English with a Navajo Accent: Language and Ideology in Heritage
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View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by ASU Digital Repository English with a Navajo Accent: Language and Ideology in Heritage Language Advocacy by Meredith Genevieve Moss A Dissertation Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy Approved April 2015 by the Graduate Supervisory Committee: Karen L. Adams, Chair Elly van Gelderen Elenore Long ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY May 2015 ABSTRACT Much of the public discourse promoting Navajo (Diné) language revitalization and language programs takes place in English, both on and off the reservation, as in many other indigenous communities whose heritage languages are endangered. Although Navajo language is commonly discussed as being central to the identity of a Navajo person, this ideology may lie in contradiction to the other linguistic and social means Navajos use to construct Navajo identities, which exist within a wide spectrum of demographic categories as well as communities of practice relating to religion, occupation, and other activities (Field, 2009; Baker & Bowie, 2010). This dissertation examines two sets of data: 1) interviews with eight Navajo individuals whose interests, academic studies, and/or occupations relate to the promotion of Navajo language use in connection with cultural and linguistic revitalization; and 2) public statements made in online forums discussing the language used by Navajos. The interview data gathered consist of ten sociolinguistic (and open-ended conversational) interviews, culminating in over 13 hours of recorded interviews. The findings of this study show enregistered (i.e., imbued with social meaning) features of the dialect of Navajo English as well as insights into the challenges Navajos face while advocating for programs and policies supporting the teaching of their heritage language. i This work is dedicated to my wonderful family. Seth Schermerhorn, my most avid reader and my greatest ally in this and all work, thank you for joining me in the lifelong quest to accumulate books. Zoe and Kirby, thank you for your sense of humor, your patience while “Mama wrote her book,” and especially for being very good sleepers. Finally, for my brilliant parents, Thomas and Ryna Moss. A philosopher and an engineer raised a linguist, and I cannot wait to discover what my own children will become. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Arizona State University’s English department changed significantly in the seven years I spent there as a student in the Ph.D. program in Rhetoric, Composition, and Linguistics. One of the changes established that the Navajo language and other indigenous or less commonly taught languages could be studied in order to fulfill a graduate student’s foreign language requirement. I would like to thank those faculty members, including those on my committee, who petitioned in favor of less commonly taught languages in order to encourage the study of indigenous languages at ASU. This dissertation would not have been possible without my committee members, Karen L. Adams, Elly van Gelderen, and Elenore Long, whose inspiration, guidance, and feedback were instrumental during coursework and the writing of this dissertation. I also appreciate the hard work of the administrative staff and librarians at Arizona State University and at Hamilton College for their help and support. I am indebted to Seth Schermerhorn and Thomas Moss for their careful reading of my work, and to Ryna Moss for the numerous conversations on language use and for her invaluable support. Most of all, I would like to thank the participants in this study, who generously gave their time and their words, and who shared a part of their lives with me. Ahxéhee’. I am grateful for the generous support from the Jacobs Research Funds, the Philips Fund for Native American Research, Arizona State University’s Graduate and Professional Student Association’s JumpStart and Graduate Research Support Program, and the English Department Dissertation Fellowship. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER Page 1 INTRODUCTION...................................................................................................1 2 RESEARCH METHODS........................................................................................6 Background.........................................................................................................6 Preparation..........................................................................................................7 Participants..........................................................................................................9 Materials/Design...............................................................................................11 Procedure..........................................................................................................15 Data Analysis....................................................................................................18 Ethical Considerations and the Observer’s Paradox.........................................19 3 LITERATURE REVIEW......................................................................................22 The Current State of the Navajo Language.......................................................22 Education and Language Shift..........................................................................23 Theoretical Approaches to Navajo Language and Identity...............................26 Scholarship on Navajo English.........................................................................29 Stance, Enregisterment, and Navajo English....................................................32 4 ESSENTIALIZING NAVAJO IDENTITY: ICONICITY, RECURSIVITY, AND ERASURE IN NAVAJO’S COMPETITION WITH ENGLISH................35 Navajo Language, Identity, and Language Loss...............................................37 Language and Prestige: The Linguistic Choices of Navajo Youth...................48 Navajo Language in Discursive Competition with English..............................52 iv CHAPTER Page English Language Provides Opportunity..........................................................54 Navajo Identity: Denigrated and Demonized...................................................60 Criticism from Elders........................................................................................72 The Code Talkers Didn’t Talk About It, So Don’t Talk about It.....................83 5 THE VARIETY OF NAVAJO ENGLISH: CHARACTERISTIC FEATURES AND IDEOLOGIES OF USE.......................87 Features of Navajo English...............................................................................92 Theoretical Approaches to Navajo English....................................................116 Ideologies of Navajo English Usage...............................................................118 T-Release and Correctness..............................................................................123 6 CONCLUSION....................................................................................................132 7 REFERENCES....................................................................................................134 v Chapter 1: Introduction Much of the public discourse promoting Navajo language revitalization and language programs takes place in English, both on and off the reservation, as in many other indigenous communities whose heritage languages are endangered. Although Navajo language is commonly discussed as being central to the identity of a Navajo person, this ideology may lie in contradiction to the other linguistic and social means Navajos use to construct Navajo identities, which exist within a wide spectrum of demographic categories as well as communities of practice relating to religion, occupation, and other activities (Field, 2009; Baker and Bowie, 2010). The connection of language and identity is increasingly important as fewer and fewer children are learning Navajo as a first language. According to the Ethnologue (Lewis, Simons, & Fennig (Eds.), 2014), the Navajo language is spoken by 169,000 people, with 7,600 monolingual Navajo speakers. However, the shift to English is proceeding rapidly. The language is described as status 6b on a scale of 0 (used in many contexts) to 10 (not used); 6b represents a language being “in trouble”: Intergenerational transmission is in the process of being broken, but the child-bearing generation can still use the language so it is possible that revitalization efforts could restore transmission of the language in the home. (http://www.ethnologue.com/cloud/nav) This dissertation examines two sets of data: 1) interviews with eight Navajo individuals whose interests, academic studies, and/or occupations relate to the promotion of Navajo language use in connection with cultural and linguistic revitalization; and 2) public statements made in online forums discussing the language used by Navajos. The 1 interview data gathered consist of ten sociolinguistic (and open-ended conversational) interviews, culminating in over 13 hours of recorded data. The advocates being interviewed range widely in the ways in which they work on Navajo language advocacy. Two participants are former Miss Navajo winners, one participant is a software developer who created the Navajo Toddler App, and five others were university students or recent graduates studying indigenous rights, culture, or education. Due to the constraints agreed upon with Arizona State University’s Institutional Review Board, participants