linguistic exogamy and the Tukano people

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The politics of language acquisition: language learning as social modeling in the northwest Amazon

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The combined practices of marrying outside the language group, a phenomenon known as linguistic exogamy, and patrilocality, whereby a woman moves to the village of her husband, result in communities composed of a core of men and children who are same-language speakers and differently-speaking in-marrying women. In these communities, married women continue to speak their own languages while living among speakers of their husbands' languages.
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...links linguistic performance to patrilineal descent and prohibits marriage between speakers of the same language. This paper argues that: through linguistic modeling in the northwest Amazon, one language, father's, becomes standard and public; while another language, mother's, non-standard and private. Although this does not constitute case of linguistic stratification in its more common variant, implications for the politics of language and gender identity are far reaching.

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Researchers of language and society have given inadequate attention to the significance of the language learning process in the reproduction of social roles and the values given them. Although anthropological linguists such as Elinor Keenan Ochs and Bambi Schieffelin emphasize the importance of an ethnographic approach to language learning (Ochs 1982, 1988; Ochs & Schieffelin 1984; Schieffelin 1979; Schieffelin 1990; Schieffelin and Ochs 1986a, 1986b), most studies continue to focus on language acquisition per se and neglect the social modeling that universally accompanies the language learning process. This oversight is particularly egregious in the case of gender roles in the northwest Amazon where early language learning and the rules accompanying language use devalue mother's language, in particular, and women, in general.

This paper considers language acquisition within the greater context of gender-associated norms and practices among Amerindian speakers of Eastern Tukanoan languages in the northwest Amazon (1) where descent and language are viewed as manifestations of one another. There, an underlying ideology links linguistic performance to patrilineal descent and prohibits marriage between speakers of the same language. This paper argues that in the acquisition process father's language becomes standard and public, while mother's language, in turn, becomes nonstandard and private. Processes of language learning in Eastern Tukanoan societies thus reproduce the asymmetries between men and women, furthering the male hold on linguistic proprietorship, a political resource that serves to maintain social power and to limit access to forms of communication that make sense of experience and create solidarity among speakers of the same language.

For speakers of Eastern Tukanoan languages in the northwest Amazon, language is not only a symbol matrix; it is itself a symbol, a marker of identity and descent. Thus a linguistic-qua descent group, known as the "language group" (Jackson 1974, 1976, 1983), is the fundamental unit in a complex social structure. Marriages occur exclusively across language groups (2) (Chernela 1989, 1993; C. Hugh-Jones 1979, H. Hugh-Jones 1979) so that marital and kin ties unite some 14,000 speakers of diverse languages into a homogeneous culture complex over an area of approximately 150,000 km. (2) I describe norms of linguistic performance and the language learning process from the perspective of one of the participating language groups of the Eastern Tukanoan family, the Wanano, located along the middle Uaupes River in northern Brazil.

The combined practices of marrying outside the language group, a phenomenon known as linguistic exogamy, and patrilocality, whereby a woman moves to the village of her husband, result in communities composed of a core of men and children who are same-language speakers and differently-speaking in-marrying women. In these communities, married women continue to speak their own languages while living among speakers of their husbands' languages.

Just as I had thought that the practice of linguistic exogamy in the northwest Amazon was old news among students of language use, I came upon a current introduction to sociolinguistics that denies its possibility (Bonvillain 2003). Speaking of seventeenth-century reports of the Island Caribs, Nancy Bonvillain observes: "Statements made by Europeans of the period claimed that Carib men and women spoke different languages. This is clearly impossible for, if they did, husbands and wives, parents and children, would not have been able to communicate" (Bonvillaln 2003:217).

Bonvillain is correct in recognizing the effort and potential difficulties involved when spouses speak different languages. Indeed, the persistence of the tradition is testimony to the importance with which it is regarded by its practitioners. Bonvillain's point that it would be impossible to raise children in such circumstances would seem to make sense until one recalls that 1) children often speak languages other than the examples presented by one or both parents; 2) children are capable of learning several languages at once; and, 3) peers play a strong role in influencing the speech choices of children. Wanano children--who can speak mother's language but do not--may be likened to the children of U.S. immigrants (such as Yiddish and Chinese speakers) who also avoided public performances of non-standard speech.

The practice of linguistic exogamy may be regarded as one extreme along a continuum of variation in women's and men's speech genres and use patterns. Whether the differences reside in subtle phonological shift or in the social use of different conversational styles, gendered differences in speech are widespread and may be universal. Rather than merely exotic, the Eastern Tukanoan case fits into a larger universe in which linguistic practices and associated norms and values reflect and construct gender stratification.

Wanano children learn early to devalue the language spoken by mother and to value and identify with the language spoken by father. Speaking competence and rhetorical skill are prized in father's language--i.e., the language of one's own descent group--but public demonstrations of mother's language are strongly sanctioned. Although children are competent in both mother's and father's languages they must supress mother's language as they mature. Through linguistic modeling, then, mother's language is rendered private, sub-standard and stigmatized, while father's language is public, social, and dominant.

Studies of language learning in multilingual settings derive predominantly from situations where a dominant speech pattern is regarded as uniquely authoritative and is typically taught as a second language (Appel and Muysken 1987; Grillo 1989; Gumperz 1971, 1978; Hudelson 1987; Lambert 1967; Macnamara 1967; Taylor, Meynard, and Rheault 1977). In the villages of the northwest Amazon, no single language is consistently standardized on a systemic level. (3) Within any given village the language of the local descent group dominates. That which is regarded as the standard language, therefore, shifts from location to location. Because women marry out of their own linguistico-descent groups into those of their husbands, it is their languages that are subordinated. Although this does not constitute a case of linguistic stratification in its more common variant, implications for the politics of language and gender identity are far reaching.

Background

Speakers of the Eastern Tukanoan family of languages live in the rainforested regions of the Uaupes River basin along the frontiers of Brazil and Colombia. Some ten-fifteen (4) named groups speaking distinct languages make up the social universe. Villages, consisting of one or two resident descent groups, are arranged in settlements of up to 150 persons spaced about 5 miles apart along the river edge. Fishing, planting, and hunting are the means of livelihood.

Within the Eastern Tukanaon family of languages, speakers of recognized linguistic variants constitute socially bounded groups in which all members consider themselves to belong to one family based upon the principle of patrilineal reckoning from a mythical male ancestor. Offspring, regardless of gender, take their identity from father. These units or "tribes," therefore, have been called "language groups" by Jean Jackson...