George Ann Gregory, Ph.D.

George Ann Gregory, Ph.D.

United States

ph: 505 908 9562

linguisticdoc@drgrammarguru.com

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Additional Argument for Literacy and References


One Additional Argument for Literacy

In addition to literacy for recording cultural and linguistic knowledge and expanding intellectuality, there is one additional reason why literacy is important for language maintenance or revitalization. In her examination of the Cherokee syllabary and consequent literacy, Cushman (2011) links Cherokee literacy with identity.

To this point, I have been arguing that the Cherokee syllabary has played a crucial role in facilitating Cherokee’s efforts to maintain a sense of peoplehood through profound social and cultural change….Whenever the syllabary is present, the four aspects of peoplehood can potentially be present as well: language, sacred history, religion, and place. Like any tool endowed with various meanings by the people who use it, the Cherokee writing system has been a central part of language perseverance efforts in secular and national intiatives (187).

Since literacy and literature is associated with H functions of a language, having a body of literature in an endangered language can only contribute to the maintenance of a language while at the same time promoting the identity of the people themselves. Cushman (2011) suggested that literacy can complete the identity of a people, especially during the 21st century. The linguistic elaboration necessary for the perpetuation of a complete language may exist in Olson’s (1977) academic literacy or continue to exist in traditional ceremonies and storytelling (Akinasso, 1981, 1982). In some languages, there is potential for both realms.


References

Akinnaso, F.Niyi. (1981). The Consequences of Literacy in Pragmatic and Theoretical Perspectives. Anthropology and Education Quarterly, 12: 163-200.

Akinnaso, F.Niyi. (1982). The Literate writes and the Nonliterate Chants: Written Language and Ritual Communication in Sociolinguistic Perspective. In Linguistics and Literacy edited by William Frawledy, 7-36. New York: NY: Plenum Press.

Bernstein, Basil. 1961. Social Structure, Language, and Learning. Educational Research, 3: 163-175.

Biber, Douglas. 1988. Variation Across Speech and Writing. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Bowles, Freddie A. 2012.  Teaching Choctaw as a foreign language in a nontraditional setting: A challenge with high expectations and possibilities. In Standing together: American Indian education as culturally responsive pedagogy edited by Beverly J. Klug, 87-96. New York, NY: Rowman & Littlefield.

Boyce, Mary, and Stephen, Māmari. 2009. The Legal Māori Corpus: Texts Printed before 1910. .http://nzetc.victoria.ac.nz/tm/scholarly/tei-legalMaoriCorpus.html.

Broadwell, George. A . 2006. A Choctaw Reference Grammar. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press.

Byington, Cyrus. 2001. Choctaw Language Dictionary. Asheville, NC: Global Bible Society.

Chamot, Anna Uhi, and O’Malley, J. Micheal. 1994. The CALLA Handbook: Implementing the Cognitive Academic Language Learning Approach. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.

Cummins, Jim. 1982. Bilingualism and minority language children. Toronto: OISE Press.

Cummins, Jim. 1984. Bilingualism and Special Education: Issues in Assessment and Pedagogy. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters.

Cummins, Jim. 1991.  Interdependence of First-and-Second-Language Proficiency in

Bilingual Children.  In Language Processing in Bilingual Children edited by Ellen Bialstok, 70-89.  Cambridge, UK:  Cambridge University Press.

Cummins, Jim. (1992). The Empowerment of Indian Students. In Teaching American Indian Students edited by Jon Rehhner, 3-12. Norman, OK; University of Oklahoma Press.

Cummins, J. 2006.  BICS and CALPS. http://www.iteachilearn.org/cummins/bicscalp.html.

Ferguson, C. A. 1959. Diglossia. Word 15: 325–340.

Field, Margaret. 1994. Beauty is That Which Does Something: The Relationship Between Aesthetic and Performative Functions in Navajo Ritual Language. Unpublished manuscript, University of California, Santa Barbara.

Fishman, Joshua A. 1967. Bilingualism with and without Diglossia; Diglossia with and without Bilingualism. Journal of Social Issues, 32 (2): 29–38.

Fishman, Joshua  A. 1991. Reversing Language Shift: Theoretical and Empirical Foundations of Assistance to Threatened Languages. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters.

Gregory, George Ann. 1993. Standard/Standards: How Diné Student Writers Get It Right. Journal of Navajo Education, XI, (1): 33-40.

Gregory, George Ann. 2009. Creating Our Future: Creating a Computer Corpus of Written Choctaw. In Speaking of Endangered Languages edited by Anne Marie Goodfellow, 166-183. Newcastle upon Tynne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

Houia-Roberts, Ngaere. 2004. An Analysis of the Rhetorical Organization of Selected Authentic Māori Texts Belonging to the Text-types Argument and Information Report. Journal of Māori and Pacific Development, 5: 1-34.

Kidwell, Clara Sue. 2007. The Choctaws in Oklahoma: From Tribe to Nation, 1855-1970. Norman, OK: The University of Oklahoma Press.

Kluckhorn, Clyde, and Leighton, Dorothea. 1962. The Navajo. Garden City, NY: The Natural History Library.

Kroskrity, Paul V. 1983. On Male and Female Speech in the Pueblo Southwest. International Journal of American Linguistics, 49: 88-91.

McCreedy, Linn A. 1983. Aspects of Reference, Cohesion, and Style in Three Genres of Navajo Texts. Ph.D. dissertation. Georgetown University.

Ochs, Elinor. 1979. Planned and Unplanned Discourse. In Discourse and Syntax edited by Tamy Givon, 51-80. New York, NY: Academic Press.

Oklahoma Choctaw Alliance, Inc. 2013. News. http://www.okchoctaws.org/languageclasses.htm

Parsons-Yazzie, Evangeline, and Reyhner, Jon. 2009. Prospects for the Navajo Language. In Speaking of Endangered Languages edited by Anne Marie Goodfellow, 47-69. Newcastle upon Tynne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

Potaka-Dewes, Te Mana. 2002. Te Tiriti o Waitangi or The Treaty of Waitangi 1840: Interpretations of the Tiriti/Treaty.  http://www.postcolonialweb.org/nz/dewes1.html

Reyhner, Jon. 2001. Teaching reading to American Indian/Alaska Native students. ERIC Digest. ED459972.  http://www.ericdigests.org/2002-3/reading.htm

Ryan, P.M. 1995. The Reed Dictionary of Modern Māori. Auckland: GP Print Ltd.

Sims, Christina  P. and Valiquette, Hilaire. 1990. More on Male and Female Speech in (Acoma and Laguna) Keresan. International Journal of American Linguistics, 56(1): 162-166.

Southeastern Oklahoma State University. 2011, January 24.  Choctaw Language Department Announces Teacher Education Scholarship. http://www.se.edu/news/2011/choctaw-lang/

Te Puni Kōkiri. 1998. The National Māori Language Survey. Wellington, NZ:  author.

Williams, Jay. 2005, October. A Cognitive Approach to Subject-Object Inversion and the yi-bi Alternation in Navajo.  Paper presented at the 34th Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Association of the Southwest, Texas Tech University.

Young, Robert W. 1972. Written Navajo: A Brief History: Navajo Reading Report no. 19. ERIC document ED 068229. http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/search/detailmini.jsp?_nfpb=true&_&ERICExtSearch_SearchValue_0=ED068229&ERICExtSearch_SearchType_0=no&accno=ED068229

 


© 2019 by George Ann Gregory

George Ann Gregory, Ph.D.

United States

ph: 505 908 9562

linguisticdoc@drgrammarguru.com