Name: Western Apache Language and Culture: Essays in Linguistic Anthropology
ISBN: 9780816513239

New!Websites for Authors

The co-op bookstore for avid readers

Western Apache Language and Culture: Essays in Linguistic Anthropology

Keith H. Basso

Paperback

Regular price$21.95With free membership trial$10.9850% off your first book+ Free shipping

Currently out of stock. Place a backorder.

Do you recommend this book?

Yes!

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 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

Book Details

Publisher: University of Arizona Press
Publish Date: Jul 1st, 1992
Pages: 195
Language: English
Edition: undefined - undefined
Dimensions: 8.44in - 5.52in - 0.66in - 0.71lb
EAN: 9780816513239
Categories: • Native American Studies• Indigenous Languages in the Americas

About the Author

Keith Basso was University Regents Professor of Anthropology at the University of New Mexico

More books by Keith H. Basso

Book Cover for: Wisdom Sits in Places: Landscape and Language Among the Western Apache, Keith H. Basso

Book Cover for: Portraits of 'The Whiteman': Linguistic Play and Cultural Symbols Among the Western Apache, Keith H. Basso

Book Cover for: Apachean Culture History and Ethnology, Keith H. Basso

Book Cover for: Western Apache Witchcraft: Volume 15, Keith H. Basso

Praise for this book

"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