Barbra A Meek
Biographic Data
| ID | 475241 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Barbra A Meek |
| GIVEN NAMES | Barbra A |
| FAMILY NAME | Meek |
| SIGNATURE | MEEK B A |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Michigan |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-7643-5049 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 18 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 151 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 17 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1998 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
On Relanguaging
What does it mean to "relanguage"? I offer this term as a proposal and an approach toward change within and across disciplinary fields that investigate linguistic form and practice. It addresses the call to "decolonize" the academy while also recognizing the limits of decolonization in settler colonial contexts. Linguistic representations are not in and of themselves pejorative or "racist/racializing" or "colonizing." Their interpretive framings …
Whitefellas got miserable language skills
Linguistic differences in staged or scripted performances matter, since language, or language-ing, is a critical component in structuring power and maintaining unequal social differences or challenging and complicating them. To investigate such scripted speech in the context of Indigenous characters, we draw on the semiotic processes of erasure and rhematisation as well as the newly proposed concepts of erasure marking and semiotic overlay. We ex…
"Are you Navajo or Inuit?" Identity, television dialogue, and Indigenizing semiotics
This study analyzes Indigenizing semiotic tactics in television narratives from the United States, combining corpus linguistic methodology with a theoretical framing inspired by linguistic anthropology. Given recent changes in the US television landscape, we analyze two landmark series with First Nations showrunners: Reservation Dogs and Rutherford Falls. Specifically, our dataset consists of all dialogue transcribed from both series' first two s…
Language use in Indigenous-authored television series
For much of telecinematic history depictions of Indigenous characters and languages have instantiated racist stereotypes that perpetuate White, colonial frameworks. However, a new generation of Indigenous writers, directors, producers, and actors use scripted performances to illuminate, contest, and reconfigure these representations, and ideally provoke new interpretations. and three in Australia), focusing on how they diversify and complicate ma…
From Endangerment to (Re)Emergence
What does it mean to acquire an endangered language as a child? How does acquisition manifest across different endangered language scenarios? We propose a view of language acquisition and transmission that encompasses a broad range of language endangerment contexts beyond monolingual settings and thus reframes language endangerment through insights from children's speech, across learning contexts, and in relation to community ideologies. We consi…
On Classification, Language, and American Indian Scholarship
So far as I know the actual process of a transfer of grammatical categories from one language to another [or hybridization] has never been observed, although minor changes, like the adoption of a form here and there, and syntactic influences are known to occur. ... The question in which we are interested is not that of the theoretical definition of relation of languages as defined by Meillet ..., but merely a question of historical development. (…
At risk” languages and the road to recovery
This article traces the various ways that "languages at risk" in the Yukon Territory, Canada, are imagined and managed across a range of "stakeholders." Predicated on a history of oppression and the management of risk in the U.S. and Canada, aboriginal language endangerment has arisen from insecurities about communicative diversity. Conversely language revitalization has arisen from insecurities about the loss of diversity. As this article demons…
Pathways Forward for Indigenous Language Reclamation
Peer Reviewed
Language Endangerment in Childhood
Language endangerment by definition excludes children and childhood, as the most endangered languages are those which are no longer being used, spoken, or acquired by the youngest generations. By and large, research in this area reflects this exclusion by focusing primarily on the documentation of grammatical knowledge elicited from the oldest speakers for storage in archives (what Maliseet anthropologist Bernard Perley has termed "zombie linguis…
Engaging Native American Publics
She can do it in English too
Teaching Indigenous Languages
In the introduction to the edited volume, Teaching Indigenous Languages , Dr. Jon Reyhner reflected that “I have written on this subject of maintaining and renewing indigenous languages before . . . but the recent work of Dr. Evangeline Parsons Yazzie and Dr. Richard Littlebear . . . has crystallized for me the centrality of this effort for the survival of indigenous peoples” (1997, p. v).
Interactional Surveillance and Self-Censorship in Encounters of Dominion
This paper addresses the contradictions inherent (adherent) in indigenous nations' (and peoples') articulations of self-determination and sovereignty which are unavoidably constrained by some dominating nation-state, resulting in their "dependent" independence. While such constraints and contradictions crosscut a variety of domains from policy-making and implementation to global recognition of human rights, we attend to the interactional scale. T…
Failing American Indian Languages
This article critically examines the mediating role of scholarly expectations and the unexpected in the management—and transcendence—of failure/success as these concepts relate to language revitalization. Deloria remarks that, “expectations tend to assume a status quo defined around failure, the result of some innate limitation on the part of Indian people. Success is written off as an anomaly, a bizarre little episode that calls up a chuckle” (2…
Respecting the Language of Elders
This article examines an ideological shift related to and affecting language shift, focusing especially on children's experiences. I show that while elders retained their status as intellectual authorities responsible for passing their knowledge on to younger community members, their knowledge became limited to practices conceptualized as "traditionally Kaska," of which language was an integral part. As a result, the acquisition of Kaska became s…
Framing Indigenous Languages as Secondary to Matrix Languages
Reversing language shift has proven to be difficult for many reasons. Although much of the literature has focused on educational practices, little research has attended to the visual presentation of language used in educational texts aimed at reversing shift. In this article, we compare language materials developed for two different language situations, finding that for both situations the minority languages continue to be framed by the matrix la…
"And the Injun goes "How
This article describes linguistic features used to depict fictional American Indian speech, a style referred to as "Hollywood Injun English," found in movies, on television, and in some literature (the focus is on the film and television varieties). Grammatically, it draws on a range of nonstandard features similar to those found in "foreigner talk" and "baby talk," as well a formalized, ornate variety of English; all these features are used to p…
Rethinking Linguistic Relativity
Rethinking Linguistic Relativity. John J. Gumperz and Stephen C. Levinson. eds. Studies in the Social and Cultural Foundations of Language, 17. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. 488 pp
"And the Injun goes "How
This article describes linguistic features used to depict fictional American Indian speech, a style referred to as "Hollywood Injun English," found in movies, on television, and in some literature (the focus is on the film and television varieties). Grammatically, it draws on a range of nonstandard features similar to those found in "foreigner talk" and "baby talk," as well a formalized, ornate variety of English; all these features are used to p…
Respecting the Language of Elders
This article examines an ideological shift related to and affecting language shift, focusing especially on children's experiences. I show that while elders retained their status as intellectual authorities responsible for passing their knowledge on to younger community members, their knowledge became limited to practices conceptualized as "traditionally Kaska," of which language was an integral part. As a result, the acquisition of Kaska became s…
Framing Indigenous Languages as Secondary to Matrix Languages
Reversing language shift has proven to be difficult for many reasons. Although much of the literature has focused on educational practices, little research has attended to the visual presentation of language used in educational texts aimed at reversing shift. In this article, we compare language materials developed for two different language situations, finding that for both situations the minority languages continue to be framed by the matrix la…
Language Endangerment in Childhood
Language endangerment by definition excludes children and childhood, as the most endangered languages are those which are no longer being used, spoken, or acquired by the youngest generations. By and large, research in this area reflects this exclusion by focusing primarily on the documentation of grammatical knowledge elicited from the oldest speakers for storage in archives (what Maliseet anthropologist Bernard Perley has termed "zombie linguis…
She can do it in English too
Whitefellas got miserable language skills
Linguistic differences in staged or scripted performances matter, since language, or language-ing, is a critical component in structuring power and maintaining unequal social differences or challenging and complicating them. To investigate such scripted speech in the context of Indigenous characters, we draw on the semiotic processes of erasure and rhematisation as well as the newly proposed concepts of erasure marking and semiotic overlay. We ex…
On Classification, Language, and American Indian Scholarship
So far as I know the actual process of a transfer of grammatical categories from one language to another [or hybridization] has never been observed, although minor changes, like the adoption of a form here and there, and syntactic influences are known to occur. ... The question in which we are interested is not that of the theoretical definition of relation of languages as defined by Meillet ..., but merely a question of historical development. (…
At risk” languages and the road to recovery
This article traces the various ways that "languages at risk" in the Yukon Territory, Canada, are imagined and managed across a range of "stakeholders." Predicated on a history of oppression and the management of risk in the U.S. and Canada, aboriginal language endangerment has arisen from insecurities about communicative diversity. Conversely language revitalization has arisen from insecurities about the loss of diversity. As this article demons…
Interactional Surveillance and Self-Censorship in Encounters of Dominion
This paper addresses the contradictions inherent (adherent) in indigenous nations' (and peoples') articulations of self-determination and sovereignty which are unavoidably constrained by some dominating nation-state, resulting in their "dependent" independence. While such constraints and contradictions crosscut a variety of domains from policy-making and implementation to global recognition of human rights, we attend to the interactional scale. T…
Rethinking Linguistic Relativity
Rethinking Linguistic Relativity. John J. Gumperz and Stephen C. Levinson. eds. Studies in the Social and Cultural Foundations of Language, 17. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. 488 pp
"Are you Navajo or Inuit?" Identity, television dialogue, and Indigenizing semiotics
This study analyzes Indigenizing semiotic tactics in television narratives from the United States, combining corpus linguistic methodology with a theoretical framing inspired by linguistic anthropology. Given recent changes in the US television landscape, we analyze two landmark series with First Nations showrunners: Reservation Dogs and Rutherford Falls. Specifically, our dataset consists of all dialogue transcribed from both series' first two s…
Rethinking Linguistic Relativity
Rethinking Linguistic Relativity. John J. Gumperz and Stephen C. Levinson. eds. Studies in the Social and Cultural Foundations of Language, 17. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. 488 pp
"And the Injun goes "How
This article describes linguistic features used to depict fictional American Indian speech, a style referred to as "Hollywood Injun English," found in movies, on television, and in some literature (the focus is on the film and television varieties). Grammatically, it draws on a range of nonstandard features similar to those found in "foreigner talk" and "baby talk," as well a formalized, ornate variety of English; all these features are used to p…
Respecting the Language of Elders
This article examines an ideological shift related to and affecting language shift, focusing especially on children's experiences. I show that while elders retained their status as intellectual authorities responsible for passing their knowledge on to younger community members, their knowledge became limited to practices conceptualized as "traditionally Kaska," of which language was an integral part. As a result, the acquisition of Kaska became s…
Framing Indigenous Languages as Secondary to Matrix Languages
Reversing language shift has proven to be difficult for many reasons. Although much of the literature has focused on educational practices, little research has attended to the visual presentation of language used in educational texts aimed at reversing shift. In this article, we compare language materials developed for two different language situations, finding that for both situations the minority languages continue to be framed by the matrix la…
Failing American Indian Languages
This article critically examines the mediating role of scholarly expectations and the unexpected in the management—and transcendence—of failure/success as these concepts relate to language revitalization. Deloria remarks that, “expectations tend to assume a status quo defined around failure, the result of some innate limitation on the part of Indian people. Success is written off as an anomaly, a bizarre little episode that calls up a chuckle” (2…
Teaching Indigenous Languages
In the introduction to the edited volume, Teaching Indigenous Languages , Dr. Jon Reyhner reflected that “I have written on this subject of maintaining and renewing indigenous languages before . . . but the recent work of Dr. Evangeline Parsons Yazzie and Dr. Richard Littlebear . . . has crystallized for me the centrality of this effort for the survival of indigenous peoples” (1997, p. v).
Interactional Surveillance and Self-Censorship in Encounters of Dominion
This paper addresses the contradictions inherent (adherent) in indigenous nations' (and peoples') articulations of self-determination and sovereignty which are unavoidably constrained by some dominating nation-state, resulting in their "dependent" independence. While such constraints and contradictions crosscut a variety of domains from policy-making and implementation to global recognition of human rights, we attend to the interactional scale. T…
She can do it in English too
Engaging Native American Publics
Language Endangerment in Childhood
Language endangerment by definition excludes children and childhood, as the most endangered languages are those which are no longer being used, spoken, or acquired by the youngest generations. By and large, research in this area reflects this exclusion by focusing primarily on the documentation of grammatical knowledge elicited from the oldest speakers for storage in archives (what Maliseet anthropologist Bernard Perley has termed "zombie linguis…
Pathways Forward for Indigenous Language Reclamation
Peer Reviewed
At risk” languages and the road to recovery
This article traces the various ways that "languages at risk" in the Yukon Territory, Canada, are imagined and managed across a range of "stakeholders." Predicated on a history of oppression and the management of risk in the U.S. and Canada, aboriginal language endangerment has arisen from insecurities about communicative diversity. Conversely language revitalization has arisen from insecurities about the loss of diversity. As this article demons…
Language use in Indigenous-authored television series
For much of telecinematic history depictions of Indigenous characters and languages have instantiated racist stereotypes that perpetuate White, colonial frameworks. However, a new generation of Indigenous writers, directors, producers, and actors use scripted performances to illuminate, contest, and reconfigure these representations, and ideally provoke new interpretations. and three in Australia), focusing on how they diversify and complicate ma…
From Endangerment to (Re)Emergence
What does it mean to acquire an endangered language as a child? How does acquisition manifest across different endangered language scenarios? We propose a view of language acquisition and transmission that encompasses a broad range of language endangerment contexts beyond monolingual settings and thus reframes language endangerment through insights from children's speech, across learning contexts, and in relation to community ideologies. We consi…
On Classification, Language, and American Indian Scholarship
So far as I know the actual process of a transfer of grammatical categories from one language to another [or hybridization] has never been observed, although minor changes, like the adoption of a form here and there, and syntactic influences are known to occur. ... The question in which we are interested is not that of the theoretical definition of relation of languages as defined by Meillet ..., but merely a question of historical development. (…
On Relanguaging
What does it mean to "relanguage"? I offer this term as a proposal and an approach toward change within and across disciplinary fields that investigate linguistic form and practice. It addresses the call to "decolonize" the academy while also recognizing the limits of decolonization in settler colonial contexts. Linguistic representations are not in and of themselves pejorative or "racist/racializing" or "colonizing." Their interpretive framings …
Whitefellas got miserable language skills
Linguistic differences in staged or scripted performances matter, since language, or language-ing, is a critical component in structuring power and maintaining unequal social differences or challenging and complicating them. To investigate such scripted speech in the context of Indigenous characters, we draw on the semiotic processes of erasure and rhematisation as well as the newly proposed concepts of erasure marking and semiotic overlay. We ex…
"Are you Navajo or Inuit?" Identity, television dialogue, and Indigenizing semiotics
This study analyzes Indigenizing semiotic tactics in television narratives from the United States, combining corpus linguistic methodology with a theoretical framing inspired by linguistic anthropology. Given recent changes in the US television landscape, we analyze two landmark series with First Nations showrunners: Reservation Dogs and Rutherford Falls. Specifically, our dataset consists of all dialogue transcribed from both series' first two s…
Multilingual Education and Policy (12 works) · Sociology (11 works) · Linguistics (9 works) · Computer Science (8 works) · Linguistic Variation and Morphology (7 works) · Political science (7 works) · Law (6 works) · Philosophy (6 works) · Indigenous (5 works) · Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies (5 works)