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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Vaupés Multilingualism And The Substance Of Language, Stephen Hugh-Jones
Vaupés Multilingualism And The Substance Of Language, Stephen Hugh-Jones
Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America
By focusing on ordinary conversational language, relying on a notion of “group” derived from unilineal descent theory, and neglecting mythology and ritual, studies of Vaupés Tukanoan multilingualism have inadvertently tended to reproduce a Western ideology of language as marking national identity and concerned with conveying meaning. This paper suggests that attention to musical, ritual, and shamanic contexts reveals multilingualism in a different light, with ritual speech acts as constitutive of social groups, names as vehicles of reproduction, and breath as a substance-like bodily element and source of vitality. The more esoteric, rhetorical, musical, or visual ornamentation is given to breath, …
Introduction: Indigenous Multilingualism In Lowland South America, Patience Epps
Introduction: Indigenous Multilingualism In Lowland South America, Patience Epps
Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America
Recent decades have seen an exponential growth in our understanding of the indigenous languages of lowland South America – from their structures and interrelationships to the dynamics of their day-to-day use and the ways they are conceptualized by their speakers. These advances highlight not only the diversity of languages in lowland South America, but also the complexity of the dynamics of interaction among speakers in multilingual settings. The region is home to a range of interactive indigenous ‘regional systems’, such as the Vaupés, Upper Xingu, and other areas, where multiple languages have thrived alongside each other for generations, and interaction …
Multilingual Pantanal And Its Decay, Gustavo Godoy, Kristina Balykova
Multilingual Pantanal And Its Decay, Gustavo Godoy, Kristina Balykova
Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America
Historically, the Pantanal wetlands were inhabited by diverse ethnicities belonging to various linguistic groups, including Bororoan, Arawakan, Tupian, Gauicuruan, and Zamucoan, as well as some isolates and unclassified languages. Numerous ethnic groups disappeared without leaving any records of their languages, leaving behind only a list of ethnonyms. A point of confluence of different peoples that also circulated in other major South American areas, the Pantanal was a place with high linguistic diversity. Trade networks surrounded and permeated the area, as described in the earliest accounts by Portuguese and Spanish colonizers. As Indigenous groups were affected by colonial disputes over labor …