Basso book (Portraits of ‘the Whiteman’)

• Social meanings of Whiteman joking:• What joking indexes about joker and relationships among participants• Context is informal enough to joke• Joker is "fast with words", likes to perform for an audience• Joker has enough status that he can make fun of someone else in public• Joker and the "butt" of the joke have a close enough relationship that the joke won't be taken as an insult• Cultural meanings indexed by Whiteman joking:• What joking indexes about Apache cultural norms and contrast with their perception of Anglo American normsHighlight behavior of Anglo-AmericansHighlight contrast with Apache attitudes/values about proper behavior• Respect for others' privacy• Not drawing attention to self or others• Avoidance of personal names• Respect for others' autonomy• Avoidance of talking about adversity

• Primary text: real life model• Secondary text: joking imitation• A Whiteman joke is a negative statement that contains within it an implicit negative metastatement• Whiteman joke is an act of play: it imitates a real life situation that is not play• Contrasted with Anglo American behaviors• Distorts: distorts the behavior, voices, gestures to highlight/point out behaviors they see as ridiculous• Cultural and social meanings of code-switching by Apaches: They make overarching statements in Apache at the end of the joke to summarize the point (ex- "aren't white men so stupid?")

• The joke makes a non-playful subject, playful.• It's possible that the "butt" of the joke will take it in the wrong way• The joking stretches a relationship, but you can't really count on it to work as a joke unless you really know the person. This is dangerous if one is unsure if they are close enough to joke with the "butt"

Frame: background knowledge we use to make sense of events; how we perceive, approach, describe a situation we witness or participate in

• Need to know events that occurred in a certain place• The story about the place teaches proper apache behavior• Criticism expressed indirectly (if the shoe fits, wear it): individual must see relevance to their own behavior

1. Meeting strangers: Apache like to postpone talking to a stranger.

First they want to get familiar with their behaviors and what kind of person they are; they "watch" each other. In American culture, we like to talk to strangers to get to know them and ask them questions about personal things that and Apache would find offensive.2. Courting: Apache couples also postpone talking to their "sweetheart" because they don't know each other. This gives them time to get their nerves and shyness out and get to know each other enough to talk comfortably. American culture, again, like to talk in order to get to know their partner.

3. Children coming home: Apache children come back from schools that introduce them to "Whiteman" behavior, so the parents avoid interaction with them. They find it difficult to relate to their children when they adopt behaviors of the "Whiteman". In American culture, parents usually want to discuss all of the child's experiences and what they learned upon returning home.

4. Getting cussed out: In an argument, Apaches believe silence is the best solution. It prevents the fight from getting worse. In American culture, we tend to yell and argue in order to get our point across.

5. Being with people who are bereaved: when someone is grieving, Apaches give them space. They are not in the right state of mind for company or interacting with others. In American culture, when someone dies we tend to want to give their relatives comfort.

We have wakes and ask those grieving to talk about it, to make them feel better.6. Being with someone who is undergoing a curing ceremony: best to leave someone alone after a curing ceremony because they "get holy and you shouldn't try to talk to them when they are like that... it's best to leave them alone".

After someone overcomes an illness in American culture, we tend to congratulate them and want to talk to them about it, or about their recovery.

• In this view, one's sex is immutable and given at birth, whereas one's gender identity can change, depending on what cultural practices of masculinity and femininity a person might choose to enact at different times• "There is no obvious point at which sex leaves off and gender begins partly because there is no single objective biological criterion for male and female sex" -Eckert & McConnell-Ginet• Sex is made up of several things: anomalies in any of these areas can result in what is known as an "intersexed" individual. But this is more common than we think, and intersexed individuals are beginning to fight to have the right to be accepted as they are, rather than being considered "abnormal" and in need of change

basically says females demonstrate a deficit by being linguistically quicker. According to this view, males are more mindful of their thoughts (slower to speak) and thus make better/ more appropriate linguistic decisions

society keeps females from using language like a male, even early on in life, and this later leads to females being put down into a demeaning position and society feels more comfortable in their refusal to take her seriously as a human being. Now, after this conditioning to speak in a less dominant way, she will be accused of being "unable to speak precisely to express herself forcefully• Females are socially taught to speak in a way that puts them in the inferior position to males.

Society then accuses females of being less linguistically capable than males.

Men and women hear language differently, and so they are basically speaking two different dialects: genderlects. This can improve communication and relationships between males and females because it highlights the differences in communication styles, relieving the burden of blaming themselves, their partner, or relationship for the issue at hand.• Men and women use language differently in the sense that women hear a language of connection and intimacy while men speak and hear language of status and independence• They are only different, one is not better than the other, and one does not dominate the other.

• **There is no one to one mapping of grammatical and social gender to each other• Grammatical categories of some languages require speakers to assign a gender when using a personal pronoun- he or she (English) vs.

grammatical categories of other languages that don't assign gender at all in any personal pronouns (Nepali Village) but instead use social status in second and third person pronouns vs. Spanish and French that apply gender to all nouns vs. German who has a feminine, masculine, and neuter grammatical category for nouns and pronouns• **Grammatical gender extends beyond the masculine and feminine categories associated with social gender • Grammatical gender is important b/c studying the relationship between languages and gender helps us understand which ling features, styles or discourses index gender identities or practices Indirectly index social realities - these realities may differ across different societies

Men can also take part in what is called gossip

• The use by women of masculine generics in Hebrew and Arabic: female speakers of both these languages in Israel often use masculine grammatical forms as generics to refer to themselves and their female addressees. Did so unconsciously. Some women felt it helped them participate in public or professional spheres to use masculine grammatical forms.

Others though it was a function of their particular dialect (Sa'ar study in Ahearn, pg. 192)• A dialect of Nepali spoken in a village of Junigau does not assign gender at all in any personal pronoun- but does assign several different levels of social status in second and third person pronouns• Dyirabal: group terms in gender categories that link women with fire, water, and fighting• Western Samoan mothers refused to accommodate to their children and instead preferred to research such linguistic accommodation for high-status foreigners who had trouble speaking Samoan• Malagasy-speaking women and men in Madagascar:Women are associated with direct criticism and haggling in marketsMen tend to conduct themselves with discretion and subtletyMost highly valued style here is indirectness and avoidance of affront, and so women in Madagascar were looked down upon b/c of their direct linguistic practices and the language ideologies that led people to judge these practices as appropriate only for children and the unsophisticatedSimilarities in Papua New Guinea:Anger is associated with women because they use a much more direct, confrontational and even vulgar style in their disputesMen in contrast favor styles of communication that emphasize cooperation and the importance of community Japanese women's language:7. "Schoolgirl speech," which, male commentators of the time claimed, was "vulgar" and "lazy" because it omitted honorifics and used different utterance endings Male writers of the time saw this style as suitable for the kinds of novels that they wanted to write. Thus, what was initially a stigmatized form of talk that was said to have been used among a small set of upper-class schoolgirls in the late nineteenth century came to be employed in novels, newspaper reports, advertisements, and other print media to represent the way that all Japanese women spoke (or were supposed to speak).