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言，由土著查奇人所说的厄瓜多尔西北部沿海低地。它将把这些语言数据与拉丁美洲查奇人的种族和族裔结构的人种学描述联系起来，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，查帕拉语法的资源是如何在查奇人关于他们自己和其他社会群体的话语中被激活的。回答这一问题需要将生活在查奇社区的传统长期人种学研究与描述语言学的方法论结合起来，包括数字记录和存档以及计算机转录和数据库程序等新技术。要考虑的主要数据将是一个广泛的、转录、翻译和分析的查帕拉自然话语视频记录语料库。该语料库将为语言描述提供丰富的数据，并记录文化知识，包括讲故事的传统、口述历史、生态知识、手工艺、农业、政治组织和仪式日历。语料库将被存档在几个地点，以供研究人员和社区成员保护和未来使用。本文将对这一语料库中的一个特殊子集进行分析，重点放在查奇人与其他社会群体(如他们的非裔厄瓜多尔邻居)之间的访谈和日常对话中。这一分析将产生对文化语境中的语言的民族志描述，以及查帕拉的语法草图，这将在以后形成完整的语法基础。大部分数据输入和分析将在母语为英语的顾问的帮助下完成，这些顾问接受大学支持和培训。论文研究将成为今后与厄瓜多尔机构合作增加土著学生受教育机会的基础。

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.