Geographical Areas of Specialization: Mexico,
Mesoamerica
Topical Interests: Linguistic
anthropology, Sociolinguistics, Bilingualism, Verbal Art, Youth
and Adolescence, Mesoamerican languages and cultures
Current Courses: E319/E321 Peoples of Mexico, L600 Ethnography of Communication
Profile:
My Research focuses on grammatical change and changing patterns
of language use and how they both form part of larger social changes.
I have been studying how language serves as a medium through which
people talk about the impact of economic development and globalization
on their lives and how it becomes valued as a symbolic resource
that social actors struggle to control and pass on to future generations.
Since 1991, I have been doing field research in southern Mexico
on the indigenous languages of this region and the social contexts
in which they continue to be spoken. I have concentrated on
three members of the Mixe-Zoquean language family: Chiapas Zoque
(spoken in the northwestern corner of the state of Chiapas), Ayapaneco
(spoken in the state of Tabasco, near the Gulf Coast), and Totontepecano
Mixe (spoken in the mountains east of Oaxaca City). Since
1996, I have been working with Project for the Documentation of
the Languages of Mesoamerica (PDLMA) to produce dictionaries, grammars
and text collections for Totontepecano Mixe and Ayapaneco.
Over the past several years, I have also been investigating the
arrival of modern Western-style adolescence in the Sierra Mixe
of southern Mexico and its consequences for Mixe social organization
and patterns of language use. Mixe teenagers have become a
source of great anxiety for their elders, but they are also viewed
as uniquely situated to carry Mixe culture onward into the future.
As a result of the competing pressures they face, Mixe youths number
among the most sophisticated Spanish-speakers in their community.
However, many of them are also die-hard Mixe language purists.
My theoretical aim in this project has been to develop an account
of the roles that speech patterns and language attitudes play in
the formation of generational groups and the role of inter-generational
relationships in linguistic and cultural change.
Field Schools:
Heritage and Cultural Diversity in Oaxaca, Mexico
Selected Publications:
| 2004 |
The Story of O: Orthography and Cultural Politics
in the Mixe Highlands. Pragmatics 13(4):551-563 |
| 2000 |
"The Woman and the Hawk": A Guayabaleno Story. In
Kay Sammons, Joel Sherzer, eds. Translating Native Latin
American Verbal Art: Ethnopoetics and Ethnography of Speaking.
The Smithsonian Series of Studies in Native American Literatures.
Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press |
| 1998 |
"The Burning Old Woman": Zoque explanations of the
eruption of Volcan Chichonal. Proceedings from SALSA
V - Symposium about Language and Society, Austin. Austin:
Texas Linguistics Forum, University of Texas. |
