Politics and Poetics of Navajo Ideophony

to appear in Semiotica

This article takes seriously Edward Sapir’s observation about poetry as an example of linguistic relativity. Taking my cue from Dwight Bolinger’s “word affinities,” this article reports on the ways sounds of poetry evoke and convoke imaginative possibilities through phonological iconicity. In working with Navajos in translating poetry, I have come to appreciate the sound suggestiveness of that poetry and the imaginative possibilities that are bound up in the sounds of Navajo. It seems that just such sound suggestiveness via phonological iconicity and the ways they orient our imaginations are a crucial locus for thinking through linguistic relativities.

This article follows the theme of this JAR special issue-from self-suppression to expressive genres-as a way to investigate Navajo poets' ordeals with languages. If ordeals of languages arise from languages as objects of scrutiny, then intimate grammars can be seen as the use of expressive genres in the face of such ordeals of language. I look fi rst at the ways in which Navajo is an object of scrutiny and how, as objects of scrutiny, Navajos have self-suppressed speaking Navajo. Next I turn to the practice of some Navajos of feigning monolingualism in Navajo to avoid interacting with "outsiders" and to remove their uses of non-mainstream Navajo English from external scrutiny. I then turn to the ways Navajo poets continue to use Navajo English in their poetry and to the fact that Navajo poets now write about social, environmental, and political issues on the Navajo Nation. Here they resist a Navajo injunction, doo ajinída (don't talk about it), which is meant to discourage critique that can be overheard by outsiders. I conclude by arguing that we can only understand Navajo poetry within the context of both emergent ordeals of languages and the expressive satisfaction of intimate grammars.

Pragmatics 18(3), 2008

Why do some Navajo poets write poetry that describes “ugliness” on the Navajo Nation and what do they believe they are doing by writing that poetry? I examine those questions by focusing on Blackhorse Mitchell's poem “Beauty of Navajoland.” I first discuss a performance of this poem to a Navajo and non-Navajo audience at Swarthmore College. I turn to discussions I had with Mitchell about his poetry and this poem. Contrary to an injunction on the Navajo Nation to dooajinída “don't talk about it,” Mitchell and other Navajo poets argue that it is only by talking about it that the “ugliness” can be restored to “beauty.” We need to understand these terms as bivalent terms — the iconicity of linguistic forms across languages — that reside in two linguistic systems.