Ethnography

I am interested in ethnographic linguistic anthropology, and am currently completing an ethnographic study 鈥淣aming the World: Language and Power among the Northern聽Arapaho,鈥 which examines issues of language, power, ideology and identity in the context of language shift. I write primarily within the framework of Practice Theory, and try to maintain a detailed focus on specific language practices (personal names and their usage, cultural metaphors, linguistic acculturation, place naming practices). I also seek to provide a rich historical context for shifts in linguistic practices and ideologies over time. The book argues that more attention is needed on micro-contextual language practices and the way in which language ideologies function and are deployed in these contexts. I seek to move away from overly-broad understandings of language ideologies as features of 鈥渃ultures鈥 or 鈥渃ommunities,鈥 and from sweeping discussion of ideologies of English vs. indigenous languages. Instead, I focus on ideologies specific to personal names, or place names, or linguistic borrowing and neologism practices, and examine the ways in which differing ideologies around these specific practices are used in response to differing contexts and inform those contexts in daily interaction (in Arapaho). I am also interested in the way that a specific language practice such as personal naming functions as a 鈥渃ultural resource鈥 which is deployed in multiple communities of practice within the larger Arapaho society, with competing ideologies surrounding what appears on the surface to be the 鈥渟ame鈥 practice, but in reality is not. Thus my research argues for a more detailed, nuanced and partial view of the concept of 鈥渃ommunity,鈥 especially in the context of language shift.