Doctoral Dissertation Research: Bilingualism and Spatialization in Spanish and Zapotec

研究生Melanie McComsey（加州大学圣地亚哥分校），在John B博士的指导下。哈维兰将在墨西哥瓦哈卡的Juchitán与双语儿童进行语言和人种学研究。该研究是对语言人类学的一个主要问题，即语言，思维和行为的交叉点的创新方法。这项研究将侧重于使用空间语言和手势的儿童谁是西班牙语和Juchitán Zapotec双语。我们的目标是了解语言接触对空间沟通的影响，以及这些影响对语言变化的影响。该项目采用了从实践和多模态互动的角度而不是从“思想”的角度来探讨语言相对性问题的方法。“通过结合微观民族志观察和任务来引出空间语言和手势，研究人员将收集参与者的视频数据，以了解（1）单语西班牙语成年人与单语萨波特克语成年人在空间概念的概念化方面是否不同（2）双语儿童与这两组儿童在每种语言中关于空间的说话和手势方面的比较;（3）双语儿童两种语言系统在语义和语法上的趋同是否会影响他们在萨波特克语中的交际能力。本研究对教师和教育管理者设计教学计划具有实际意义。语言维护，振兴和双语教育的项目目前正在寻求新的方法和模式，并可能发现这项研究的结果是有价值的，因为它涉及到语言习得，变化和转变。教育工作者和研究人员可能会发现，社会化实践而不是识字是语言和文化再生产的更重要场所。 此外，该项目还将提供关于墨西哥一个少数土著群体所讲的一种很少得到研究的语言的描述性数据，并将让Juchiteco土著研究助理参与，他们可能会从学习其语言结构和语言转录中受益。

Graduate student Melanie McComsey (University of California, San Diego), under the guidance of Dr. John B. Haviland, will conduct linguistic and ethnographic research with bilingual children in Juchitán, Oaxaca, Mexico. The research is an innovative approach to a primary problem of linguistic anthropology, the intersection of language, thinking and behavior. The study will focus on the use of spatial language and gesture by children who are bilingual in Spanish and Juchitán Zapotec. The goal is to understand the effects of language contact on communication about space and the implications of these effects for language change. The project employs methodologies developed to approach the problem of linguistic relativity from the perspective of practice and multimodal interaction rather than "thought." Using a combination of micro-ethnographic observation and tasks to elicit spatial language and gesture, the researchers will collect video data of participants in order to understand (1) whether monolingual Spanish-speaking adults differ from monolingual Zapotec-speaking adults in their conceptualization of spatial concepts (as evidenced by their gestures that accompany speaking); (2) how bilingual children compare to these two groups in their speaking and gesturing about space in each language; and (3) whether semantic or grammatical convergence of the bilingual children's two linguistic systems affects their communicative competence in Zapotec.The proposed research has practical implications for teachers and educational administrators who may use the findings to design educational programs. Projects of language maintenance, revitalization, and bilingual education are currently seeking new approaches and models, and may find the results of this research valuable as it pertains to language acquisition, change and shift. Educators and researchers may discover that socialization practices rather than literacy are more important sites of linguistic and cultural reproduction. In addition, the project will contribute descriptive data on a little-studied language spoken by a minority indigenous group in Mexico, and will involve native Juchiteco research assistants who may benefit from learning about the structure of their language and about linguistic transcription.