UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles "When the dead are resurrected, how are we going to speak to them?": Jehovah's Witnesses and the Use of Indigenous Languages in the Globalizing Textual Community A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Anthropology by Jena Barchas-Lichtenstein 2013 © Copyright by Jena Barchas-Lichtenstein 2013 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION "When the dead are resurrected, how are we going to speak to them?": Jehovah's Witnesses and the Use of Indigenous Languages in the Globalizing Textual Community by Jena Barchas-Lichtenstein Doctor of Philosophy in Anthropology University of California, Los Angeles, 2013 Professor Paul V. Kroskrity, Chair In the face of global language contraction, unlikely allies are emerging to support language maintenance and revitalization. This dissertation demonstrates that the interest of many speakers in revitalizing the indigenous Mexican language Highland Oaxaca Chontal is connected to their faith as Jehovah's Witnesses, a new religious movement rooted in the global North. At the time of research, Witness religious meetings were the only high-status context – and the only public context – in which Chontal was consistently used. Moreover, new indexical connections between language and religion position knowledge of the language as a moral imperative rather than a matter of individual choice. That is, local Jehovah's Witnesses have begun using more Chontal as speaking this language has come to index devoutness. ii This religion is highly centralized and standardized: Witnesses obeyed instructions to use Chontal because these instructions bore the authority of the Watch Tower Society institution. This dissertation proposes the concept of the globalizing textual community, which synthesizes understandings of community from throughout social science literature, in order to explain how religious identity can supersede national, ethnic, and linguistic identities. In particular, I consider how members define their language practices as shared across externally imposed boundaries between language varieties. I build on Anderson's (1983) fundamental insight about the affordances of written texts to consider how translations are framed as commensurate or even identical, using community members' own logic as a guide. A textual regime of shared reading and shared literacy practices unites this community. If written texts afford standardization not only of content but also of literacy and mediational practices, translation represents the potential to challenge it. One chief mechanism for minimizing these challenges is the transidiomatic authoritative discourse of the "pure language." Other mechanisms include a variety of mediational performances (Bauman 2004) of written texts, institutional regulations and consequences, and textual ideologies. This dissertation explores both the particular ethnographic case and the institution behind many of this community's language ideologies and religious practices. I demonstrate that the enactment of Witness religious texts and the moral weight this enactment carries are, ultimately, inseparable from the language in which it is carried out. iii The dissertation of Jena Barchas-Lichtenstein is approved. Marjorie Harness Goodwin Pamela Munro Elinor Ochs Aaron Huey Sonnenschein Paul V. Kroskrity, Committee Chair University of California, Los Angeles 2013 iv TABLE OF CONTENTS One: Arriving 1 1.1 Arriving in Zapotitlán: The Projects We Choose and the Projects that Choose Us 1 1.2 Arriving at Kingdom Hall: "You Came to Study Chontal, but You Are Studying the Truth, Too" 7 1.3 Arriving at Methods: An Overview 16 1.4 Chapter Overview 20 Two: The Totalizing, Globalizing Textual Community 23 2.1 The Anthropology of Christianity 24 2.2 Missionary Linguistics and Bible Translation 28 2.2.1 Missionary Linguistics, Bible Translation, and the History of Indigenous Languages in Colonial Latin America 28 2.2.2 Modern Missionary Linguistics: Academia, SIL, and Ideologies of Translation 32 2.3 Community 37 2.3.1 Models of Community Based on Shared Communicative Resources 38 2.3.2 From Speech Community to Community of Practice 39 2.3.3 Models of Community Based on Mass Media 40 2.3.4 The Interpretive Community 41 2.3.5 The Textual Community 42 2.4 Linguistic Economies, Literacies, Textual Economies, and Textual Regimes 45 2.4.1 (Political) Economy of Language 45 2.4.2 Literacies 48 2.4.3 Textual Economies 52 2.4.4 Textual Regimes 54 2.5 Participation 55 2.5.1 Writing, Translation, and Authorship 57 2.6 Language Choice and Moral Personhood 59 2.7 Jehovah's Witnesses: A Totalizing, Globalizing Textual Community 61 2.7.1 Implications for Chontal 64 2.7.2 Implications for Language Maintenance and Education 67 2.7.3 Implications for the Anthropology of Christianity 67 Three: Introducing Santa María Zapotitlán and the Watch Tower Society 69 3.1 Santa María Zapotitlán: The Community 69 3.1.1 Location and Geography 69 3.1.2 Community Institutions 71 3.1.2.1 Political Institutions 71 3.1.2.2 Cultural Institutions 72 v 3.1.2.3 Educational Institutions 74 3.1.3 Households 75 3.1.3.1 Physical Characteristics 75 3.1.3.2 Social Characteristics 76 3.1.3.3 Resident Outsiders 77 3.1.4 Economic Life 78 3.1.4.1 Work 78 3.1.4.2 Government Aid 79 3.1.4.3 Communal Labor 80 3.1.5 Political Life 80 3.1.6 Religious Life 81 3.1.6.1 Jehovah's Witnesses 82 3.1.7 Language 85 3.1.7.1 Sociolinguistics 85 3.1.7.2 Structure and Classification of Chontal 87 3.1.7.3 Local Spanish 89 3.1.8 Zapotitlán in the Sierra Chontal, the Isthmus, Oaxaca State, Mexico, and the World 90 3.2 Jehovah's Witnesses, Worldwide and in Mexico: Historical Background 93 3.2.1 Jehovah's Witnesses in Mexico 96 3.3 Secondary Research Sites Outside Zapotitlán 99 Four: "We Have Just Started Looking for the Words": Language Ideologies in the Chontal Speech Community 102 4.1 Language Ideologies 102 4.1.1 Language Ideologies, Native Americans, and Language Shift 104 4.2 Ideologies about Speech and Speaking 105 4.2.1 Speaking 105 4.2.2 Knowing 108 4.2.3 Translating (and Interpreting): Finding Words 109 4.3 Ideologies about Form and Language 113 4.3.1 The Salience of Words and Nouns 113 4.3.2 Purism: Older is Better 117 4.4 Ideologies about Language Learning 120 4.4.1 The Role of Parents 120 4.4.2 Interactions with Children 122 4.4.3 Writing and Learning 123 4.4.4 Scaffolding for Non-Speakers 123 4.5 Evaluative Stances 124 4.5.1 The Sacred 124 4.5.2 The Profane 125 4.5.3 Different Codes: Chontal and Spanish 127 4.5.3.1 What is Chontal Good For? 127 4.5.3.2 Who Speaks Spanish, and Who Speaks Chontal? 130 vi 4.5.3.3 What is Chontal Like? 131 4.6 Ideologies about Text and Writing 132 4.6.1 Literate Epistemology: Books as Sources of Knowledge 132 4.6.2 Authoritative Genres and Institutions 134 4.6.3 Text as Literal Authority 135 4.7 Ideologies about Chontal-Language Texts and Expertise 138 4.7.1 Local Initiatives, Authority, and Iconicity 138 4.7.2 Outside Initiatives: The Chontal-English-Spanish Dictionary 139 4.7.3 "There used to exist a book, Chontal, legitimate Chontal" 143 4.8 Patterns Across Ideologies 145 4.9 Language as Concrete, Discrete, and Absolute 147 Five: The "Pure Language" Community 149 5.1 The Pure Language as Language 151 5.1.1 From Pure Language to Human Languages at Babel, and Back Again 151 5.1.2 "It's not an idioma [human language], it's a symbolic lenguaje [system of communication]" 152 5.1.3 Authoritative Discourse 153 5.1.4 The Pure Language as Transidiomatic 155 5.2 The Pure Language as Pure: Structural, Denotational, and Social Purism 156 5.3 The "Pure Language" Community as Imagined Community 160 5.4 Linguistic Relativity: Language, Thought, and Affect 162 5.5 The "Pure Language" Community in External Perspective 164 Six: "Spiritual Food at the Appropriate Time": Ideologies of the Witness Textual Regime 165 6.1 Textual Economies and Regimes 165 6.2 The Divine Name 167 6.3 Biblical Inerrancy 170 6.4 Translation and Translators 176 6.5 Authorship and Recognition 181 6.6 (Not) Just the Bible 184 6.7 A Singular Correct Interpretation, a Single Interpreter 190 6.8 Religion as Logic 195 vii Seven: Performance and Participation 198 7.1 Mediational Performances and New Participant Roles 199 7.2 Activities with a Witness Audience 206 7.2.2 Congregation Bible Study and Watchtower Study: Question and Answer Format 209 7.2.3 The Service Meeting 212 7.2.4 The Theocratic Ministry School: Learning to Preach, Learning a Relationship to Text 216 7.2.6 Family Worship 223 7.3 Activities with No Witness Audience 223 7.3.1 Door-to-Door Ministry 224 7.3.2 Home Bible Study 225 7.3.3 Back Stage with No Audience at All: Preparation for Public Activities 236 7.4 Prayer 237 7.5 Mind the (Intertextual) Gap: Texts and the Incomplete Determination of Interpretation 239 Eight: "When the Dead Are Resurrected, How Are We Going to Speak to Them?": The Once and Future Chontal Language Community 242 8.1 History 243 8.2 Motivations for the Use of Chontal 250 8.2.1 The Mother Tongue: "to touch the fibers of their heart with the Biblical message" 250 8.2.2 Resurrection: "We will see our grandparents and great-grandparents face to face" 255 8.3 Monolingualism and the Genetic Fallacy 268 8.3.1 The Ideal of Synchronic Chontal Monolingualism 268 8.3.2 "It takes a lot of effort.