Table Of ContentSOCIO- AND STYLOLINGUISTIC PERSPECTIVES
ON AMERICAN INDIAN ENGLISH TEXTS
Guillermo Bartelt
Native American Studies
Volume 8
The Edwin Mellen Press
Lewiston•Queenston•Lampeter
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Bartelt, Guillermo.
Socio- and stylolinguistic perspectives on American Indian English texts / Guillermo Bartelt.
p. cm. — (Native American studies ; v. 8)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-7734-7346-7
1. Indians of North America—Languages. 2. English language—United States—Foreign
elements—Indian. 3. Indians of North America—Languages—Influence on English. 4.
English language—United States—Discourse analysis. 5. English language—Written
English—United States. 6. English language—Social aspects—United States. 7. Languages
in contact--United States. 8. Americanisms. I. Title. II. Series.
PE3102.155 B37 2001
420'.9'08997--dc2I
2001031604
This is volume 8 in the continuing series
Native American Studies
Volume 8 ISBN 0-7734-7346-7
NAS Series ISBN 0-88946-482-0
A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the British Library.
Copyright © 2001 Guillermo Bartelt
All rights reserved. For information contact
(cid:9)
The Edwin Mellen Press The Edwin Mellen Press
(cid:9)
Box 450 (cid:9) Box 67
Lewiston, New York Queenston, Ontario
(cid:9)
USA 14092-0450 CANADA LOS ILO
The Edwin Mellen Press, Ltd.
Lampeter, Ceredigion, Wales
UNITED KINGDOM SA48 8LT
Printed in the United States of America
To Lupe and the kids
Contents
Page
Preface
Foreword(cid:9) iii
Acknowledgements
Introduction(cid:9) 1
Part One: The Ethnography of Speaking
I. Syncretism in Cognitive Perspective(cid:9) 7
II. The Discourse of Intertribalism(cid:9) 23
III. Invocative Discourse(cid:9) 35
IV. Rhetorical Processes(cid:9) 45
V. Cultural Constraints on Metacognition(cid:9) 57
Part Two: The Ethnography of Writing
VI. Discourses of Assimilationism(cid:9) 69
VII. Interlingual Productions as Ethnolect (cid:9) 89
VIII. Indian English in the Native American Novel(cid:9) 101
IX. The Discourse of Geopiety(cid:9) 113
Conclusions(cid:9) 131
Appendix 1(cid:9) 135
Appendix 2(cid:9) 136
Appendix 3(cid:9) 137
Appendix 4(cid:9) 138
Appendix 5(cid:9) 140
Appendix 6(cid:9) 141
Appendix 7(cid:9) 142
References(cid:9) 143
Index(cid:9) 157
Preface
The relative neglect of research on American Indian English linguistics
and literature is quite surprising in view of early research by American
anthropology and linguistics. In the early 1900s, anthropological linguists such
as Boas, Bloomfield, and Sapir were fascinated with describing Native American
languages. In his introduction to the Handbook of American Indian Languages
(1911), for example, Boas emphasized the diversity of these languages and
pointed out the need for their independent linguistic analysis. For too long
researchers had artificially grouped unrelated Indian languages together, or
(worse still), attempted to describe them based on grammatical categories within
European languages.
The emerging field of world Englishes has also paid little attention to the
use of English by American Indian tribes. Discussion of the "nativization" of
English by American Indians is inadequate, and Kachru's model of concentric
circles fails to account for the unique relationship that has existed between
American Indians and speakers of a variety of colonial languages for the past four
hundred years.
Guillermo Bartelt's perspectives in this volume address the linguistic and
cultural systems employed by American Indians living in English-dominant
North America. This work focuses on the ethnography of speaking as well as
writing. Bartelt grapples with real-world challenges involved in American Indian
sociolinguistics, and thus his study is a fascinating example of the use of
linguistics as a critical tool used to analyze spoken and written discourse.
Bartelt has a unique perspective on American Indian communities. His interest
and contact with Indian tribes range from the Shoshone in Wyoming, to the Sioux
in South Dakota, to the Navajo and Apache in Arizona. Bartelt's previous work
on American Indian English linguistics and literatures considers a range of topics:
tense, aspect. and mood in Apachean English; Apachean English interlanguage;
boarding school language policy and the spread of English among Indians of the
American Southwest; American intertribal discourse; and linguistic features of
American Indian writers such as Scott Momaday. This text incorporates Bartelt's
research of the past twenty years. Bartelt views his research as an "attempt to
demystify cultural practices that utilize language as a vehicle to legitimize
particular sociocultural partialities."
I am particularly intrigued by Bartelt's treatment of the intertribal Indian
powwow in southern California within a cultural and linguistic framework. His
research reveals the potential of linguistics to describe and analyze spoken
discourse. Bartelt sees the powwow as an attempt by Indians to come to terms
with bicultural pressures. At the same time, he acknowledges that such intertribal
ceremonies risk threatening traditional tribal practices and may, in fact, further
threaten the remaining vestiges of Indian culture.
In my teaching at the university, I often point out examples of significant
contributions in applied and sociolinguistic research. Bartelt's study of American
Indian powwows or journalistic and literary documents is exemplary, for it
reveals numerous possibilities in analyzing spoken and written discourse
independently and collectively, it connects linguistics to real occurrences; and it
considers the inextricable link between language and culture.
John Battenburg, Professor
Coordinator
Graduate Program
TESL Certificate Program
English Department
California Polytechnic State University
ii
Foreword
The study of American Indian English has been central to my work as a
sociolinguist. In the 1970s, I found myself teaching English to American Indian
college students on the Rosebud Sioux Reservation in South Dakota and in
northern Arizona to students from the Navajo and White Mountain Apache
reservations. These initial teaching experiences prompted me to look beyond
Pedagogical issues and to pursue the wider picture through additional graduate
work at the University of Arizona, where I was fortunate to have as a teacher the
anthropological linguist Keith Basso. In subsequent years, my research led me to
a number of Indian English topics involving both spoken and written texts. The
present volume brings together some of that work, previous versions of which
have either been strewn about the sea of journal literature or have remained
unpublished conference papers.
Guillermo Bartelt
Simi Valley, California
Christmas, 2000
iii
Acknowledgements
I wish to thank the following publishers for permission to use in revised form
some of my previously published material:
The National Museum of Ethnography (Sweden): A cognitive semantic
framework for syncretism: The case of the southern California powwow.
Ethnos, 56, 53-66. 1991.
California Folklore Society: Amerindian English invocative discourse
layers. Western Folklore, 51, 189-197. 1992.
John Benjamins Publishing Company: Urban American Indian intertribal
discourse. English World-Wide, 14, 57-70. 1992.
Gunter Nan Verlag: Cultural constraints in L2 rhetorical processes. In G.
Bartelt (Ed.), The dynamics of language processes: Essays in honor of
Hans W. Dechert (pp. 161-172). 1994.
Trinity University: Interlingual productions in American Indian creative
writing. Language and Literature, 16, 1-12. 1991.
American Indian discourses of assimilationism. Language and Literature,
17, 59-75. 1991.
American Indian English in Momaday's House Made of Dawn. Language
and Literature, 19, 37-53. 1994.
American Indian geopiety in Scott Ivlomaday's discourse of the mora
landscape. Language and Literature, 23, 19-31. 1998.
