Copyright by Nicole Rae Seifert 2013 The Dissertation Committee for Nicole Rae Seifert Certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: The Cross-Cultural Classroom in the Context of Radical Language Shift: Humor, Teasing, and the Ethnolinguistic Repertoire in the Blackfeet Nation Committee: Anthony C. Woodbury, Supervisor Anthony K. Webster Lars Hinrichs Megan J. Crowhurst Patience L. Epps The Cross-Cultural Classroom in the Context of Radical Language Shift: Humor, Teasing, and the Ethnolinguistic Repertoire in the Blackfeet Nation by Nicole Rae Seifert, B.A., M.A. Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin May 2013 Dedication For the students of ‘Gopher Peaks.’ Acknowledgments I would like to thank the staff, teachers, community, and especially the students of ‘Gopher Peaks,’ for talking with me and sharing their day-to-day lives with me. I look warmly on my time at the school. I am grateful to the principal/superintendent for welcoming me to the school and community and for helping me shape my research. I am also grateful to the English and shop teachers for allowing me to observe their classrooms and for sharing their experiences with me. Thanks also go to Darrell Kipp and Lester Johnson for taking the time to meet with me and talk with me. I am lucky to have had excellent advisers and peers throughout my graduate career. Working with Dr. Lisa Green gave me an excellent foundation for understanding language variation. Dr. Qing Zhang has been a great support and mentor to me, and her ideas and input were integral to this research. Dr. Anthony Woodbury was the perfect kind of supervisor—he provided guidance while enabling me to find my own intellectual path. His intellectual flexibility and ability to see right to the heart of an issue are amazing. I thank my other committee members, Dr. Anthony Webster, Dr. Lars Hinrichs, Dr. Megan Crowhurst, and Dr. Patience Epps, for providing thoughtful feedback and pointing me toward relevant research. I want to thank Benjamin Rapstine for his help over the years, especially in helping me coordinate my work long distance. Thanks also go to Douglas Bigham and Jessica White-Sustaíta, who helped make my early graduate years some of the most fun of my life, and to Rachelle Adams, an inspiration. Finally, I would like thank my family. My parents, Dale and Marilyn Seifert, have always been supportive of my choices and trusted in me; you are great parents. Also thank you to my sister, Darla Baliko, for always being there. Thanks to my in-laws, Joyce v and Christopher Hobbins, who have been a great support and who understood what finishing would mean to me. I could not have done this without the love and support in every way from my wonderful husband, Aaron Hobbins. And thank you to my children, Georgie and Hugh, for putting up with my time away: You are the joy of my life, and you and your Papa mean the world to me. This research was supported by National Science Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant BCS-0819568 and a University of Texas at Austin Continuing Fellowship. vi The Cross-Cultural Classroom in the Context of Radical Language Shift: Humor, Teasing, and the Ethnolinguistic Repertoire in the Blackfeet Nation Nicole Rae Seifert, PhD The University of Texas at Austin, 2013 Supervisor: Anthony C. Woodbury In this dissertation, I analyze classroom interactions between a White, nonlocal high school English teacher and American Indian students on the Blackfeet Nation in Montana. I focus on the participants’ strategic use of humor and distinctive linguistic features in these interactions, particularly teasing as a cultural activity among the students, the teacher’s immersion and adaptation to that culture, and the affective and sociocultural importance of the ethnolinguistic repertoire to the students. I argue that the main functions of the humor and teasing are threefold: (a) to build rapport, (b) to accomplish interactional goals in the classroom, and (c) to negotiate teacher–student power struggles in a socioculturally acceptable way. I show that the students’ humor and discourse is constitutive of local culture and often counterhegemonic, implicitly and at times explicitly critiquing mainstream educational practices and the marginalized status of the students. My analysis considers the data from a discourse level as well as examines the indexical and patterned use of microlevel linguistic resources from the student’s ethnolinguistic repertoire—specifically, distinctive interjections and scooped-accent intonation. The primary data is naturally occurring classroom discussions, complemented by individual and group interviews and ethnographic observations. vii This study points to the importance of sociocultural factors in language variation and change in communities undergoing or having undergone radical language shift. It thus adds to the literature that considers how cultural practices are disrupted and may be restructured as the linguistic code changes. This research also contributes to the research that details the difficulties nonmainstream students face in public schools when their home culture and language practices are at odds with those of the school, and it examines humor and teasing as student strategies to navigate these differences. This study aims to help paint a more complete picture of the contemporary social and linguistic contexts in which American Indian speakers live, with a mind toward how this understanding can be applied to the real-world circumstances of these youth viii Table of Contents List of Tables ....................................................................................................... xiii List of Figures ...................................................................................................... xiv Chapter 1: Introduction ...........................................................................................1 1.1. Data .......................................................................................................2 1.2. Significance of the School as a Research Site .......................................3 1.3. Overview of the Dissertation .................................................................4 Chapter 2: Background: Theory ..............................................................................6 2.1. Research on Humor..................................................................................6 2.1.1. General Literature on Humor and Teasing ..................................6 2.1.2. Indian Humor: Joking and Teasing ..............................................9 2.1.3. Relationships Between Humor and Culture ...............................13 2.2. Style .......................................................................................................14 2.3. Identity and Ethnicity .............................................................................17 2.3.1. Identity .......................................................................................17 2.3.2. Ethnic Identity ............................................................................19 2.4. Language Shift, Heritage Languages, and English ................................21 2.5. Native Americans in the Classroom ......................................................24 2.5.1. Overview of Relevant American Indian Education Research ...24 2.5.2. Humor in the Native American Classroom ................................26 2.6. Summary ................................................................................................27 Chapter 3: Background: Site and Methods ...........................................................29 3.1. Research Site ..........................................................................................29 3.1.1. Demographic and Linguistic Overview of Research Site ..........29 3.1.2. Research at Gopher Peaks High .................................................30 3.1.3. A Blackfeet Nation High School ...............................................34 3.2. Methods of Data Collection ...................................................................35 3.2.1. Initial Meetings With Teachers, Students, and Pilot Study .......36 ix 3.2.2. My Rapport With Teachers and Students ..................................40 3.2.3. Naturally Occurring Classroom Interactional Data ...................41 3.2.4. Interview Data ............................................................................43 3.2.4. Visual Semiotic Data and Fieldnotes .........................................44 3.3. Methods of Analysis ..............................................................................45 3.3.1. Transcription ..............................................................................45 3.3.2. Qualitative Analysis ...................................................................46 3.3.3. Examples of Features Analyzed.................................................47 3.3.4. Ethnic Labels .............................................................................48 Chapter 4: Humor, Teasing, and Cultural Conflict ................................................50 4.1. Introduction ............................................................................................50 4.2. Descriptions and Analyses of Teasing Among Students .......................50 4.2.1. Progression of Teasing