"The Validity of Navajo Is in Its Sounds": On Hymes, Navajo Poetry, Punning, and the Recognition of Voice

Inspired by Dell Hymes's ethnopoetic analysis of expressive and presentational features, this article takes as its point of departure a poem written in Navajo by contemporary Navajo poet Rex Lee Jim; the poem uses the velar fricative [x] as an expressive feature that indicates an affective stance (here, 'lacking control') toward the actions and actors in the poem. Working back from this poem, I point to two sets of language documentation practices in the mid-twentieth century and show how Gladys Reichard recognized the use of this expressive or presentational feature (and hence documented it), while the work of Edward Sapir and Harry Hoijer systematically erased the feature from linguistic descriptions of Navajo. This erasure echoes the perspective of missionaries who saw confusion instead of speech play in Navajo punning practices. Here I look at the use of phonological iconicity and punning as important components of Navajo verbal art and suggest how this analysis reflects Hymes's concern with presentational features, inequality, and voice. A commentary to this essay by Richard Bauman appears later in this special issue.