Research Focus Group Talk: LISO’s Annual John J. Gumperz Lecture

John B. Haviland will present a lecture on “K’alal Lajyak’bekon Notisia, ‘Bweno Ta Xinupunkutik’, Gloria a Dios, Háganlo Bien (When they told me ‘Well, we’re getting married’—Glory to God! Do it well!): Changing Tzotzil Discourses of Marriage.”

Haviland is an anthropological linguist, with interests in the social life of language, including gesture, emerging sign languages, and interaction. His work concentrates on Tzotzil (Mayan) speaking peasant corn farmers from Zinacantán, Chiapas, Mexico, and on speakers of Guugu Yimithirr (Paman), especially at the Hopevale Aboriginal Community, near Cooktown, in northern Queensland, Australia. He has most recently engaged in two fieldwork projects: one an ongoing study of language origins based on extensive documentation of a first generation sign language (Zinacantec Family Homesign, or ZFHS) from Chiapas, Mexico; and the other with speakers of Amuzgo (Otomanguean), both in their home community in Oaxaca and in an immigrant community in Oceanside, California, part of a wider set of studies about Mexican indigenous people in diaspora. Haviland’s recent research interests also include Mexican merolicos (street performers), gesture and multimodal interaction, ethnomusicology, and language and the law, especially as it involves speakers of indigenous languages of Mexico and Central America.

Sponsored by the IHC’s Language, Interaction, and Social Organization RFG (LISO); the Language & Globalization Lecture Series of the Mellichamp Global Dynamics Initiative; the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center; and the Department of Linguistics.