Doctoral Dissertation Research: Discourse Forms and Social Categorization in Cha'palaa

这篇论文的研究将产生第一个广泛的文献和描述查帕拉语，由厄瓜多尔西北部沿海低地的土著查奇人说。它将把这些语言数据与拉丁美洲查奇族种族和民族结构的民族志描述联系起来，研究社会类别是如何通过社会互动产生和复制的。主要的研究问题是察帕拉语的语法资源是如何在察赤人关于自己和其他社会群体的话语中被激活的。回答这个问题需要将传统的长期民族志研究与描述语言学的方法结合起来，包括数字记录和存档、计算机转录和数据库程序等新技术。将考虑的主要数据将是Cha'palaa自然话语的广泛、转录、翻译和分析的录像语料库。该语料库将为语言描述和文化知识的记录提供丰富的数据，包括讲故事的传统、口述历史、生态知识、手工艺品、农业、政治组织和仪式日历。语料库将在几个地点存档，以供研究人员和社区成员保护和将来使用。论文将对这个语料库的一个特殊子集进行分析，重点是访谈和日常对话，其中查奇人讨论自己相对于其他社会群体，如他们的非裔厄瓜多尔邻居。这种分析将产生一种文化背景下语言的民族志描述和查帕拉语的语法草图，这将在以后形成完整语法的基础。大部分的数据输入和分析将在以英语为母语的顾问的帮助下完成，这些顾问接受大学的支持和培训。论文研究将形成与厄瓜多尔机构的未来工作的基础，以增加土著学生的教育机会。

This dissertation research will produce the first extensive documentation and description of the Cha'palaa language, spoken by the indigenous Chachi people of the coastal lowlands of northwestern Ecuador. It will link this linguistic data to an ethnographic account of Chachi constructions of race and ethnicity in Latin America, examining how social categories are produced and reproduced through social interaction. The primary research question asks how the resources of Cha'palaa grammar are activated in Chachi people's discourse about themselves and other social groups. Answering this question requires combining traditional long-term ethnographic research living in Chachi communities with the methodologies of descriptive linguistics, including new technologies such as digital recording and archiving and computer transcription and database programs. The primary data to be considered will be a broad, transcribed, translated and analyzed corpus of video recordings of natural discourse in Cha'palaa. This corpus will provide both rich data for linguistic description and a documentation of cultural knowledge, including traditions of storytelling, oral history, ecological knowledge, handcrafts, agriculture, political organization, and the ritual calendar. The corpus will be archived in several sites for safeguarding and future use by researchers and community members. The dissertation will undertake an analysis of a special subset of this corpus, focusing on interviews and everyday conversation in which Chachi people discuss themselves relative to other social groups such as their Afro-Ecuadorian neighbors. The analysis will produce an ethnographic account of language situated in cultural context and a grammatical sketch of Cha'palaa that will later form the basis of a full grammar. Much of the data entry and analysis will be done with the help of native speaker consultants who receive support and training for college. The dissertation research will form the basis for future work with Ecuadorian institutions to increase educational opportunities for indigenous students.