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“Tséyi' first, because Navajo language was here before contact”: On intercultural performances, metasemiotic stereotypes, and the dynamics of place
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Anthony k. Webster
Published/Copyright:
August 24, 2010
Abstract
This article analyzes portions of an intercultural performance by Navajo poet Laura Tohe to a non-Navajo audience in rural Illinois. By analyzing Tohe's metalinguistic commentaries about the use of Navajo, as well as her actual uses of Navajo in her performance, it is argued that Tohe presents a metasemiotic stereotype of Navajo language users. In performing such stereotypic displays, Tohe also indexes her own Navajo identity and becomes iconic of such an identity. Paying close attention to the uses of Navajo language place-names also reveals the ways that Tohe connects her performance with larger concerns about Navajo claims to place and language shift.
Keywords:: Navajo; poetry; intercultural performance; metasemiotic stereotypes; place names; phonological iconicity
Published Online: 2010-08-24
Published in Print: 2010-August
© 2010 Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin/New York
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Keywords for this article
Navajo;
poetry;
intercultural performance;
metasemiotic stereotypes;
place names;
phonological iconicity
Articles in the same Issue
- L'onomatologie et ses différentes facettes
- La double chaîne prédicative: Analyse du texte de la première partie du traité de la Constitution de l'Europe avec l'hypothèse du génotexte
- Des éléments structurels à identifier dans le texte: “Point de vue” et repérage topologique du schème associé
- Beyond the merely visual: Interacting with digital objects in interdisciplinary scientific practice
- “Tséyi' first, because Navajo language was here before contact”: On intercultural performances, metasemiotic stereotypes, and the dynamics of place
- Managing miànzi in Mandarin Chinese talk-in-interaction: A nonverbal perspective
- Power in society, economy, and mentality: Towards a semiotic theory of power
- Image and primary iconism: Peirce and Husserl
- Metaphoric image and iconic likeness
- Vers une écriture rhizomatique: Style et syntaxe dans La bataille de Pharsale de Claude Simon
- Qui a peur de Saussure?
- A stroll around the worlds of zoosemioticians and other animals
