Documenti di Didattica
Documenti di Professioni
Documenti di Cultura
ETHNOGRAPHIC
FIELDWORK
Nancy C. Dorian
The Language and Ethnicity
Link: Ideal and Actual
The ideal case.
place a people live
Speak a ceratin language
Name
The actual point of view
Ethnic labels are not always good guides to the
actual situation where language is concerned (or
customes, for that matter)
Ethnic name:
speak behave very much alike
speak behave quite different from one another
how many groups can be recognized in a study area.
On what basis the distinctions can be made
Ethnicity
Social rather than bilogical
Socially constructed categories
are subject to change
Great changes:
Warefare and conquest
Voluntary or involuntary migration
Resource scarcity
Resource abundance
intense trade contacts
Consequences:
Less support less
respect Social standing
Social and economical
opportunities
Groups whose languages have no oficial
standing try to blur the lines between
themselves and certain other groups.
Shifting to the use of other languages.
Marrying inot other group
The Garos
A Southeast Asian Case: Ugong
in Thailand
David Bradley
Being Ugong
Thai Identities
A NorthAmerican Case: Cayuga
in Oklahoma
A field worker investigating an Iroquoian
population in Oklahoma found a Native
American Group speaking one Iropuoian
language (Cayuga) but calling themselves
by the name of another (Seneca).
Tribes History Oklahoma 1978, found a half-dozen
people descend from Sandusky
Marianne Mithun a linguist Seneca who were still able to speak
specialing in Iroqoian their ancestral language
languages
An African Case: The Elmolo of
Kenya
Bernd Heine