Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-gb8f7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T08:22:00.956Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

“So it's got three meanings dil dil:” Seductive ideophony and the sounds of Navajo poetry

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 March 2017

Anthony K. Webster
Anthony K. Webster*
Affiliation:
University of Texas at Austin
*
[email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article engages questions about translation, phonological iconicity, and seductive ideophony. I begin by discussing the work of Paul Friedrich as it relates to questions of linguistic relativity and poetics and the qualities of music and myth that constitute poetry. I then present a poem written in Navajo by Rex Lee Jim and four translations of the poem. Three are from Navajo consultants and one of those translations will be, from a certain perspective, rather surprising. Namely, why does one consultant translate this poem as if it is composed of ideophones? The fourth translation is mine. I then work through the morphology of the poem in Navajo, saying something more about the translators and the process of translation. I then provide a transcript of a conversation I had with Blackhorse Mitchell about this poem. I use this to take up questions of phonological iconicity (punning) and the seductive quality of ideophony (the pole of music). I also place this poem within a context of the stick game in Navajo philosophy (the pole of myth). This leads, in the conclusion, to reflections about linguistic relativity, misunderstandings, sound, and poetics.

Résumé

Cet article soulève des questions sur la traduction, sur l'iconicité phonologique et sur la séduction de l'idéophonie. Je discute d'abord du travail de Paul Friedrich (1979, 1986 sur les questions de relativité linguistique et de poétique, et les qualités de la musique et du mythe qui constituent la poésie. Je présente ensuite un poème écrit en Navajo par Rex Lee Jim, et quatre traductions du poème, dont trois faites par des consultants navajo. L'une de ces trois sera, d'un certain point de vue, assez surprenante : pourquoi le consultant a-t-il traduit le poème comme s'il était composé d'idéophones? La quatrième traduction est de moi. J'analyse la morphologie du poème en Navajo, avec des commentaires au sujet des traducteurs et du processus de traduction. Je fournis ensuite la transcription d'une conversation que j'ai eue au sujet de ce poème avec Blackhorse Mitchell. Cette conversation me permet d'aborder des questions d'iconicité phonologique (calembours) et de la séduction qu'exerce l'idéophonie (le pôle de la musique). Je situe le poème dans le contexte du jeu de bâton dans la philosophie navajo (le pôle du mythe). Cela mène, en conclusion, à des réflexions sur la relativité linguistique, les malentendus, le son et la poétique.

Keywords

ideophonyNavajopoetryiconicitylinguistic relativitypunningidéophonieNavajopoésieiconicitérelativité linguistiquejeux de mots
Type
Articles
Information
Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique , Volume 62 , Issue 2: Structuring sensory imagery: Ideophones across languages and cultures/La structuration de l'imagerie sensorielle : les idéophones dans diverses langues et cultures , June 2017 , pp. 173 - 195
Copyright
© Canadian Linguistic Association/Association canadienne de linguistique 2017 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

This article is dedicated to the memory of Paul Friedrich. Portions of this paper were originally presented at the University of Rochester at the Structuring Sensory Images: Ideophones Across Languages & Cultures workshop in May, 2014. I thank all in attendance for useful comments and lively discussion about the topics broached here. Words fail to express what a delightful and invigorating experience the workshop was. Thanks especially to Joyce McDonough and Joseph Majesky for their hospitality while I was in Rochester. Another version of this paper was presented at Yale University in March of 2015. I thank Dina Omar, Paul Kockelman and Joseph Errington for stimulating comments and discussion about that paper. I would especially like to thank Blackhorse Mitchell, Rex Lee Jim and the other Navajos I have worked with on questions of translation, punning, and poetry. This paper doesn't exist without them. Research on the Navajo Nation was conducted in 2000–2001 and again in the summers of 2007–2012. Funding was provided by Wenner-Gren, the Philips Fund of the American Philosophical Society, the Jacobs Fund of the Whatcom Museum, and a Faculty Seed Grant at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. I thank them all. I thank as well the reviewers for the Canadian Journal of Linguistics, and Solveiga Armoskaite and Päivi Koskinen for their work as editors of this special issue.

References

References

Aberle, David. 1942. Mythology of the Navaho game stick-dice. Journal of American Folklore 55(217): 144–154.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barrett, Rusty. 2014. Ideophones and (non-)arbitrariness in the K'iche’ poetry of Humberto Ak'abal. Pragmatics and Society 5(3): 406–418.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bauman, Richard, and Briggs, Charles. 2003. Voices of modernity: Language ideologies and the politics of inequality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Becker, Alton. 1995. Beyond translation: Essays toward a modern philology. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Boas, Franz. 1889. On alternating sounds. American Anthropologist 2(1): 47–53.Google Scholar
Boas, Franz. 1966. Introduction. In Handbook of American Indian languages and Indian families of America north of Mexico, ed. Boas, Franz, and Powell, J. W., 1–79. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. [1911]Google Scholar
Bolinger, Dwight. 1940. Word affinities. American Speech 15(1): 62–73.Google Scholar
Bolinger, Dwight. 1949. The sign is not arbitrary. Boletín del Instituto Caro y Cuervo 5(1–3): 52–62.Google Scholar
Dingemanse, Mark. 2011. Ezra Pound among the Mawu: Ideophones and iconicity in Siwu. In Semblance and signification, ed. Michelucci, Pascal, Fischer, Olga, and Ljungberg, Christina, 39–54. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Dingemanse, Mark. 2012. Coerced iconicity in writing and speech. In Semiotix XN-8. <http://semioticon.com/semiotix/2012/07/coerced-iconicity-in-writing-and-speech/>>Google Scholar
Fabian, Johannes. 1995. Ethnographic misunderstanding and the perils of context. American Anthropologist 97(1): 41–50.Google Scholar
Field, Margaret. 2009. Metaphor, mythology, and a Navajo verb: The role of cultural constructs in the lexicography of endangered languages. Anthropological Linguistics 51(3/4): 296–302.Google Scholar
Fathers, Franciscan. 1910. An ethnological dictionary of the Navaho language. St. Michaels, Arizona: St. Michaels Press.Google Scholar
Friedrich, Paul. 1979. Language, context, and the imagination. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Friedrich, Paul. 1986. The language parallax: Linguistic relativism and poetic indeterminacy. Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Friedrich, Paul. 2006. Maximizing ethnopoetics: Fine-tuning anthropological experience. In Language, culture, and society, ed. Jourdan, Christine and Tuite, Kevin, 207–228. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Friedrich, Paul. 2009. Beyond the unsaid: Transcending language through language. In Culture + Rhetoric: Studies in rhetoric and culture, ed. Strecker, Ivo, and Tyler, Stephen, 211–220. Oxford: Berghahn Books.Google Scholar
Frisbie, Charlotte. 1980. Vocables in Navajo ceremonial music. Ethnomusicology 24(3): 347–392.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frisbie, Charlotte. 1993. Kinaaldá: A study of the Navaho girl's puberty ceremony. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press.Google Scholar
Haile, Fr. Berard. 1984. Navajo Coyote tales. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.Google Scholar
Hopper, Paul. 1987. Emergent grammar. In Berkeley Linguistics Society: Proceedings of the thirteenth annual meeting, ed. Aske, Jon, Beery, Natasha, Michaelis, Laura, and Filip, Hana, 139–157. Berkeley Linguistics Society.Google Scholar
Hopper, Paul. 1996. Some recent trends in grammaticalization. Annual Review of Anthropology 25: 217–236.Google Scholar
Hymes, Dell. 1960. Phonological aspects of style: Some English sonnets. In Style in language, ed. Sebeok, Thomas, 107–131. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Hymes, Dell. 1981. In vain I tried to tell you: Essays in Native American ethnopoetics. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Jakobson, Roman. 1960. Concluding statement: Linguistics and poetics. In Style in language, ed. Sebeok, Thomas, 350–373. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Kluckhohn, Clyde, and Leighton, Dorothea. 1962. The Navajo. New York: Doubleday.Google Scholar
Landar, Herbert. 1985. Navajo interjections. International Journal of American Linguistics 51(4): 489–491.Google Scholar
Leavitt, John. 2006. Thick translation: Three soundings. In Language, culture and the individual, ed. O'Neil, Catherine, Scoggin, Mary, and Tuite, Kevin, 79–108. München: Lincom.Google Scholar
Leavitt, John. 2011. Linguistic relativities: Language diversity and modern thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Matthews, Washington. 1889. Navajo gambling songs. American Anthropologist 2(1): 1–19.Google Scholar
McAllester, David. 1954. Enemy way music: A study of social and esthetic values as seen in Navajo music. Papers of the Peabody Museum of American Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University 41(3). Cambridge: Peabody Museum.Google Scholar
Mitchell, Blackhorse, and Webster, Anthony K.. 2011. We don't know what we become: Navajo ethnopoetics and expressive features in a poem by Rex Lee Jim. Anthropological Linguistics 53(3): 259–286.Google Scholar
Noss, Philip K. 2001. Ideas, phones and Gbaya verbal art. In Ideophones, ed. Erhard Voeltz, F. K., and Kilian-Hatz, Christa, 259–270. Philadelphia: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nuckolls, Janis. 1996. Sounds like life: Sound symbolic grammar, performance and cognition in Pastaza Quechua. London: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Nuckolls, Janis. 2010. Lessons from a Quechua strongwoman: Ideophony, dialogue and perspective. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.Google Scholar
Nuckolls, Janis. 2014. Ideophones’ challenge for typological linguistics: The case of Pastaza Quichua. Pragmatics and Society 5(3): 355–383.Google Scholar
Peterson, Leighton C., and Webster, Anthony K.. 2013. Speech play and language ideologies in Navajo terminology development. Pragmatics 23(1): 93–116.Google Scholar
Reichard, Gladys. 1951. Navaho grammar. New York: J.J. Augustin.Google Scholar
Samuels, David. 2001. Indeterminacy and history in Britton Goode's western Apache placenames. American Ethnologist 28(2): 277–302.Google Scholar
Samuels, David. 2004. Language, meaning, modernity, and Doowop. Semiotica 149: 297–323.Google Scholar
Sapir, Edward. 1921. Language. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, Inc.Google Scholar
Sapir, Edward. 1929a. The status of linguistics as a science. Language 5(4): 207–214.Google Scholar
Sapir, Edward. 1929b. A study in phonetic symbolism. Journal of Experimental Psychology 12: 225–239.Google Scholar
Sapir, Edward. 1932. Two Navajo puns. Language 8(3): 217–19.Google Scholar
Schwarz, Maureen Trudelle. 1997a. Modeled in the image of Changing Woman. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.Google Scholar
Schwarz, Maureen Trudelle. 1997b. Snakes in the ladies room: Navajo views on personhood and effect. American Ethnologist 24(3): 602–627.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schwarz, Maureen Trudelle. 2003. Blood and voice: Navajo women ceremonial practitioners. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.Google Scholar
Sherzer, Joel. 1970. Talking backwards in Cuna: The sociological reality of phonological descriptions. Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 26(4): 343–353.Google Scholar
Sherzer, Joel. 1987. A discourse-centered approach to language and culture. American Anthropologist 89(2): 295–309.Google Scholar
Sicoli, Mark. 2014. Ideophones, rhemes, and interpretants. Pragmatics and Society 5(3): 445–454.Google Scholar
Silverstein, Michael. 1976. Shifters, linguistic categories, and cultural description. In Meaning in anthropology, ed. Basso, Keith and Selby, Henry, 11–55. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.Google Scholar
Silverstein, Michael. 2001. The limits of awareness. In Linguistic anthropology: A reader, ed. Duranti, Alessandro, 382–401. Malden: Blackwell Publishing.Google Scholar
Toelken, Barre. 1987. Life and death in Navajo Coyote tales. In Recovering the word, ed. Swann, Brian and Krupat, Arnold, 388–401. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Toelken, Barre, and Scott, Tacheeni. 1981. Poetic retranslation and the ‘pretty languages’ of Yellowman. In Traditional literatures of the American Indians, ed. Kroeber, Karl, 65–116. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.Google Scholar
Urban, Greg. 1986. Linguistic consciousness and allophonic variation: A semiotic perspective. Semiotica 61(1/2): 33–59.Google Scholar
Wall, Leon, and Morgan, William. 1994. Navajo-English dictionary. New York: Hippocrene Books, Inc.Google Scholar
Wallace, Anthony. 1961. Culture and personality. New York: Random House.Google Scholar
Webster, Anthony. 2006. The mouse that sucked: On “translating” a Navajo poem. Studies in American Indian Literature 18(1): 37–49.Google Scholar
Webster, Anthony. 2009. Explorations in Navajo poetry and poetics. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.Google Scholar
Webster, Anthony. 2010. A note on Navajo interlingual puns. International Journal of American Linguistics 76(2): 289–298.Google Scholar
Webster, Anthony. 2013. The validity of Navajo is in its sounds: On Hymes, Navajo poetry, punning, and the recognition of voice. Journal of Folklore Research 50(1–3): 117–144.Google Scholar
Webster, Anthony. 2014a. Rex Lee Jim's ‘Na'asts’ǫǫsí:’ On iconicity, interwoven-ness, and ideophones. Pragmatics and Society 5(3): 431–444.Google Scholar
Webster, Anthony. 2014b. In favor of sound: Linguistic relativity and Navajo poetry. In Proceedings of the Symposium About Language and Society, Austin, SALSA XXII. Texas Linguistic Forum 57.Google Scholar
Webster, Anthony. 2015a. ‘Everything got kinda strange after a while:’ Some reflections on translating Navajo poetry that should not be translated. Anthropology & Humanism 40(1): 70–92.Google Scholar
Webster, Anthony. 2015b. Intimate grammars: An ethnography of Navajo poetry. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.Google Scholar
Webster, Anthony. 2015c. Why the world doesn't sound the same in any language and why that might matter. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 25(1): 87–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Whorf, Benjamin. (ed. Carroll, John). 1956. Language, thought, and reality. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Woodbury, Anthony. 1998. Documenting rhetorical, aesthetic, and expressive loss in language shift. In Endangered languages, ed. Grenoble, Lenore, and Whaley, Lindsay, 234–258. Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press.Google Scholar
Woodbury, Anthony. 2007. On thick translation in linguistic documentation. In Language documentation and description, ed. Austin, Peter K., 120–135. London: Hans Rausing Endangered Languages Project 4.Google Scholar
Woolard, Kathryn. 1998. Simultaneity and bivalency as strategies in bilingualism. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 8(1): 3–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wright, Sylvia. 1954. The death of Lady Mondegreen. Harper's Weekly 201(1254): 48–51.Google Scholar
Young, Robert, and Morgan, William. 1987. The Navajo language. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.Google Scholar
Young, Robert, and Morgan, William. 1992. Analytical lexicon of Navajo. With the assistance of Sally Midgette. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.Google Scholar

Literary Works Cited

Bitsui, Sherwin. 2009. Flood song. Port Townsend, WA: Copper Canyon Press.Google Scholar
Jim, Rex Lee. 1995. saad. Princeton collections of western Americana. Lenape Yaa Deez’á [Princeton, N.J.]: Ti'oh Nilnééh.Google Scholar