Having a shinshii/shiishii ‘master’ around makes you speak Japanese!
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Toshihide Nakayama
Abstract
Everyone brings with them a particular set of contextualization to interaction. After several years of working on the Ikema dialect of Miyako Ryukyuan, we are finally realizing that our very presence as shinshii/shiishii ‘masters’ is one of the major factors encouraging Ikema people to use Japanese. Because of the way our social identity is perceived among the Ikema people, our work session turns out to be an inherently a Japanese speaking context, which not only makes collection of naturalistic discourse data rather precarious but also can influence even the native speakers’ grammatical intuition of Ikema. Our goal in this paper is to explicate the very sensitive nature of the fieldwork setting and its implication for data collection by illustrating how the identity of researchers themselves can inadvertently shape the context and in turn shape the choice and use of language in fieldwork situations.
Abstract
Everyone brings with them a particular set of contextualization to interaction. After several years of working on the Ikema dialect of Miyako Ryukyuan, we are finally realizing that our very presence as shinshii/shiishii ‘masters’ is one of the major factors encouraging Ikema people to use Japanese. Because of the way our social identity is perceived among the Ikema people, our work session turns out to be an inherently a Japanese speaking context, which not only makes collection of naturalistic discourse data rather precarious but also can influence even the native speakers’ grammatical intuition of Ikema. Our goal in this paper is to explicate the very sensitive nature of the fieldwork setting and its implication for data collection by illustrating how the identity of researchers themselves can inadvertently shape the context and in turn shape the choice and use of language in fieldwork situations.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Dedication vii
- Acknowledgements ix
- Introduction xi
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Part I. Language Endangerment: Challenges and Responses
- The world’s languages in crisis 3
- What can revitalization work teach us about documentation? 21
- Unanswered questions in language documentation and revitalization 43
- Training as empowering social action 59
- How to avoid pitfalls in documenting endangered languages 79
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Part II. Case Studies in Documentation and Revitalization of Endangered Languages and Languages in Contact
- Converb and aspect-marking polysemy in Nar 97
- Grammatical relations in Mixe and Chimariko 119
- Having a shinshii/shiishii ‘master’ around makes you speak Japanese! 141
- Internal and external calls to immigrant language promotion 157
- Code-switching in an Erzya–Russian bilingual variety 175
- Colonialism, nationalism and language vitality in Azerbaijan 197
- Revitalizing languages through place-based language curriculum 221
- Remembering ancestral voices 243
- Index 271
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Dedication vii
- Acknowledgements ix
- Introduction xi
-
Part I. Language Endangerment: Challenges and Responses
- The world’s languages in crisis 3
- What can revitalization work teach us about documentation? 21
- Unanswered questions in language documentation and revitalization 43
- Training as empowering social action 59
- How to avoid pitfalls in documenting endangered languages 79
-
Part II. Case Studies in Documentation and Revitalization of Endangered Languages and Languages in Contact
- Converb and aspect-marking polysemy in Nar 97
- Grammatical relations in Mixe and Chimariko 119
- Having a shinshii/shiishii ‘master’ around makes you speak Japanese! 141
- Internal and external calls to immigrant language promotion 157
- Code-switching in an Erzya–Russian bilingual variety 175
- Colonialism, nationalism and language vitality in Azerbaijan 197
- Revitalizing languages through place-based language curriculum 221
- Remembering ancestral voices 243
- Index 271
