Doctoral Dissertation Research: New Technologies and Emerging Communicative Practices Among the Navajo

在Joel Sherzer博士的指导下，Leighton C. Peterson先生将为他关于新技术对纳瓦霍语言和社会的影响的博士论文进行人种学研究。私人倡议和联邦政策决定最近为纳瓦霍族提供了补贴手机和免费高速互联网连接，这是美国西南部一个传统上服务不足的地区。本研究的重点是纳瓦霍交际实践的后续转变，调查关于语言和技术的信仰和态度的变化如何汇聚形成新的交流方式。研究将包括参与观察、访谈记录、线上与线下科技互动的影像与录音。这项研究在几个方面意义重大。首先，它将语言维护和社会语言学的科学研究带入了新的领域，包括新媒体对土著和少数民族语言活力的潜力。其次，本研究考察了技术介导的语言和文化所涉及的微观和宏观层面的过程。这是语言人类学研究的一个重要领域，尤其是随着世界各地的土著和少数群体越来越多地参与新媒体的自我表现和文化保护。第三，本研究探讨了旨在弥合数字鸿沟的项目的影响，调查了边缘化社区的成员，新技术的接受者，实际上是如何得到服务的，以及这些新技术的使用如何影响他们。

Under the direction of Dr. Joel Sherzer, Mr. Leighton C. Peterson will conduct ethnographic research for his doctoral dissertation concerning the impact of new technologies on Navajo language and society. Private initiatives and Federal policy decisions have recently made subsidized cell phones and free high-speed Internet connections available to the Navajo Nation, a traditionally underserved area in the US Southwest. This study focuses on the subsequent shifts in Navajo communicative practice, investigating how changing beliefs and attitudes regarding language and technology converge to form new ways of communicating. The research will consist of participant observation, recorded interviews, and video and audio recording of on-line and off-line interactions with technology. This research is significant in several ways. First, it brings the scientific study of language maintenance and sociolinguistics into new areas, including the potential of new media for the vitality of indigenous and minority languages. Second, this research investigates the micro and macro level processes involved in technologically-mediated language and culture. This is an important area of inquiry in linguistic anthropology, especially as indigenous and minority groups around the world increasingly engage new media in efforts of self-representation and cultural preservation. Third, this research explores the impact of programs designed to bridge the digital divide, investigating how members of a marginalized community, the recipients of the new technologies, are actually being served, and how the use of these new technologies is affecting them.