Doctoral Dissertation Research: New Technologies and Emerging Communicative Practices Among the Navajo

University Of Texas At Austin, Austin TX

Investigators

Abstract

Under the direction of Dr. Joel Sherzer, Mr. Leighton C. Peterson will conduct ethnographic research for his doctoral dissertation concerning the impact of new technologies on Navajo language and society. Private initiatives and Federal policy decisions have recently made subsidized cell phones and free high-speed Internet connections available to the Navajo Nation, a traditionally underserved area in the US Southwest. This study focuses on the subsequent shifts in Navajo communicative practice, investigating how changing beliefs and attitudes regarding language and technology converge to form new ways of communicating. The research will consist of participant observation, recorded interviews, and video and audio recording of on-line and off-line interactions with technology. This research is significant in several ways. First, it brings the scientific study of language maintenance and sociolinguistics into new areas, including the potential of new media for the vitality of indigenous and minority languages. Second, this research investigates the micro and macro level processes involved in technologically-mediated language and culture. This is an important area of inquiry in linguistic anthropology, especially as indigenous and minority groups around the world increasingly engage new media in efforts of self-representation and cultural preservation. Third, this research explores the impact of programs designed to bridge the digital divide, investigating how members of a marginalized community, the recipients of the new technologies, are actually being served, and how the use of these new technologies is affecting them.