"Please read loose": Intimate grammars and unexpected languages in contemporary Navajo literature

American Indian Culture and Research Journal

Volumn 35, Issue 2, 2011, Pages 61-86

  Webster, Anthony K ^a  

^a SOUTHERN ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 79959556957     PISSN: 01616463     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.17953/aicr.35.2.w1l47n693q780050     Document Type: Article

References (128)

1. Sherwin Bitsui, Shapeshift (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2003), 64.
2. Sherwin Bitsui, Shapeshift (2003) See ibid., 29.
3. Other works by Bitsui reflect this ambivalence. In the poem "The Northern Sun" Bitsui asks, "Is this what I deserve: a white anthropologist sitting beside me at a winter ceremony?" Bitsui, Shapeshift, 17. Bitsui has often teased me at poetry performances with this line.
4. Esther Belin, "Contemporary Navajo Writers' Relevance to Navajo Society," Wicazo Sa Review 22, no. 1 (2007): 74.
5. Elizabeth Povinelli, "Intimate Grammars: Anthropological and Psychoanalytic Accounts of Language, Gender, and Desire," in Language, Culture, and Society, ed. Christine Jourdan and Kevin Tuite (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 190-206;
6. Michael Herzfeld, Cultural Intimacy (New York: Routledge, 1997).
7. I have developed the theme of "intimate grammars" more fully in Anthony K. Webster, "On Intimate Grammars, with Examples from Navajo English, Navlish, and Navajo," Journal of Anthropological Research 66, no. 2 (2010): 187-208;
8. "Imagining Navajo in the Boarding School: Laura Tohe's No Parole Today and the Intimacy of Language Ideologies," Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 20, no. 1 (2010): 39-62;
9. "A Note on Navajo Interlingual Puns," International Journal of American Linguistics 76, no. 2 (2010): 289-98.
10. See Paul V. Kroskrity in this issue for a useful critique of intimate grammars ("All Intimate Grammars Leak: Reflections on 'Indian Languages in Unexpected Places,'" American Indian Culture and Research Journal 35, no. 2 [2011]: 161-72).
11. A useful precursor to intimate grammars and an inspiration for my work can be found in Dell Hymes, In Vain I Tried to Tell You: Essays in Native American Ethnopoetics (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1981), 88-91. Hymes describes an instance of code switching from English to kiksht by Philip Kahclamet. As Hymes notes, "The key, however, in my opinion is the evidence that the switch is prepared for and seems literally a switch into kiksht for the sake of kiksht⋯ . Moreover, my remembered impression ⋯ is that when Mr. Kahclamet realized that he was launched into oratory in kiksht that he became self-conscious, aware of surroundings [The Rainbow Cafe], and stopped" (91). This, for me, is an example of the intimacies of grammar.
12. Philip J. Deloria, Indians in Unexpected Places (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2004).
13. Philip J. Deloria, Indians in Unexpected Places (2004), Ibid., 4.
14. For useful discussions of a discourse-centered approach to language and culture, see Joel Sherzer, "A Discourse-Centered Approach to Language and Culture," American Anthropologist 89 (1987): 295-309;
15. "The Kuna and Columbus: Encounters and Confrontations of Discourse," American Anthropologist 96 (1994): 902-24.
16. I have applied this approach to Navajo poetry more generally in Anthony K. Webster, Explorations in Navajo Poetry and Poetics (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2009).
17. Dell Hymes's Ethnography, Linguistics, Narrative Inequality: Toward an Understanding of Voice (Bristol, PA: Taylor and Francis, 1996) is still the most thought-provoking discussion concerning the inequalities of languages.
18. See Deborah House, Language Shift among the Navajo (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2002), for a discussion about the ways that some Navajos have valorized Navajo.
19. See also Webster, Explorations, for a discussion of the ways Navajo poets valorize certain forms of Navajo and erase other forms (especially Navlish, a code-mixed form of Navajo and English widely in use among Navajos on the Navajo Nation). For a general discussion of these issues, see Paul Kroskrity and Margaret Field, eds., Native American Language Ideologies: Beliefs, Practices, and Struggles in Indian Country (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2009).
20. For a useful discussion of some of the issues involved, see Walter Mignolo, The Darker Side of the Renaissance: Literacy, Territoriality, and Colonization (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995).
21. For a more general discussion of the power relations behind concerns with literacy, see James Collins and Richard Blot, Literacy and Literacies: Text, Power, and Identity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).
22. Mindy Morgan, The Bearer of This Letter: Language Ideologies, Literacy Practices, and the Fort Belknap Indian Community (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2009).
23. Barbra Meek, "And the Injun Goes 'How!': Representations of American Indian in English in White Public Space," Language in Society 35, no. 1 (2006): 93-128; (Pubitemid 43388779)
24. "Failing American Indian Languages," American Indian Culture and Research Journal 35, no. 2 (2011): 43-60.
25. See also Jane Hill, The Everyday Language of White Racism (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2008).
26. Lionel Wee, "Intra-Language Discrimination and Linguistic Human Rights: The Case of Singlish," Applied Linguistics 26, no. 1 (2005): 48-69. (Pubitemid 41236878)
27. I am not overly enamored with Wee's distinction between interlanguage and intralanguage. I find the boundaries between languages a bit fuzzier than his dichotomy suggests. However, as a useful heuristic it serves its purposes here. See Webster, "On Intimate Grammars."
28. As Jessica Ball and B. May Bernhardt ("First Nations English Dialects in Canada: Implications for Speech-Language Pathology," Clinical Linguistics and Phonetics 22, no. 8 [2008]: 585) note, there is a real danger in misrecognizing the local language skills of Native peoples as "true language deficits." Such concerns are not unique to Native Americans.
29. See Rosina Lippi-Green, English with an Accent: Language, Ideology, and Discrimination in the United States (New York: Routledge, 1997).
30. See Richard Bauman and Charles Briggs, Voices of Modernity: Language Ideologies and the Politics of Inequality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003);
31. Michael Silverstein, "The Whens and Wheres-As Well as Hows-of Ethnolinguistic Recognition," Public Culture 15, no. 3 (2003): 531-57. By the word glottonym, I mean a lexical-grammatical code that has come to have a recognized "language name." One project of modernism is to name various "things" (here really "sets of practices"), so that they can be counted. (Pubitemid 37306738)
32. See Arthur Spears and Leanne Hinton, "Language and Speakers: An Introduction to African American English and Native American Languages," Transforming Anthropology 18, no. 1 (2010): 3-34. I think the comparison is useful but misplaced. A more meaningful comparison would be between African American English and American Indian Englishes.
33. Arthur Spears and Leanne Hinton, "Language and Speakers: An Introduction to African American English and Native American Languages," Transforming Anthropology 18, no. 1 (2010), Ibid., 12.
34. See, e.g., AnCita Benally and Denis Viri, "Diné Bizaad [Navajo Language] at a Crossroads: Extinction or Renewal," Bilingual Research Journal 29 (2005): 104, who note that "the presence of Navajo English-especially in schools-carries a certain stigma in contrast to Standard English, Navajo English enjoys considerable celebration in the expressive arts." This celebration, I should add, is largely by Navajos.
35. For a discussion of some of the educational ramifications of speaking and writing American Indian Englishes, see William Leap, American Indian English (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1993).
36. Blackhorse Mitchell with T. D. Allen, Miracle Hill: The Story of a Navaho Boy (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1967).
37. The book has since been reissued as Blackhorse Mitchell, Miracle Hill: The Story of a Navajo Boy (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2004).
38. Note that in the reissued version T. D. Allen's name has been removed from the cover, and her introduction has been removed as well. Note also the subtle shift from Navaho to Navajo in order to align more with current practices on the Navajo Nation. Terry Diener Allen, it should be noted, was also an author. She and her husband, Don Allen, wrote a number of novels and nonfiction works under the name T. D. Allen (which are also Terry Allen's initials) concerning the West and Native Americans. Perhaps the most famous of those works is T. D. Allen, Navahos Have Five Fingers (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1963). That Allen already had a relationship with the University of Oklahoma Press is important in understanding how Mitchell's book wound up being published there. As one Navajo consultant pointed out, Allen did encourage Mitchell to write, and she did get the book published. As that consultant further noted, for whatever reasons that the book was published, once it was published it was no longer under Allen's control, and Navajos could and did make of it what they would. These are both good points to keep in mind throughout the discussion that follows. Allen, as this Navajo consultant noted, was paternalistic (or maternalistic) and sympathetic toward Mitchell.
39. N. Scott Momaday, "Broneco's Own Story," review of Miracle Hill: The Story of a Navaho Boy, by Blackhorse Mitchell, New York Times, November 19, 1967;
40. Dan L. Thrapp, "Navaho Lad Pens Lyrical Novel," review of Miracle Hill: The Story of a Navaho Boy, by Blackhorse Mitchell, Los Angeles Times, August 13, 1967.
41. The Navajo Times also called attention to Mitchell and his book. However, in conversations I have had with Navajos of that generation, his book was probably more public off-reservation than on-reservation. In October 1967, there was a short review of Mitchell's book by Dick Hardwick in the Navajo Times ([Window Rock, AZ], October 26, 1967, Blackhorse Mitchell Collection).
42. See n. 41 regarding the Blackhorse Mitchell Collection. In 1968, Mitchell's poem "The New Direction" was awarded a special prize in the Navajo Tribal Centennial literary contest, and the poem was published in the Navajo Times (Window Rock, AZ), July 1, 1968, B8.
43. Mitchell, Miracle Hill.
44. According to Mitchell, the protagonist's name should be Bronco. Mitchell has explained to me that he had wanted Allen to change this misspelling, but she refused. In later unpublished work that follows up on the events found in Miracle Hill, Mitchell spells the main character's name as "Bronco." Here Mitchell clearly asserts his authorship of this work in contrast to Allen's editorial practices.
45. Mitchell with Allen, Miracle Hill.
46. Dorothea Leighton, "Review of Miracle Hill: The Story of a Navaho Boy," American Anthropologist 70, no. 3 (1968): 616.
47. T. D. Allen, "Please Read Loose," in Miracle Hill, by Blackhorse Mitchell with T. D. Allen (Norman: Oklahoma University Press, 1967), vii. As Paul Kroskrity noted in a review of this piece, "please read loose" is also a nonstandard form of English.
48. Note that, although Mitchell's nonstandard English must be apologized for, Allen's use of nonstandard English does not become an "object of scrutiny." Minority populations are not licensed to use nonstandard Englishes, although dominant populations can and do use nonstandard Englishes without the attendant stigma. I borrow "object of scrutiny" from Bonnie Urciuoli, Exposing Prejudice: Puerto Rican Experiences of Language, Race, and Class (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996), 178-79.
49. See also Hill, Everyday Language of White Racism.
50. Allen, "Read Loose," vii.
51. See Hymes, Ethnography, 208.
52. T. D. Allen, "Emerson Blackhorse 'Barney' Mitchell," in Whispering Wind, ed. Terry Allen (Garden City, NJ: Doubleday and Company, 1972), 91. Let me add that Mitchell has stated to me that Allen never sought his consent to publish his work in this collection.
53. Allen, "Read Loose," viii.
54. Allen, "Read Loose,", Ibid., xi.
55. Webster, "On Intimate Grammars."
56. See Guillermo Bartelt, "Some Observations on Navajo English," Papers in Linguistics 14, no. 3 (1981): 377-85;
57. "Mode and Aspect Transformation in Navajo and Western Apache English Narrative Technique," International Review of Applied Linguistics 21 (1983): 104-24;
58. Socio- and Stylolinguistic Perspectives on American Indian Texts (Lewiston, NY: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2001).
59. I have discussed Navajo English in contemporary Navajo poetry in Anthony K. Webster, "Coyote Poems: Navajo Poetry, Intertextuality, and Language Choice," American Indian Culture and Research Journal 28, no. 4 (2004): 69-91;
60. "'Still She Didn't See What I Was Trying to Say': Towards a History of Framing Navajo English in Navajo Poetry," World Englishes 29, no. 1 (2010): 75-96.
61. See also William Leap, "Written Navajo English: Texture, Construction, and Point of View," Journal of Navajo Education 11, no. 1 (1993): 41-48.
62. For an overview of American Indian Englishes see Leap, American Indian English.
63. I borrow this notion of aesthetic principles and negative evaluations by outsiders from Anthony Woodbury, "Documenting Rhetorical, Aesthetic, and Expressive Loss in Language Shift," in Endangered Languages, ed. Lenore Grenoble and Lindsay Whaley (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 256.
64. See also Hill, Everyday Language of White Racism.
65. Leighton C. Peterson, "'Reel Navajo': The Linguistic Creation of Indigenous Screen Memories," American Indian Culture and Research Journal 35, no. 2 (2011): 111-34. Note that speaking in Navajo with subtitles in "standard" English matched certain expectations from "media professionals" about Navajos, but that letting Elsie Cly Begay speak in her local Navajo English did not match those expectations. Most non-Navajo audiences have no ability to evaluate Begay's use of Navajo (e.g., to recognize regional diacritics), but they can and do evaluate Begay's Navajo English as somehow compromised or dysfluent.
66. See Hymes, Ethnography.
67. See also Dell Hymes, "Tonkawa Poetics: John Rush Buffalo's 'Coyote and Eagle's Daughter,'" in Native American Discourse: Poetics and Rhetoric, ed. Joel Sherzer and Anthony Woodbury (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 17-61;
68. Lippi-Green, English with an Accent;
69. Hill, Everyday Language of White Racism.
70. See, esp., Meek, "And the Injun," on this point.
71. Allen, "Read Loose," ix.
72. Allen, "Read Loose,", Ibid., vii.
73. Allen, "Read Loose,", Ibid., viii.
74. Allen, "Read Loose,", Ibid., xi.
75. See James Milroy, "Language Ideologies and the Consequences of Standardization," Journal of Sociolinguistics 5, no. 4 (2001): 530-55.
76. On languages ideologies, see Paul Kroskrity, "Language Ideologies," in A Companion to Linguistic Anthropology, ed. Alessandro Duranti (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2004), 496-517.
77. Many of the following reviews are quoted from a notebook collection of reviews that Mitchell kept. The reviews were cut out of newspapers, but there is incomplete information concerning the original publication places for many of the reviews. Hereinafter, I will cite the author of the review and note that the review can be found in Mitchell's collection of reviews. I will give the publication date when known and any other pertinent information. I also have a copy of that collection of reviews. I thank Mr. Mitchell for sharing those reviews with me and for letting me make copies of the reviews. Copies of the reviews are available upon request from the author. Robert Ford (Blackhorse Mitchell Collection, 1967). I am unsure where Ford's review appeared.
78. Ford (Blackhorse Mitchell Collection).
79. Paul Kroskrity, "Language Ideologies," in A Companion to Linguistic Anthropology, (2004), 496-517, Ibid.
80. Peggy Durham, review of Miracle Hill: The Story of a Navaho Boy, by Blackhorse Mitchell, Oklahoma Journal (Blackhorse Mitchell Collection, 1967).
81. Peggy Durham, review of Miracle Hill: The Story of a Navaho Boy, (1967). Ibid.
82. Vincent Starrett, review of Miracle Hill: The Story of a Navaho Boy, by Blackhorse Mitchell, Chicago Tribune, August 28, 1967 (Blackhorse Mitchell Collection).
83. Vincent Starrett, review of Miracle Hill: The Story of a Navaho Boy, 1967, Ibid.
84. Maggy King, review of Miracle Hill: The Story of a Navaho Boy, by Blackhorse Mitchell, Monterey Peninsula Herald, August 19, 1967 (Blackhorse Mitchell Collection).
85. Anna Lee Stensland, "American Indian Culture: Promises, Problems, and Possibilities," The English Journal 60 (1971): 1195-1200. This review is not in Mitchell's collection.
86. Brian Garfield, review of Miracle Hill: The Story of a Navaho Boy, by Blackhorse Mitchell, Saturday Review, September 9, 1967 (Blackhorse Mitchell Collection), 37.
87. Brian Garfield, review of Miracle Hill: The Story of a Navaho Boy, 1967 , 37. Ibid.
88. Joan Seager, review of Miracle Hill: The Story of a Navaho Boy, by Blackhorse Mitchell, Denver Quarterly (Blackhorse Mitchell Collection, 1968), 109.
89. Joan Seager, review of Miracle Hill: The Story of a Navaho Boy (1968), Ibid., 110.
90. Mildred Hart Shaw, review of Miracle Hill: The Story of a Navaho Boy, by Blackhorse Mitchell, Daily Sentinel, Grand Junction, CO, October 15, 1967 (Blackhorse Mitchell Collection).
91. Webster, "Still She Didn't."
92. Allen, "Read Loose," xiv-xv.
93. Allen, "Read Loose," xiv-xv, Ibid.
94. See also Paul Zolbrod, foreword to Miracle Hill, Blackhorse Mitchell (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2004), xix.
95. Deloria, Unexpected Places, 11.
96. My use of such a format follows from the arguments developed in Larry Evers and Felipe Molina, "Like This It Stays in Your Hands: Collaboration and Ethnopoetics," Oral Tradition 13 (1998): 15-57.
97. Other work by Navajo poets reflects the impression that boarding school was a place to be silent. See, e.g., Laura Tohe, No Parole Today (Albuquerque, NM: West End Press, 1999). I develop this theme more thoroughly in Webster, "Imagining Navajo."
98. For a sampling of Mitchell's sheepherding songs, listen to Blackhorse Mitchell, American Bar: Sheepherder Songs (CD) (NativeNow!, 2002);
99. Where Were You When I Was Single? Old-Time Sheepherder Songs (CD) (Window Rock, AZ: Cool Runnings Music, 2006);
100. Don't Let Go (CD) (Window Rock, AZ: Cool Runnings Music, 2008).
101. I am tempted to call this a "breakthrough into performance" following Hymes, In Vain I Tried to Tell You, 79-141.
102. On performance, see Dennis Tedlock, The Spoken Word and the Work of Interpretation (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983);
103. and, particularly, Richard Bauman, Story, Performance, and Event (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986).
104. I have developed the perspective of poetry performance among Navajos in Webster, Explorations.
105. See Bartelt, "Some Observations," "Mode and Aspect Transformation," and Socio- and Stylolinguistic.
106. Bartelt, "Some Observations," 382.
107. The usitative mode indicates "actions or events that are performed, or that take place, repeatedly and usually, customarily," Robert W. Young, The Navajo Verb System (Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 2000), 161.
108. The momentaneous aspect, to be discussed in the following text, indicates "a verbal action or event that takes place at a point in time-punctually" (Young, Navajo Verb System, 71).
109. See Bartelt, Socio- and Stylolinguistic, 97-98. Although I find much of value in Bartelt's discussion, I would disagree with Bartelt's rather straightforward acceptance of Allen's role in the construction of Miracle Hill. If this article does anything, I hope it suggests that the "writing" of Miracle Hill was a complex set of practices, and that Allen's introduction obscured much of that complexity.
110. See "Blackhorse Mitchell: Diné Teacher, Artist, Writer, Musician," http://www.blackhorsemitchell.com/index.html (accessed June 8, 2010).
111. See Judith Irvine and Susan Gal, "Language Ideology and Linguistic Differentiation," in Regimes of Language: Ideologies, Polities, Identities, ed. Paul V. Kroskrity (Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research, 2000), 35-83.
112. See Hymes, Ethnography; "Tonkawa Poetics."
113. For a useful discussion of agency within a language ideological framework, see Paul Kroskrity, "Embodying the Reversal of Language Shift: Agency, Incorporation, Language Ideological Change in the Western Mono Community of Central California," in Kroskrity and Field, Native American Language Ideologies, 190-210.
114. See also Hymes, In Vain I Tried to Tell You. It is certainly true that not all features of Mitchell's Navajo English are equally salient to him and within the limits of his linguistic awareness. But certain features clearly are, and Mitchell has built up certain felt attachments to such forms.
115. On the "limits" of linguistic awareness, see Michael Silverstein, "The Limits of Awareness," Sociolinguistic Working Papers 84 (Austin, TX: Southwest Educational Development Laboratory, 1981), 1-30.
116. Ellen Basso, "Ordeals of Language," in Culture, Rhetoric, and the Vicissitudes of Life, ed. Michael Carrithers (New York: Berghahn Books, 2009), 122.
117. Feigning monolingualism in Navajo dates at least to returning veterans after World War II as a response to "social exclusion" on the part of Anglo society. However, the feigning of monolingualism in Navajo was also a wider phenomenon than simply returning veterans. See Carl Voegelin, Flo Voegelin, and Noel Schutz, "The Language Situation in Arizona as Part of the Southwest Culture Area," in Studies in Southwestern Ethnolinguistics, ed. Dell Hymes and William Bittle (The Hague, the Netherlands: Mouton and Company, 1967), 439.
118. Mitchell has explained to me that his grandmother had learned English at the mission school in Farmington, NM, but that she did not speak English to him. It came as a bit of a surprise to him that his grandmother spoke English (see Mitchell, Miracle Hill [2004]).
119. See also Margaret Field, "Changing Navajo Language Ideologies and Changing Language Use," in Kroskrity and Field, Native American Language Ideologies, 31-47.
120. Hymes, Ethnography, 64.
121. See also Jan Blommaert, "Ethnography and Democracy: Hymes's Political Theory of Language," Text and Talk 29, no. 3 (2009): 257-76. I thank Paul Kroskrity for pushing me to clarify this point.
122. Bartelt, Socio- and Stylolinguistic.
123. Susan Brill de Ramírez, Contemporary American Indian Literatures and the Oral Tradition (Tucson: Arizona University Press, 1999);
124. Amelia Katanski, Learning to Write "Indian": The Boarding- School Experience and American Indian Literature (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2005);
125. Robert Dale Parker, The Invention of Native American Literature (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003). The absence from Katanski's book is perhaps most striking, given that the topic of the book is "learning to write Indian" at the boarding school.
126. I should add that, when Mitchell was looking for a filmmaker to work on his book Miracle Hill, after meeting Bennie Klain, he decided on Klain because, as Mitchell noted, "he's a sheepherder like me," which is to say that Mitchell and Klain shared many experiences of growing up on the Navajo Nation.
127. This is not to claim that all Navajos appreciated the use of Navajo English in Mitchell's book. One Navajo consultant was rather dismissive of Navajo English and agreed with Allen's introduction that these were mistakes and errors of grammar. This is also not to claim that most Navajos have read the book. Another Navajo consultant, e.g., had not read the book, but liked the idea of a book "written by a Navajo for Navajos." Still another Navajo consultant had never heard of the book. However, the vast majority of Navajo poets and writers who I have worked with know the work and wish to promote it. Esther Belin, e.g., was working to get the book used for incoming freshman at Ft. Lewis College in Durango, CO. According to Mitchell, Luci Tapahonso and Laura Tohe were instrumental in getting the book reissued by the University of Arizona Press.
128. Deloria, Unexpected, 4.