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Socio and Stylo Linguistic Perspectives on American Indian English Texts

Author: 
Year:
Pages:176
ISBN:0-7734-7346-7
978-0-7734-7346-1
Price:$159.95
The emerging theme is the (re)construction of American Indian tribal identities in terms of a newly created intertribal consciousness in an urban setting. The work introduces an ethnography of writing approach not only as a contribution to the intersection of linguistics and literature in general but as a valid approach to American Indian texts in particular.

Reviews

“. . . this readable book is a beautifully woven treatise about how American Indians use English to mark their sameness and their difference, to praise, to exhort, to pray, to express themselves, and to teach the young people about the old and proper ways of doing things. Building on research in anthropology, linguistics, discourse analysis, and cognitive psychology, Bartelt gives a concise treatment of selected texts produced by American Indian speakers and writers in authentic contexts. . . . he has worked with texts based on many existing discourses, ranging from welcoming speeches at a powwow to prayers to political treatises on Indian education of the early 1900’s. His analyses examine utterances and writings from members of several different tribes across more than a century of inter-cultural contact – a context producing varied and fascinating texts, covering topics of honor, gratitude, oppression, patriotism, faith, heroism, family values, and tribal loyalties. . . . The appendices alone will serve as a source of data for scholars who wish to check the author’s analyses or to conduct further studies of these and other American Indian texts.” – Prof. Kathleen M. Bailey, Monterey Institute of International Studies

”. . . extremely interesting. . . will attract a wide readership among sociolinguists, anthropologists, and others interested in Native Americans’ adoption of, and adaptation to, the ways of speaking of the majority culture they have come, willingly or not, to be a part of. . . . offers a provocative insight into Native American ways of thinking and experiencing, and it is a welcome addition to the still scanty growing body of literature on how those ways are evoked and communicated in the adopted English of the first Americans.” – Prof. Beverly Olson Flanigan, Ohio University

Table of Contents

Preface
Foreword
Introduction
Part One: The Ethnography of Speaking
1. Syncretism in Cognitive Perspective
2. The Discourse of Intertribalism
3. Invocative Discourse
4. Rhetorical Processes
5. Cultural Constraints on Metacognition
Part Two: The Ethnography of Writing
6. Discourses of Assimilationism
7. Interlingual Productions as Ethnolect
8. Indian English in the Native American Novel
9. The Discourse of Geopiety
Conclusions
Appendix 1