Reviving Indigenous Voices: Ideologies, Narratives, and Methods
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2013
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Swarthmore College. Dept. of Linguistics
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Thesis (B.A.)
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Abstract
Recently, the loss of indigenous languages worldwide has accelerated due to increased
globalization and cross-cultural contact. North American indigenous languages have been
especially vulnerable because native people in the U.S. and Canada lost their land and traditional
livelihood involuntarily. Historically, these groups have been oppressed and disenfranchised by
forces of national politics that have impinged on their indigenous sovereignty. Today,
indigenous communities throughout North America are reclaiming their land, cultural identity,
and political autonomy (Hinton and Hale 2001). For many of these communities, efforts toward
language revitalization are part of a larger effort to maintain and revitalize cultural heritage.
This thesis examines community-based language revitalization efforts in four Native
communities from across the United States: (1) Siletz Dee-ni, of Western Oregon, (2)
Passamaquoddy of Northern Maine, (3) Lenape, historically of Eastern Pennsylvania and
Northern Delaware, and (4) Washo of Nevada and California. To better understand how
indigenous language advocates promote increased interest, pride in, and use of their heritage
languages, I investigate the ways in which language attitudes and ideologies inform revitalization
efforts. I draw my data from primary interviews co-conducted by myself (Siletz, Lenape) and
from secondary materials from interviews collected by other scholars (Passamaquoddy, Washo)
with key language advocates. I coded these interviews for common themes, and identified (a)
language attitudes, (b) ideologies, and (c) strategies for effective linguistic and cultural
revitalization, all embedded in the statements of these language advocates. With the hope of
illuminating the ways in which language attitude and ideology influence the strategies used, and
even affect the efficacy of revitalization, I identified six critical factors to investigate further:
accommodation to English, technology, strategy, property, ineffability, and indigenous
worldview.
I propose my own research as a remedy to a gap in the literature on language
endangerment and revitalization: namely, that it often omits first-person narrative accounts of
endangerment, revitalization, and language attitude and ideology. I discuss whether advocates
accept Anglicized pronunciations of indigenous words, and how they accommodate English
speakers when teaching their heritage languages. I examine the role of technology, with a
particular emphasis on online talking dictionaries. I look at the dictionaries as a medium of
language transmission, and use them as the basis for a brief investigation into lexical
acculturation in three of my four case studies. I also consider strategies for teaching and
maintaining indigenous language. In an effort to illuminate some of the unique insights that are
gained when Native voices are added to the discourse on language revitalization, I discuss the
value of language as an inherited cultural property, and consider the unique cultural and
linguistic nuances that cannot be translated into another language effectively. I demonstrate the
value of including Native narratives by showing that language revitalization is part of a larger
effort to retain and celebrate indigenous identity and worldview.