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

在Joel Sherzer博士的指导下，Leighton C.彼得森将为他的博士论文进行民族志研究，研究新技术对纳瓦霍语言和社会的影响。 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，纳瓦霍族是美国西南部传统上服务不足的地区。 本研究的重点是纳瓦霍语交际实践的后续转变，调查如何改变对语言和技术的信念和态度汇聚形成新的沟通方式。 这项研究将包括参与者观察，录音采访，以及与技术的在线和离线互动的视频和音频记录。 这项研究在几个方面具有重要意义。 首先，它将语言维护和社会语言学的科学研究带入新的领域，包括新媒体对土著和少数民族语言活力的潜力。 其次，本研究探讨了技术中介语言和文化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，特别是随着世界各地的土著和少数群体越来越多地利用新媒体进行自我表达和文化保护。 第三，本研究探讨旨在弥合数字鸿沟的方案的影响，调查边缘化社区的成员，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.