Native American Language Ideologies: Beliefs, Practices, and Struggles in Indian Country

11. Language Revitalization and the Manipulation of Language Ideologies: A Shoshoni Case Study

chapter 11 Language Revitalization and the Manipulation of Language Ideologies A Shoshoni Case Study christopher loether Within the last century the study of Native American languages has transformed from a descriptive and ‘‘salvage’’ phase to a more applied phase, in which maintenance and revitalization of the languages have become major focuses. In many revitalization programs an important factor in the success of language revitalization efforts has been community members’ ideas about their language, including the social meanings that speakers attach to their language and the accepted roles of usage of the language within the Native culture and the larger Euro-American society. The acceptance or rejection of language revitalization efforts may depend more on a community’s beliefs and feelings about language than on seemingly more substantive issues regarding language structure or the practical concerns of implementation. Today these folk-level concepts, beliefs, and feelings are understood as ‘‘language ideologies’’ (Silverstein 1979). Native communities, of course, are hardly monolithic entities, as many studies in this volume demonstrate (e.g., Anderson, Reynolds, and Neely and Palmer). They exhibit multiple and contradictory language ideologies that may impede the success of a revitalization project. Richard and Nora Marks Dauenhauer, a husband and wife linguistic team, address this very issue in their discussion of Tlingit revitalization efforts and the need for what they call ‘‘prior ideological clarification’’ when they note that ‘‘certainly in Alaska, and probably throughout the United States and Canada, Native American individuals and communities are plagued and haunted with anxieties, insecurities, and hesitations about the value of their indigenous language and culture’’ (1998:62–63). Addressing and resolving these a shoshoni case study 239 insecurities typically involves raising community awareness about the impact of colonial and hegemonic language ideologies on local thinking about language and communication. It also involves recognition of indigenous beliefs and practices regarding the heritage language. This process of both decolonizing imposed concepts and locating a foundation of indigenous beliefs and feelings that will support language renewal efforts I call the ‘‘manipulation’’ of language ideologies at the individual, family, and community levels. My perspective is that of a linguistic anthropologist who has served tribally based language renewal efforts for about two decades. Based on that experience, I contend that a community-based program of language ideological manipulation is a necessary, critical, and ongoing activity in any successful effort to engage in a program of language renewal. One area in the language revitalization process that can be especially problematic for a community is the selection of an orthography and a standardized form of the language for teaching purposes (Neely and Palmer, this volume). In many cases, the lack of a strategy to deal with multiple and conflicting language ideologies has thwarted sincere and potentially successful efforts at language revitalization. Darrel Kipp, the cofounder and director of the Piegan Institute of the Blackfoot Nation, a very successful immersion school in Browning, Montana, expresses the frustration of an indigenous activist with such ideological variation and contestation: ‘‘You do not ask permission to use your language, to work with it, to revitalize it. . . . You don’t change the entire community. . . . [Y]ou work with the people who want you to work with them’’ (2000:6). In this chapter I look at how one Native American community’s language ideologies have affected language revitalization efforts. I first examine the current situation of the Shoshoni language and then focus on Shoshoni speakers on the Fort Hall Indian Reservation of southeastern Idaho and the role their language ideologies have played in language revitalization efforts. Next I describe the Shoshoni Language Project at Idaho State University (ISU), located eight miles south of Fort Hall, and how it has affected language ideologies among Shoshoni speakers throughout Shoshoni country. Afterward I examine how particular language ideologies have been and can be manipulated by language activists and language revitalization specialists, focusing again on the efforts of the Shoshoni Language Project. 240 christopher loether The Shoshoni In precontact times the Shoshoni were spread from Death Valley in eastern California through Nevada, Utah, Idaho, and Wyoming, spilling over into the western Great Plains, and from Alberta, Canada, in the north to Chihuahua, Mexico, in the south. Today the Shoshoni are divided by anthropologists into three groups that correspond roughly to the three different environmental adaptations of the prehistoric Shoshoni. The Western Shoshoni of Nevada and western Utah lived traditionally within a Great Basin cultural context. The Northern...