Author: schrisomalis

Anthropologist, Wayne State University. Professional numbers guy. Rare Words: http://phrontistery.info. Blog: http://glossographia.com.

Genes, languages, and archaeology

John Hawks has a new blog entry entitled ‘Gene-culture models and reductionism‘, which is a thoughtful response to a 2004 letter in American Anthropologist. The letter adopts a highly skeptical view towards the possibility that genetic information can tell us much about prehistoric population history and specifically that it can tell us much about cultural and linguistic prehistory. Hawks, in contrast, takes a more moderate view that leaves open the possibility that we can use genetic, linguistic, and archaeological evidence in tandem, while acknowledging that naively using one as a proxy for the other two is a serious error. Read it, then come back here. It’s short, and I’ll wait.

This is a subject of some interest to me, as a historically and prehistorically-minded linguistic anthropologist (or a linguistically-minded archaeological anthropologist, I don’t care which). The late Bruce Trigger and I published a chapter in 2004 (perhaps we could have found a better venue for it) in which we talk about the naive ways in which Iroquoian studies have used archaeological evidence to attribute ethnic identification (esp. ‘Iroquoian’ vs. ‘Algonkian’) to sites, and linked this problematic issue to broader problems in the use of archaeology to reconstruct language and ethnicity (Chrisomalis and Trigger 2004). The AA letter rightly points out that identifications of tribes or fixed social structures that correlate with genetic populations – or, unmentioned, languages – is problematic, and the notion that any of these must correspond with overarching ethnic identities is doubly problematic, as Barth (1969) argued persuasively decades ago. And yet …

It has long been recognized (since the 19th century at least) that language families are organized phylogenetically and that biological taxa are phylogenetic. This is partly a reflection of reality, and partly a reflection of the mutual reinforcement of phylogenetic models in linguistics and biology through academic interdisciplinary discourse over the past couple hundred years. But the problem noted by Hawks (and which no one interested in the subject can ignore) is that biological transmission (excepting some viruses) is vertical – you get all your genetic material from your parents alone – whereas cultural and linguistic transmission is both vertical and horizontal – that is, you get a lot of your culture from non-kin, including people who may not be part of your ‘tribe’. This is the sort of work that people like Steve Shennan (2002) are doing, and while I am not always convinced by the answers he reaches (particularly, I remain unconvinced that vertical, parent-child linguistic and cultural transmission is as important as he thinks it is), the research deserves more attention than it is getting.

On Tuesday, I am introducing my class to this subject through Colin Renfrew’s (2000) paper ‘At the edge of knowability: towards a prehistory of languages’. Again, I’m not always in agreement with Renfrew (I’m more of a skeptic than he is), but I’m thrilled that people are asking these questions. As social scientists and humanists, linguists and archaeologists need to forcefully assert the relevance of their data, and not let themselves be run roughshod by geneticists who treat their apex of the triad as the cornerstone of all knowledge in the field. One of my hopes for this blog, and for my research in general, is to be able to contribute to ongoing discussions on this issue. This post is, at best, a preliminary introduction to a topic which I suspect you will see here very often in the months (dare I hope for years?) to come.

Works cited

Barth, F. 1969. Ethnic groups and boundaries. Boston: Little, Brown.
Chrisomalis, S. and B.G. Trigger. 2004. Reconstructing prehistoric ethnicity: problems and possibilities. In In J. V. Wight and J.-L. Pilon (eds), A Passion for the Past: Papers in Honour of James F. Pendergast, pp. 419-433. Mercury Series, Paper No 164. Ottawa: Canadian Museum of Civilization.
Renfrew, C. 2000. At the Edge of Knowability: Towards a Prehistory of Languages. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 10(1): 7-34.
Shennan, S. 2002. Genes, memes and human history: Darwinian archaeology and cultural evolution. London: Thames & Hudson.
Wildcat, D., I. Sumi and V. Deloria Jr. 2004. Commentary: A Response to Doug Jones. American Anthropologist 106, no. 3: 641.

Why I blog

I’ve only been blogging at Glossographia for six weeks, but I’ve been blogging at my non-professional blog, The Growlery, for six years, which must correspond to a century or more in Internet time.    And over those past six years, but particularly over the past six weeks, I’ve been thinking a bit about the different reasons I blog.

I blog because I like to think someone out there is reading and thinking about an issue differently than they did before.   I have never been accused of being unopinionated, and the sharp immediacy of the blogging environment gives me a thrill I rarely find outside the classroom – with the added benefit that my words are there on the screen to mull over.  Want to know what I think about something?  You can be pretty sure I’ve written about it somewhere, and if not, you know where to ask.

I blog because the community of interesting and thoughtful people that I know through blogging.  Livejournal is not primarily the refuge of fourteen-year-old emo kids.  Fully one-third of my friends list has at least one graduate degree, and there are (at last count) a dozen people with doctorates and another half-dozen who are pursuing the doctorate. I know doctors, lawyers, and architects – most of whom I have never met in real life – and people from virtually any other field of endeavour you might think of.  Not to mention the reams of bright, fascinating people whose paths have not yet led them to further education, or never will.

I blog because of my colleagues.  Anthropology seems to be underrepresented in the academic blogosphere, in comparison to, say, history or linguistics (two other fields in which I have some specialized training and interest), which is a shame.  I find it to be absolutely essential not only as a tool for social networking, but also as a tool for playing around with ideas that may not yet be quite ready for peer review, but which need a collective of thinkers.   Is academic blogging playful, even trivial sometimes?  Sure, but so is 95% of what academics do on any given day.  Is it going to give me tenure?  Not likely, but I don’t sit up nights panicking about that.  Is it worthwhile, socially and intellectually?  Damn right it is.

I blog because I see the potential for blogging to change the way we think about academic mentorship also.  One of the real joys I had while working at McGill was to observe the level of student participation in presenting ongoing research, as in the NOCUSO field school blog from Finland, or the zooarchaeology field school blog from Parc Safari in southern Quebec, both spearheaded by my friend Andre Costopoulos, but written and run by the junior scholars there who I am happy to call my friends and colleagues also.  In these efforts, as well as in the web-published projects I run, I see a grand opportunity for extremely bright and thoughtful young scholars to develop their ideas and find their voice – as well as to stay in touch.   Next term I am looking forward to having my graduate students at Wayne do similar sorts of work.

I blog because I believe in the democratization of knowledge.   That may sound all highfalutin and whatnot, but what it comes down to is a feeling of obligation to share things that I know, without any expectation of reward.  I’ve been doing that for over a decade now at the Phrontistery, and my motivation is still much the same as it was back in 1996 in the Middle Paleo-Internet.  Sure, my day job involves me getting paid to share my knowledge, but that doesn’t mean I think I should get paid for everything I write.  I am privileged enough to enjoy a career that allows me the freedom to do this service.

I blog because of my friends (academic and otherwise).  I recently moved to a city of 300,000 where I know virtually no one who is not a blood relation – and let me tell you, I don’t do well in isolation.  Most of my closest friends are nine hours’ drive away in Montreal, and most of the rest are even more distant.  But over the past little while I’ve come to realize that I’m not really alone, and that, while I really do need to get out more, it would be foolhardy in the extreme to discount what I have here.   There are people I’ve never met in person with whom I feel  a strong personal connection.  There are also people I once knew as well as family who have faded from my life through their absence, which I regret, and hope to avoid in the future.

I blog because of my family.  I don’t know what Arthur will think of the various things I have written about his young life, when he’s older and jaded and thinks his dad is a big dork.    I’d like to think though that there is value in having this record of funny moments and strange episodes, the sort of minutiae that most people never know about.  And I blog because Julia blogs – she was the one who sucked me into this life, after all – and not a day goes by that we don’t spend some time looking over one another’s shoulder at some funny thing, or talking about something we’ve encountered in our mutual journey.

Lastly, I blog for me.  I’m not sure what kind of person I would be without this outlet, but I can’t imagine that I would be better off.   Like a lot of people, I can be anxious, I can be overanalytical, and I can be wracked with doubt.   But having the ability to express these thoughts in a relatively neutral medium can be (and is) a great source of personal strength.  And having the ability to look back on things I wrote long ago, to rethink an issue, or just to remember a good day warmly, is something I wouldn’t trade for the world.

Translation follies

This BBC News story has been making the rounds on various blogs, but in case you haven’t seen it:

Officials in Swansea, Wales, UK, emailed a translator, requesting a Welsh translation for a bilingual road sign that in English reads:

No entry for heavy goods vehicles. Residential site only.

Unfortunately, the emailed response they got was:

Nid wyf yn y swyddfa ar hyn o bryd. Anfonwch unrhyw waith i’w gyfieithu.

which apparently translates to ‘I am not in the office at the moment. Please send any work to be translated.’

Oops. (see also this example from Language Log)

The linguistic situation in Wales is fascinating due to a strong linguistic resurgence related to Welsh national identity.  Although Welsh has never been an endangered language (certain parts of it have a majority of Welsh speakers), it is spoken to widely different degrees in different regions.  But by regulation, all road signs in Wales are supposed to be bilingual, creating a huge market for translation. (This stands in direct contrast to my former home province of Quebec, where bilingual public signs are forbidden – they must be in French only).   While Swansea is relatively anglophone (only 13% of the city’s inhabitants are fluent in Welsh, according to 2001 census data), the rule applies nonetheless.  Whether bilingual public signage actually provides support for language retention is an open and very interesting question, but at the very least it reflects a changing language ideology in the region in favour of Welsh.

Another set of interesting issue around this mistranslation is raised in the comments on the Language Log post.   Bob Moore wonders, “I am left wondering who this automated reply could possibly be intended for. Since virtually all Welsh speakers also speak English, surely this person’s clients are mainly English speakers who do not speak Welsh. But those are exactly the folks who would not understand the message.”  Bill Poser suggests that it is possible that a Welsh linguistic nationalist would have a monolingual Welsh auto-reply as an expression of identity (a situation that would be quite familiar to anyone who has spent any time in Montreal).   However, a couple of other respondents point out that perhaps the auto-reply was bilingual, but that the hapless recipient took the English to be the auto-reply part of the message, and then understood the Welsh part to be the actual translation.

Doorworks 2: Columna rostrata

Elogium of Gaius Duilius, Rome, Pal. dei Cons, CIL 12.125, 6.1300

The Columna rostrata was originally erected in Rome in 260 BC, commemorating the naval victory of the Roman consul Gaius Duilius over the Carthaginian fleet. The inscription boasted that over two million aes of loot were plundered. Rather than expressing the amount in numeral words, it was written using at least 22 (and possibly as many as 32 – the inscription is fragmentary) repeated Roman numeral signs for 100,000, seen towards the bottom of the inscription. The effect of this ‘conspicuous computation’ was to impress the reader with the vastness of the quantity, serving as an indexical sign of Rome’s military might.

Putting it out there

Tomorrow (well actually later today, now that I check the clock) I’ll be presenting at the Michigan Linguistics Society, discussing the preliminary results of work I and a team of students conducted in the spring into variability in stop signs in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.  I’m really proud of this work, of which parts are published over at Stop: Toutes Directions, and particularly of the quality of the work of the various contributors, whose ideas have led me to think much more deeply about this subject than I otherwise would have.  I’ve been thrilled at the reception this admittedly oddball research project has received from my colleagues at Wayne State.  What started as a wacky idea I had a couple of years ago turned into an intensive research methods project, and now into a web site, conference presentations, and hopefully in the near future an edited volume.

Anyway, if by any chance anyone who is reading this is in the Detroit area and would like to stop by, it’s at Wayne State University (where I work) at the McGregor conference center, and there is a lot of interesting work being discussed.

The abstract for my paper follows below:

—

What language is ‘STOP’?: language ideology and identity in Montreal stop signs

Due to the complexity of municipal politics, ethnolinguistic fragmentation, and provincial language policies and ideologies, public signs are important objects of linguistic discourse in Montreal,
Quebec, Canada. A pilot project in ‘contemporary epigraphy’ undertaken in Montreal reveals important spatial patterning in stop signs, one of the more visible objects on the city’s ‘signscape’.

There are three primary types of stop sign in Montreal: unilingual ARRET, unilingual STOP, and bilingual ARRET/STOP. Of these three, ARRET is by far the most common, with STOP predominant in anglophone regions, while ARRET/STOP signs are rare and are generally very worn, reflecting an earlier and rapidly vanishing state of the city’s signage practices. A quantitative analysis of these patterns reveals important disjuncts between the linguistic composition of communities and their signs.

By law, all public signs in the province of Quebec must be in French only, yet the prevalence of STOP signs in anglophone municipalities in Montreal seemingly violates this regulatory framework. The solution to this has been to define ‘stop’ (un stop) as a French word; STOP signs therefore are in fact unilingual French signs, even though they are not used in francophone municipalities. This leaves bilingual ARRET/STOP signs in a linguistically perilous position – which language is STOP in, and are these in fact legal signs at all? The question of whether STOP constitutes ‘good French’ has been an important one in recent public discussions of the subject, and remains an ongoing concern.

There is no overwhelming reason why stop signs should contain any inscription whatsoever, because the red octagon is a nearly universal, trans-linguistic ideogram. In a city such as Montreal, the majority of the populace can read and understand stop sign texts in either of Canada’s official languages. The choice of language usage is thus purely an ideological one, and reflects political interests and linguistic identities among the leaders of Montreal’s boroughs and independent towns.

Finally, important public/private tensions in Montreal’s language ideology are evident in stop signs due to the widespread practice of vandalism. Despite the prevalence of public French on stop signs, the vast majority of linguistically-identifiable vandalism is in English. Moreover, stop signs, as highly visible aspects of the city’s public material culture, are frequently vandalized in ways that reflect dissatisfaction with official language ideologies, and can thus highlight ongoing tensions.