Doctoral Dissertation Research: Translating Hopi: Language Revitalization, Knowledge, and Property

由该奖项资助的研究将调查语言保护工作的潜力，以满足科学家和母语人士的需求，科学家可能领导语言文献和振兴工作，而母语人士的文化可能要求他们对自己的语言遗产拥有独家控制权。语言保存在科学上很重要，因为它为学习人类各种能力提供了原材料。语言也为人类在地球上的历史提供了重要线索。但是，个别语言是特定民族的知识财产，他们自己的需求和目标可能有很大的不同。因此，这项研究的发现对美国国内外的科学家、说语言的人和语言复兴专家都很重要。这项研究将由芝加哥大学人类学和语言学系的博士生汉娜·麦克尔贡负责，她的导师是贾斯汀·里奇兰博士。麦克尔贡将把重点放在一种重要的美洲土著语言--霍皮人的语言上，作为一个案例研究，通过它来探索不同的了解、拥有和控制一种语言的主张如何在学者、部落工作人员以及语言教师和学习者在语言振兴努力中聚集在一起时可能会汇聚或冲突。霍皮语为这项研究提供了一个特别合适的场所，因为大多数部落成员认为他们的语言是他们的专有知识财产。随着这种知识财产的到来，就有了将其传承下去的特权和责任。此外，霍皮保留地的振兴活动不仅包括语言的课堂教学和学习，还包括与档案机构就如何管理过去的语言文件工作的分发和提供进行谈判。作为这种融合的结果，通过语言振兴倡议产生了哪些与语言有关的知识、财产和方式？这些是否可以通过相应的修改扩展到新的环境中，包括新的人和文本对象，而不是关闭访问权限？这些关键问题将通过为期12个月的人种学田野调查、访谈和对霍皮人保留地和保留地外档案的参与者观察来探索。

The research funded by this award will investigate the potential for language preservation efforts to serve the needs of both scientists, who may lead the language documentation and revitalization efforts, and native speakers, whose cultures may mandate that they have sole control over their linguistic patrimony. Language preservation is scientifically important because it provides the raw materials for learning about the full range of human capacities. Languages also provide important clues to the history of humanity on earth. But individual languages are the knowledge-property of particular peoples whose own needs and goals may be quite different. Therefore, findings from this research will be important to scientists, language speakers, and language revitalization specialists throughout the United States and beyond.The research will be undertaken by Hannah McElgunn, a doctoral student in the Departments of Anthropology and Linguistics at the University of Chicago, who is supervised by Dr. Justin Richland. McElgunn will focus on an important indigenous American language, that of the Hopi people, as a case study through which to explore how different claims to know, own, and control a language may converge or conflict as scholars, tribal staff, and language teachers and learners are drawn together in language revitalization efforts. The Hopi language provides a particularly apt locus for this study because most tribal members think of their language as their exclusive knowledge-property. With this knowledge-property comes the privilege and responsibility to pass it down. Further, revitalization activities on the Hopi reservation include not only classroom teaching and learning of the language, but negotiations with archival institutions about how to manage the circulation and availability of past language documentation work. What kinds of knowledge, property, and ways of relating to language are produced through language revitalization initiatives as a result of this convergence? Can these be extended with concomitant modification into new environments, encompassing new people and textual objects, rather than closing off access? These crucial questions will be explored through twelve months of ethnographic fieldwork, interviews, and participant observation on the Hopi reservation and at off-reservation archives.