Negotiating the languages of landscape: place naming and language shift in an Inupiaq community

• Main Author: Marino, Elizabeth K.
• Format: Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: 2005
• Subjects: Fairbanks; inuit; Inupiaq; Alaska
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/11122/6953

Thesis (M.S.) University of Alaska Fairbanks, 2005 This thesis examines the correlations between language shift, language death, and cultural change through the use of place names in White Mountain, Alaska. Traditionally Inupiaq place names have served as descriptive tools for navigating the landscape and as memory markers for oral histories, taboos, and places of harvest. Local Inupiaq place names have been inscribed in social memory for generations and, according to Inupiaq elders in White Mountain, none are without significance. As English replaces the Inupiaq language, these traditional place names fall out of use, as well as the local histories and other information associated with them. English place names used today continue to inscribe information into the land, but of a different sort. This thesis finds that cultural change and cultural resiliency can be clearly observed through and are related to language shift in White Mountain. Included in this thesis are listings and maps of traditional Inupiaq place names from White Mountain, Alaska. Introduction -- Lanuage shift and linguistic relativity -- Language shift and language death -- The linguist responds -- The problem with language shift and culture -- Linguistic relativity -- The intersection of linguistic relativity and rapid language shift -- Contributing to the question of language and culture -- White Mountain and the Iġałuinmiut -- White Mountain and the Iġałuik -- Contemporary ethnography -- Language shift in White Mountain -- Place names -- The history of place names in Inuit country -- A typology of Inupiaq/Inuit place names -- The stories written here : Inupiaq toponyms and framed learning -- The convergence of place names, language shift and culture -- Histories and places -- Place names, what else can they tell you? -- Grammar and translation -- English names, property rights, possession, and people -- New English place names -- The name White Mountain -- Boundaries -- Conclusion -- References -- Appendices.