Academic Paper |
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| Title: | “Eating the food of our place”: Sociolinguistic loyalties in multidialectal Sui villages |
| Author: | James N. Stanford |
| Email: | click here to access email |
| Homepage: | http://www.dartmouth.edu/~linguist/faculty/stanford.html |
| Institution: | Dartmouth College |
| Linguistic Field: | Sociolinguistics |
| Abstract: | Among the Sui people of rural southwestern China, descent-group loyalties are closely tied to linguistic features. In every village, long-term dialect contact occurs between local villagers and in-marrying women from different clans, yet most speakers maintain their original dialect features to a high degree. The present study conducts ethnographic interviews to more deeply understand why such behavior occurs. Most current, practice-based models of identity tend to emphasize dynamic, flexible, individualistic choices – an approach that suits variation on many levels in many societies. However, to understand the descent-group loyalties particular to indigenous, non-Western, clan-based cultures like Sui, a more tempered, culturally sensitive model is necessary. Speakers show a deep sense of stability, permanence, and collective loyalty to communities of descent, (re)produced through stable linguistic expressions: acts of loyalty. The study also highlights the use of indigenous minorities’ own categories (place, toponyms, lineage) rather than non-indigenous categories. |
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This article appears in Language in Society Vol. 38, Issue 3, which you can read on Cambridge's site or on LINGUIST . |
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