Mopan Maya

In this article, I explore the possible application of language documentation as a medium, or a “site,” that can intermediate two contrasting principles or beings, such as researchers and language consultants, or language ideologies and speakers’ felt attachment to their language. Inspired by the notion of “sites (Silverstein, 1998b; Kroskrity, 2009),” I reconsider the role of language documentation and the moment that language documentation can create. Treating this moment as a place where those contrasting beings meet and interact, I propose that language documentation can create “sites” of linguistic transaction, of self recognition, and of stance shift. Within this “site,” language documentation can serve as a medium that can erase a border between two contrasting beings and enable speakers to start self-motivated and self-engaging language renewal.

ABSTRACT OF MONOGRAPH

Relatively Speaking:
The Acquisition of Social Identity among the Mopan Maya

2001, Oxford Studies in Anthropological Linguistics.

Eve Danziger
Department of Anthropology
University of Virginia
http://pages.shanti.virginia.edu/evedanziger/


Aligning classic debates over kinship semantics with the recent renewal of interest in the measurable effects of language variation on thought (Lucy 1992, Gumperz and Levinson 1991), this study takes up the challenge of determining the "psychological reality" of semantic models; it carries out an investigation of children's language which integrates ethnographic and linguistic observations to discriminate between competing semantic models of kinship vocabulary in the Mopan Maya language of Central America.
Fourteen months of ethnographic fieldwork in southern Belize provide the basis for an understanding of the Mopan kinship domain. According to informants, relationships in this domain are based upon parent-child links, and typical nuclear family referents exist within each named category. Use of the terms of the domain in obligatory greeting is consistently understood as an important instantiation of religious respect (Mopan tzik). A deep reverence for age as the vehicle of knowledge motivates a lexical distinction between "same age group" and "different age group" relationships within the set of those entitled to the respect greeting. In a deeply felt sense, however, the sameness and differentness of age group that is crucial to Mopan kin term semantics is not predicated upon essential factors such as biological generation or absolute chronology. Rather, the distinction turns on collective assessment of the various social and cultural criteria that, in the right combination, allow one person to play a nurturing role with respect to another. Although a feature-based analysis is applicable to the internal semantics of the Mopan domain therefore, the features to be applied are social and local rather than essential or natural. In illustration of this point, the study describes how certain tzik greeting relationships are conventionally established through performative speech acts in situations which allow for a considerable degree of prior negotiation as to outcome.
On the basis of this description, three very different models of kinship semantics are proposed for the Mopan domain. One, a traditional kintype approach uses ethnogenealogical data to make an analysis in terms of combinations of biological primitives. The second, a prototype analysis made in terms of central category members, follows up linguistic and interview evidence which indicates the existence of familiar typical referents within the nuclear family for each term. A third, cryptotype, analysis proposes that the peculiarly Mopan feature of fitness for nurture by virtue of maturity functions in Mopan cognitive organization to define the category as a uniquely Mopan conceptual whole. This analysis proposes that category boundaries in the Mopan domain are well-defined and psychologically salient rather than fuzzy and peripheral.

The study now takes up the challenge of establishing the cognitive status of these three possible analyses. Previous cross-linguistic investigations have indicated that the semantic complexity of family relationship terms conditions the order in which children process them through cross-culturally verified stages of cognitive acquisition (Haviland and Clark 1974, Piaget 1928). Acquisition of Mopan terms is predicted to proceed in three alternative sequences under the three competing semantic models (cf. Greenfield and Childs 1977). Data from one hundred Mopan children aged seven to fourteen years provide results which most strongly support the cryptotype analysis. The kintype analysis is not supported by the data. The prototype analysis is not disconfirmed but is only suggestively supported. A return to the Mopan ethnography and to general ethnology helps us to interpret these cognitive results. The requirements of the social situations to which tzik is relevant are such that mutually exclusive courses of linguistic action have alternative symbolic readings and alternative social consequences. The circumstances therefore do not allow for fuzzy boundaries to the tzik-greeting ("kinship") domain, nor for gradations of membership in tzik-related categories.

The forces which define the Mopan kinship domain in cultural rather than in biological terms are symbolic ones. And within the tzik domain, the forces which emphasize category boundaries rather than the identification of central members are those of social practice. Mopan conceptual categories in the tzik domain are motivated by their relevance to culturally meaningful action in particular contexts, and they therefore reflect neither a disembodied and universal `objective reality' (kintype organization) nor a cross-culturally common and pan-contextual `human-sized experience' (prototype organization).
Between thought and language, the study concludes, lies social action. Combining quantitative with qualitative methodology, the work draws out and examines the vital links between social purpose, lexical categorization, and cognitive organization. In the Mopan kinship case, it is clear that while genealogical or physiological reality may constitute a "fuzzy" continuum, it is contextualized speech itself which functions to create sharply bounded categories of social action. These categories in turn are demonstrated to have psychological reality in the minds of speakers. The study thus addresses the issue of language and thought from a standpoint that unites cognitive with practice interests in linguistic anthropology. It views linguistic and conceptual categories as fully integrated both into the particular context of their use, and also into the larger cultural context that makes it possible to use them at all. This multiplex context is seen to play a role both in shaping linguistic structure, and in bringing into being a culturally particular form of conceptual organization.


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This dissertation explores the nature, purpose, function and role of language documentation in order to further our understanding of mechanisms of language transmission and maintenance in the face of language endangerment and the repression of indigenous identity. Beyond its traditional use for generating linguistic data, I argue that the act and the process of language documentation can be understood as a comprehensive means to evaluate the interactions between speakers and researchers and as the stage where various beliefs and emotions are displayed. Extending the notion of “sites” developed by Silverstein (1998) and Kroskrity (2009), I argue that the act of language documentation can create “sites” of linguistic transaction, of self recognition, and of ideological and emotional stance shift.

      To attain this goal, this project linguistically and ethnographically documents and describes Belizean Mopan, an endangered Mayan language spoken in the southern Petén region of Guatemala and in the Maya Mountain region (Toledo District) of Southern Belize as a case study. Ethnographic and linguistic observation suggest that characteristics of Belizean Mopan do not simply stem from its linguistic features but rather are derived from ethnic complexity, language ideologies, identity politics, the history of Belize and speakers’ awareness of the self. Linguistic biographies, interviews, participant observation, and ethnographic accounts indicate that the individual’s emotional attachments to the language and the sense of belonging to one’s linguistic community are crucial keys for effective language documentation and revitalization. Discourse and grammatical analysis of sound symbolic words in narratives suggest that speakers’ linguistic affects can be evoked through sound itself. The devices used during language documentation, such as voice and video recorders can be understood as “signifying instruments” (J. D. Hill 2014), which amplify or evoke speakers’ and researchers’ linguistic ideologies and/or affects.

    Tzik ‘respect’ plays a pivotal role in distinguishing Mopans from other Maya groups and many stories and personal narratives either explicitly or subtly demonstrate the concept and importance of tzik for regulating and maintaining the traditional community and for having a successful life, which resembles the secretos ‘secrets’ described in Hofling’s (1996: 109) account of Itzaj Maya lives. Focusing on tzik gained through being a ch’ija’an kristiyanojo ‘the grown-up people’, I argue that storytelling is a primary device to transmit and circulate traditional knowledge, worldview, ideologies and memories of Maya people from the present, the immediate past, and the mythological past and that in a sense, the role and meaning of dream divinations and my language consultant, Orlando Sho’s musical performances can be equated with the practice of storytelling. The act of language documentation is a portal to the site of linguistic and cultural transaction and of world learning, in which I see a key to successful language renewal and revitalization.

Rethinking the importance of sound and emotion is a crucial locus for thinking through cultural voices and silences carried in narratives. Inspired by Silverstein (1998b) and Kroskrity's (2009) notion of " sites, " I have reconsidered the role of language documentation and the moments that the act of language documentation can produce, and suggested that language documentation can create " sites " of linguistic transaction, of self recognition, and of ideological and emotional stance shift (Tanaka-McFarlane, 2015). Examining the use of sound symbolic utterances in Belizean Mopan Maya 2 speakers' story-telling, this paper attempts to extend this notion of language documentation as " sites " to the discussion of the sound suggestiveness through phonological iconicity (Barrett, 2014, 2016), of the imaginative possibilities via sound (Webster, 2009, 2014, 2015), and of the emotionally signified and ideologically silenced ancestors' voices and identities. My focus is on the usage of an onomatopoeic lexical item, ch'oyoy 'cicada' that reveals not only its grammatical and structural function as a lexicalized sound but also its emotional, historical and imaginative semanticity that connects the call of ajch'oyoy and the voices of ancestors.

Religion has a major impact on human-environmental relationships as evidenced by cultural responses to agricultural disease. In Belize, Protestant conversion has transformed traditional Mopan Maya environment relations and paved the way for the commercialization of formerly ritual crops. The changes in the spiritual importance of cacao and nature are re ected in farmers' responses to the emergence of Monilia (Moniliophtora roreri), a fungal disease that attacks the fruits of the cacao tree (Theobroma cacao), the botanical source of chocolate. Traditionally, Mopan cacao farmers relied on ritual offerings to nature spirits to cure diseased trees. However, the widespread adoption of Protestant Christianity by many Mopan has led to the discontinuation of cacao rituals, the demysti cation of nature spirits, and increased reliance on agro-technical disease management. The decline of Mopan ritual offerings speaks more broadly to the transformation of indigenous environmental relations in the context of Protestant conversion and capitalist agricultural development.