Challenging "Extinction" through Modern Miami Language Practices
Challenging "Extinction" through Modern Miami Language Practices
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通过现代迈阿密语言实践挑战“灭绝”
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发表时间：
2011
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通讯作者：
Wesley Y. Leonard
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作者：
Wesley Y. Leonard
这篇文章最重要的部分不是它对实际迈阿密语言实践的讨论，而是这个故事需要被讲述的元问题。它代表了一系列的调查结果，虽然在很大程度上是不言自明的，但挑战了一种共同的话语，即美洲印第安人的文化和语言被冻结在过去，只有在相对于与他们的过去有关的某种感知规范不变的情况下才是真实的。由于这种论述，现在的故事变得比它本来可能的更加反常。迈阿密语是印第安纳州的阿尔冈琴语系语言，当时有数千人声称使用这种语言，在《民族学》等广泛查阅的资料中，这种语言已被称为“灭绝”。1然而，在迈阿密人的语言库中，这种语言仍然存在。2 2007年迈阿密语言和文化青年夏令营结束时，一名12岁的参与者在困惑中提出了这个悖论，她问道：“如果米亚米亚语是一种死语言，我们怎么能说它呢？”由于20世纪90年代开始的一场强有力的语言复兴运动，许多迈阿密人，包括我自己，不仅声称自己继承了我们的语言，而且实际上也在不同程度上使用这种语言，尽管它被认为是混乱的。3正是出于这个原因，迈阿密语言使用的故事证实了菲利普·德洛里亚在《意想不到的印第安人》中发展和解构的主题
The most important part of this article is not its discussion of actual Miami language practices, but rather the meta-issue that the story needs to be told at all. It represents a series of findings that, although largely selfevident, challenge a common discourse in which American Indian cultures and languages are frozen in the past and are authentic only if unchanged relative to some perceived norm associated with their past. Because of this discourse, the present story becomes even more anomalous than it might otherwise be. Miami, an Algonquian language indigenous to Indiana and claimed by a contemporary population of several thousand people, has been termed “extinct” in widely consulted sources such as the Ethnologue.1 However, myaamia continues to exist in the linguistic repertoire of the Miami people.2 A twelve-year-old participant at the conclusion of a 2007 Miami language and cultural youth camp addressed this paradox in her puzzlement by asking, “If myaamia was a dead language, how would we be able to speak it?” Because of a robust language-reclamation effort that began during the 1990s, many Miami people, myself included, not only claim heritage to our language but also actually speak it to varying degrees, despite its supposed demise.3 It is for this reason that the story of Miami language use exemplifies the theme that Philip Deloria develops and deconstructs in Indians in Unexpected