Question: C144 Native American Languages and Cultures-Study Guide #3

Basso, Keith H. l979. "Portraits of the Whiteman": Linguistic Play and Cultural Symbols among the Western Apache, 37-76. NYC:Cambridge.

Note: See previous note re Basso. This article, published 7 years later than the one on silence, shows a transition to more complex problems of communication.

1. Notice how even though these joking imitations of White people seem to be spontaneous and are not pre-scripted, that they pack a lot of features of communication resulting from White stereotypes in them.

2. What are some of the norms of English speakers that appear to conflict with Apache interactional practices and preferences so that they are enacted in these performances? You should be able to note at least 5 such norms.

3. What is the purpose of greatly exaggerating Euro-American practices (questions one after another, talking too loud and fast, making aggressive physical contact, etc.)?

4. What SPEAKING patterns do we see both by reading the example and according to Basso's analysis in this chapter?

5. In one place in his book, Basso mentions that these performances are rarely done; why then, do you think, an anthropologist should devote such attention to them?

6. How do these imitations begin and end?

7. Are joking imitations a genre unto themselves or are they a recent innovation of a more traditional genre of imitative jokes?

Scollon, Ronald and Suzanne Scollon. l981. Athabaskan-English Interethnic Communication. In Narrative, Literacy, and Face in Interethnic Communication. Norwood, NJ: ABLEX, pp.11-37.

Note: This is a husband-wife team of communication scientists who did postdoctoral research with John Gumperz at UC-Berkeley where Gumperz was a Professor of Anthropology. He and Dell Hymes were leading figures in the creation and development of the ethnography of communication. By the 1980's Gumperz's work began to focus on Inter-ethnic miscommunication and the detection of discourse differences between cultures. His methods, revealed in such books as Discourse Strategies and elsewhere, involved the recording of naturally occurring interaction in institutional settings. He would then have panels of judges from each relevant cultural group. Thus in the Crosstalk video that he did for the BBC wherein he has Anglo civil service workers interacting with "Asian" clients needing to access such things as unemployment resources, he would have two panels-Anglo-Brits and South Asian (Indian and Pakistani) British citizens evaluate how members of their own group interacted. The Scollons appear to have used an abbreviated form of the Gumperz approach and we rarely see transcripts in their work. In fairness to them, this research on Northern Athapaskans was with a group that they knew on a more limited basis from studies that were not as long term.

1. The authors see stereotyping as emerging largely from discourse differences. Do you agree or disagree?

2. Why is it difficult or unfair to ask someone to change their discourse norms?

3. What are the four parts to the Scollons's model of discourse difference? Give an example from each?

4. In this chapter, the authors work hard to define discourse as distinct from grammar but are they completely successful in doing so? What is the evidence for your interpretation?

5. In the concluding section, "A Caution About Change," the authors seem to presuppose that people cannot or should not become multicultural? Is this a fair reading of their position? And do you share it?