Western Apache Language and Culture: Essays in Linguistic Anthropology

Western Apache Language and Culture
Essays in Linguistic Anthropology
By Keith H. Basso
195 pp. / 5.50 in x 8.50 in / 1992
Paper (978-0-8165-1323-9) [s]

Related Interest
- Language
- Apache

Seven essays, collected here for the first time, define some of the central concerns of linguistic anthropology through the close study of Western Apache, a language of astonishing complexity. All of

Instructive in its exemplary use of ethnographic methods and techniques of representation used for the understanding of linguistic anthropological phenomena....it is especially admirable and refreshing to see much in Basso's magnificent blending of cultural and linguistic anthropology that is clearly driven by 'local' relevances of Western Apache people.

—Language in Society

His clear writing, cogent arguments, and enlightening examples help the nonspecialist understand technical concepts. . . . In addition, the work suggests new ways of gaining an understanding of the language-culture nexus and endorses expanding older anthropological or ethnographic approaches.

—Western Historical Quarterly

His essays on the Apache language as it is spoken by the Cibecue Apache of northeastern Arizona are remarkable for their use of diverse theoretical perspectives to provide insights into underlying culturally given meanings. . . . Seldom have these propositions been so deftly and clearly supported as in these pages.

—Journal of Anthropological Research

the essays have been revised for this anthology.

Basso, a major authority in the field of linguistic anthropology, has drawn on fieldwork at the village of Cibecue, whose residents speak a dialect of Western Apache that is spoken nowhere else. He shows how intricacies of language—place names, metaphor, uses of silence—help a people define their very existence, so that, in the words of one Apache woman, "If we lose our language, we will lose our breath; then we will die and blow away like leaves." His essays amply demonstrate that, while Apache language and culture are changing in response to modernization, they remain intricate, vital and unique.

These essays illustrate not only the complexity of a particular cultural world as it has emerged to one observer over a protracted period of intensive fieldwork, but also the natural movement from the study of grammatical categories to that of language use and on to the study of the conceptual system underlying it. Each essay addresses a significant theoretical problem; taken together they constitute a microcosm of the anthropological understanding of language.

CONTENTS
The Western Apache Classificatory Verb System: A Semantic Analysis
Semantic Aspects of Linguistic Acculturation
A Western Apache Writing System: The Symbols of Silas John
"Wise Words" of the Western Apache: Metaphor and Semantic Theory
"To Give Up on Words": Silence in Western Apache Culture
"Stalking With Stories": Names, Places, and Moral Narratives among the Western Apache
"Speaking with Names": Language and Landscapes among the Western Apache

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