Telling stories in the face of danger : language renewal in Native American communities / edited by Paul V. Kroskrity.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Kroskrity, Paul V., 1949-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Indians--Languages--Social aspects.

Indians.

Language and culture--America.

Language and culture.

Ideology--America.

Ideology.

Indigenous peoples--Ethnic identity.

Indigenous peoples.

Indians--Ethnic identity.

Anthropological linguistics--America.

Anthropological linguistics.

Indigenous peoples--Social life and customs.

Indians--Social life and customs.

Indians--Languages.

America.

Physical Description:

xi, 269 pages : illustrations, maps ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Norman : University of Oklahoma Press, [2012]

Summary:

Stories are important in all human societies, and especially in those whose languages are threatened with extinction. "They aren't just entertainment," writes Laguna Pueblo novelist Leslie Marmon Silko in Cermony. "They are all we have ... to fight off illness and death. You don't have anything if you don't have the stories." The contributors to this volume, all linguists and linguistic anthropologists concerned with the revitalization of indigenous languages, draw on that understanding as they explore Native American storytelling both as a response to and a symptom of language endangerment. Edited by Paul V. Kroskrity, the essays show how traditional stories, and their nontraditional written descendants, such as poetry and graphic novels, help to maintain Native cultures and languages.

Highlighting language renewal programs, Telling Stories in the Face of Danger presents case studies from various North American communities that show tribal stories as vehicles of moral development, healing, and the construction of identity. Several essays presented here describe successful efforts to maintain, revitalize, and renew narrative traditions or to adapt them to new institutions, such as schools. Book jacket.

Contents:

Sustaining stories : narratives as cultural resources in Native American projects of cultural sovereignty, identity maintenance, and language revitalization / Paul V. Kroskrity

Kiowa stories express tribal memory, ideology and being / Gus Palmer Jr.

You're talking English, Grandma : language ideologies, narratives, and Southern Paiute linguistic and cultural reproduction / Pamela A. Bunte

The politics of storytelling in northwestern California : ideology, identity, and maintaining narrative distinction in the face of cultural convergence / Sean O'Neill

Tales of tradition and stories of syncretism in Kiowa language revitalization / Amber A. Neely

Kumiai stories : bridges between the oral tradition and classroom practice / Margaret C. Field

They don't know how to ask : pedagogy, storytelling, and the ironies of language endangerment on the White Mountain Apache Reservation / M. Eleanor Nevins and Thomas J. Nevins

Growing with stories : ideologies of storytelling and the narrative reproduction of Arizona Tewa identities / Paul V. Kroskrity

Silence before the void : language extinction, Maliseet storytelling, and the semiotics of survival / Bernard C. Perley

To give an imagination to the listener : replicating proper ways of speaking in and through contemporary Navajo poetry / Anthony K. Webster.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 229-259) and index.

ISBN:

9780806142272

0806142278

OCLC:

741937763