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

该奖项资助的研究将调查语言保护工作的潜力，以满足可能领导语言文献和振兴工作的科学家和母语使用者的需求，他们的文化可能要求他们对自己的语言遗产拥有唯一的控制权。语言保存在科学上很重要，因为它为学习人类的各种能力提供了原始材料。语言也为人类在地球上的历史提供了重要的线索。但是，个别语言是特定民族的知识财产，他们自己的需要和目标可能完全不同。因此，这项研究的发现对美国和其他地区的科学家、语言使用者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（Hannah McElgunn）承担，贾斯汀·里奇兰博士（Justin Richland）将指导她。McElgunn将专注于一个重要的美国土著语言，即霍皮人，作为一个案例研究，通过它来探讨如何不同的要求知道，拥有和控制一种语言可能会收敛或冲突的学者，部落工作人员，语言教师和学习者在语言振兴的努力吸引在一起。霍皮语为这项研究提供了一个特别合适的地点，因为大多数部落成员认为他们的语言是他们独有的知识财产。 这种知识财产带来了传承它的特权和责任。此外，霍皮保留地的振兴活动不仅包括课堂教学和语言学习，还包括与档案机构谈判如何管理过去语言文献工作的分发和提供。这种融合的结果是通过语言振兴举措产生了什么样的知识、财产和与语言相关的方式？这些可以扩展到新的环境，包括新的人和文本对象，而不是关闭访问伴随修改？这些关键问题将通过12个月的民族志实地考察，访谈和参与观察霍皮保留地和保留地外的档案来探讨。

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.