse (referential function foregrounded, à la Saussure)

⇾ Notably, documentation of the language as a code (≈ strictly referential, decontextualized view), or  a "specimen" 

The biological organism metaphor is useful to a certain degree. When the metaphor blinds language experts from seeing innovative and creative uses of"endangered" languages, the rhetoric becomes a liability. For example, to use the Maliseet case, the UNESCO statement that Maliseet is "severely endangered" requires a logical calculus that promotes specific interventions such as documentation in the form of texts, audio/video recordings, descriptive analyses, and diverse modes of archiving. These are useful strategies for languages that have only a few speakers. However, Maliseet presents a case where there are speakers who are working on new forms of Maliseet interactions, such as an online dictionary, audio files of Maliseet stories, children's story books, television documentary programming, and so forth. These efforts do produce the kinds of documentary artifacts of spoken Maliseet, but they also have the added benefits of creating new genres for the Maliseet language, making the Maliseet language relevant in contemporary settings and forming new social relations. Together, the benefits highlight the most significant aspect of rethinking expert rhetoric and practice. Documentary practices focus on language as a code that needs to be preserved. This renders language as a science object that can be taken out of context and dismembered into its constituent parts: phonemes, morphemes, syntactic structures, and semantic analysis." (p. 217-218)

▫︎ Perley points out that such a perspective on a language can be internalized by would-be speakers and hinder communities' progress

▫︎ Certain languages with few speakers (e.g., Potawatomi) may offer an exception to the article's critique of online learning archives or labels as a pedagogical tool

⇾ Create new uses of the language that strengthen social relationships and emphasize language's social utility

e.g., The  Master Apprentice Program in CA , run by Advocates for Indigenous California Language Survival, is a great example of a language revitalization program based in a socially embedded view of language

⇾ The Myaamia word for 'the Myaamia language' exemplifies this view of language as a living, social activity, and not a thing or code

It is worth mentioning that the typical way to talk about the Myaamia language, in the language, is by using the verb stem myaamiaataweenki, which literally means "speaking the Myaamia language"--and this is the typical way one refers to the language. Because the notion of language is not expressed in a nominal fonn, applying a concept like dead to a language not only feels strange in discourse but poses grammatical problems with verb agreement. A concept like death can really only be applied to entities (animate or inanimate) and not to actions. Speaking a language is not a thing, and therefore it cannot die, but it is an action, and so a language can cease to be spoken. If one wants to express a lack of speakers of the Myaamia language, one would say myaamiaataweehsoona, "no one speaks the Myaamia language," or would use a term like poonaataweenki, "the language ceases to be spoken," both of which are verbs. From a Myaamia philosophical perspective, a language cannot die, but it can stop being spoken. This is important, because there really isn't any notion of permanence implied here, and if the language is available in some other form, including audio or written recordings, then it's conceivable that it could be spoken again." (pp. 214-215)

⇾ Examples:

▫︎ English requires an entire phrase (periphrasis), 'the Myaamia language viewed as a spoken activity,' to explain what in Myaamia is expressed in one verb with a subject marker, myaamiaataweenki. (Conversely, one could say that Myaamia is holophrastic with respect to English.)

▫︎ Potawotami expresses in one word, a verb, wiikwegamaa, what English expresses in several, and as a noun, "[to be] a bay."

▫︎ One of the Chickasaw nouns (aashoppala chi) equivalent to our English noun 'light switch' would need to be described circuitously as "to make light for," as it places emphasis on the light's role in illuminating for a purpose.

⇾ These differences between how English speakers convey something and how Myaamia, Potawatomi, and Chickasaw speakers convey something closely related reveal linguistic relativism in these four languages' grammatical routes for expression: verbal expressions vs. noun, animacy versus no animacy distinctions, etc.

▫︎ Beyond linguistic distinctions, such holophrastic and periphrastic relations across languages may also reveal histories of how power was exercised between groups of people (e.g., English 'extinction' not finding a direct translation equivalent in Myaamia, Ashinaabemowin, and Maliseet)

▫︎ "Describe your career as a verb rather than a noun:" Example from the NYT yesterday

⇾ Kimmerer makes a clear case that environmental understanding can be "gained in translation" by learning Potawatomi and other languages that use animacy distinctions within their grammars (cf., p. 57 of her book). How might this cultural regard for nature's non-human living beings be leveraged for environmental activism? Do you agree that without the former we might be less inclined to do the latter?

"More recently, Native American organizations and environmental groups are working closely together to protect  Ward Valley, California, from becoming the site of a low level nuclear waste dump . Ward Valley is considered a sacred place by Native Americans, and the Colorado River Native Nations Alliance has been working together with non-native support groups and environmental justice organizations, such as the Indigenous Environmental Network, the Southwest Network for Economic and Environmental Justice, and the California Communities Against Toxics coalition, to prevent the opening of the radioactive dump there." (Moore 1998: 287)

"The area is seen as sacred because of its proximity to Spirit Mountain, the birthplace of the ancestors of the tribes in the Colorado River Native Nations Alliance [consisting of the Fort Mojave, Chemehuevi, Colorado River, Quechan and Cocopah Nations], because the entire valley is a spirit path (along which spirits travel), and because it is home to the desert tortoise, which is revered as a brother. These beliefs may be seen as fanciful, irrational, childish, or crazy by members of the dominant society, but they are extremely important, deeply held, and passionately embraced by followers of the indigenist vision, beliefs for which in many cases they are prepared to die. With the increase of coalitions between environmental organizations and Native American groups to resist particular development or industrial projects that threaten wild lands, these beliefs and the practices through which they are communicated are taking on an increased significance as symbolic resources that provide psychological empowerment to movement activists, both native and non-native." (Moore 1998: 289)"