Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Making It Their Own: Severn Ojibwe Communicative Practices

1996; University of Toronto Press; Volume: 38; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2307/25605827

2292-3586

Peggy Martin-McGuire, Lisa Valentine,

Linguistic Variation and Morphology

Lisa Philips Valentine states at page 34 of her book, study of communication networks in Lynx Lake opens a window into the working of social networks. In this region, information is viewed as a commodity to be shared judiciously: the person with the most knowledge has the most power in a situation. There is nothing novel in this particular statement, but it summarizes best both what is said and what is left unsaid in Making It Their Own. The book is a fascinating sociolinguistic treatment of communication styles and practices in a Canadian (northern Ontario) Ojibwe community. The author gives unusual insights into the varieties of discourse found in community, varied by technology, setting, age and gender, but there is much less said about why the knowledge of communication, and the knowledge disseminated by communication, is useful. The author spent two years in Lynx Lake, with her husband and child, over several visits between 1981 and 1988. Her initial purpose was to learn Ojibwe and to study dialect variation, but by 1987 her research interests in discourse and social organization emerged. Lynx Lake is one of the few truly viable Ojibwe speech communities (p. 3), and was thus an appropriate site for such a study, particularly given long-term research residence and participation. Although several languages are spoken in the community, including Moose and Swampy Cree and English, the dominant language is Severn Ojibwe, the most northern Ojibwe dialect. The community experienced reidcation and amalgamation in the 1960s, followed by rapid entry into a wage economy and new communications technology. Valentine presents little general ethnographic information, but she does describe in detail another key feature of Lynx Lake that came to play a prominent part in her study: the Christian (Anglican) influence. In the 1980s Lynx Lake apparently had a strong sense of community identity and image, in spite of having some social and economic difficulties. Both the church and the new radio/telephone were, Valentine asserts, major factors in the continuing strength of Native/Ojibwe identity. The author states that she has tried to write for a Native audience, rather than an academic one, but in reality the book is a hybrid. There are sections that require a background in linguistics to understand fully (because I do not have such a background, I will avoid commentary), and sections that provide crystals of insights which any interested reader would find intriguing. I was more interested in the book because of my daily work in Native communities, and in alternating discourses, than for its linguistic content, and my reaction was mixed: what can it tell me about communication and power? Valentine has done an excellent job of showing how, in time and place, people go about the business of communicating. She has made some critical statements on the human capacity to continually adapt languages and to move within and between them. This study is not about Ojibwe so much as it is about speakers who both maintain and modify the language as they face new situations requiring communication, or new technologies for purveying knowledge. There is a wonderful chapter on technology and talk, relating the interest of community members in the use of trail radios, telephones and the local radio station. People took turns sitting at the station, handling news and music and providing commentaries and stories. …