Language, meaning, modernity, and doowop

Samuels, David

doi:10.1515/semi.2004.031

Cited by 17 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 9 publications

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“…Of all the residents of the reservation, the editors chose the profile of Francis Uplegger, the Lutheran missionary, as the lead article for the issue. 4 I have discussed elsewhere some of the ideological effects of this process in modernizing Europe and the United States (Samuels 2004a), arguing that rationalizing ideologies marginalize such practices as vocables and scat singing in favor of the rational, if arbitrary, practices of referentiality. See the references therein; also Urban 2001, Certeau 1996.…”

Section: O N C L U S I O N : R a T I O N A L I Z A T I O N A N D R mentioning

confidence: 99%

Bible translation and medicine man talk: Missionaries, indexicality, and the “language expert” on the San Carlos Apache Reservation

Samuels¹

2006

Lang. Soc.

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A B S T R A C TThis article sketches the effects of 100 years of missionary presence on how people in the San Carlos Apache community regard language and the idea of a "language expert." Evangelical Christian practice demands an Apache language emptied of all indexical associations with non-Christian Apache cultural practices. The reservation is home to perhaps two dozen missions and churches, each of which takes a slightly different view of the role of Apache language and culture in religious practice. In an exploration of the translation practices of Phillip Goode, a San Carlos Apache interpreter, and of early Lutheran missionaries on the reservation, it is argued that Bible translation is a key factor in shifting ideas about language as a purely referential system on the reservation. This shifting language ideology has repercussions on how people in the community consider the prospects for language revitalization. (San Carlos Apache, missionaries, language ideology, translation.)

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Section: O N C L U S I O N : R a T I O N A L I Z A T I O N A N D R mentioning

confidence: 99%

Bible translation and medicine man talk: Missionaries, indexicality, and the “language expert” on the San Carlos Apache Reservation

Samuels¹

2006

Lang. Soc.

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“…Or they can use the discourse of unintelligibility 'as ways to back-talk' (Samuels 2004: 300) Indonesian hegemonic ideologies of semantic transparency and grammatical rationality. Or they can use the discourse of unintelligibility 'as ways to back-talk' (Samuels 2004: 300) Indonesian hegemonic ideologies of semantic transparency and grammatical rationality.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Words on the lips and meanings in the stomach: Ideologies of unintelligibility and theories of metaphor in Toraja ritual speech

Donzelli¹

2007

Text &Amp; Talk - An Interdisciplinary Journal of Language, Discourse Communication Studies

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Previous studies have shown how forms of speech endowed with di¤erent types of unintelligibility have multiple consequences on social life. Semantic ambiguity and indirectness have been variously interpreted as means to promote social cohesion and avoid political conflict (Atkinson 1984;Brenneis 1984); essential technologies for the reproduction of hierarchical conceptions of knowledge and social stratification (Bloch 1975); or important devices for gender di¤erentiation (Keenan [Ochs] 1974). This paper argues for the coexistence within the Toraja community of upland Sulawesi (Indonesia) of multiple ideologies of unintelligibility concerning the local ancestral language. Increasing involvement in global flows of money and people and exposure to new languages such as Indonesian and English trigger the production of new orders of unintelligibility, which can be used for di¤erent purposes by di¤erent social groups. While the traditional cultural elite attempts to preserve its privileged position by appealing to an ideology of intelligibility grounded on highly conventional metaphors, the nonexperts react through several counterdiscourses of marginality. They highlight their exclusion from the cultural elite through a negatively charged notion of unintelligibility as insincerity, or they craft new forms of inclusion through an ideology of ethnic pride grounded on a positive representation of unintelligibility as semantic richness.

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“…But to bring up punning in a discussion of linguistic relativities might seem too much! Such a view is conditioned, as our modernist conceits so well described by Bauman and Briggs (2003) and Samuels (2004b) suggests, on the low standing of puns in the serious work of language. But punning is, after all, and to borrow the term from Samuels (2001), a form of phonological iconicity.…”

Section: In Favor Of Soundmentioning

confidence: 94%

The poetry of sound and the sound of poetry: Navajo poetry, phonological iconicity, and linguistic relativity

Webster

2015

Semiotica

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This article takes seriously Edward Sapir's observation about poetry as an example of linguistic relativity. Taking my cue from Dwight Bolinger's "word affinities," this article reports on the ways sounds of poetry evoke and convoke imaginative possibilities through phonological iconicity. In working with Navajos in translating poetry, I have come to appreciate the sound suggestiveness of that poetry and the imaginative possibilities that are bound up in the sounds of Navajo. It seems that just such sound suggestiveness via phonological iconicity and the ways they orient our imaginations are a crucial locus for thinking through linguistic relativities.

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Language, meaning, modernity, and doowop

Cited by 17 publications

References 9 publications

Bible translation and medicine man talk: Missionaries, indexicality, and the “language expert” on the San Carlos Apache Reservation

Bible translation and medicine man talk: Missionaries, indexicality, and the “language expert” on the San Carlos Apache Reservation

Words on the lips and meanings in the stomach: Ideologies of unintelligibility and theories of metaphor in Toraja ritual speech

The poetry of sound and the sound of poetry: Navajo poetry, phonological iconicity, and linguistic relativity

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