Breakthrough into action
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Ron Scollon
Abstract
We take as axiomatic from Hymes's work that the linguistic structures of oral narrative should be construed not as abstract and ideal but as artifacts of the human mind in action in society, and that the indissoluble tension between structure and creativity should be moved by analysts in the direction of social justice. The problem we faced in an extended set of action projects aimed at reducing discrimination against Alaska Natives was that problems framed for our attention were often misleading though on the surface clear-cut and reasonable. We began by viewing narrative as a work of social interaction between storyteller and audience in which taboos often dictate indirect statement, and gradually learned to see action as the active punch line. We began to breakthrough into action—acting ourselves in order to learn how people act, what they know and value, how they structure their worlds—using a strategy we now call “nexus analysis.” Taking narrative as the discursive doppelganger of action, we trained educators and medics to perceive and pursue indigenous hunting strategies of carefully surrounding rather than going directly to quarry. We worked through abduction by moving from action to action, becoming directly engaged in processes of social change.
© 2009 by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, D-10785 Berlin
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Editorial: Hymes, text and talk
- On Hymes: introduction
- Hymes on speech socialization
- Ethnography and democracy: Hymes's political theory of language
- Breakthrough into action
- From performance to print, and back: Ethnopoetics as social practice in Alice Florendo's corrections to “Raccoon and his Grandmother”
- The place of narrative in human affairs: the implications of Hymes's Amerindian work for understanding text and talk
- Hymes's linguistics and ethnography in education
- Dell Hymes's visions of enquiry
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Editorial: Hymes, text and talk
- On Hymes: introduction
- Hymes on speech socialization
- Ethnography and democracy: Hymes's political theory of language
- Breakthrough into action
- From performance to print, and back: Ethnopoetics as social practice in Alice Florendo's corrections to “Raccoon and his Grandmother”
- The place of narrative in human affairs: the implications of Hymes's Amerindian work for understanding text and talk
- Hymes's linguistics and ethnography in education
- Dell Hymes's visions of enquiry
