Book contents
- American Literature in Transition, 1770–1828
- Nineteenth-Century American Literature In Transition
- American Literature in Transition, 1770–1828
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Series Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Chapter 1 Introduction
- Part I Form and Genre
- Chapter 2 The Law of Form and the Form of the Law
- Chapter 3 The Statesman’s Address
- Chapter 4 Vocabularies and Other Indigenous-Language Texts
- Chapter 5 The Genteel Novel in the Early United States
- Chapter 6 The State of Our Union
- Chapter 7 “To assume her Language as my own”
- Chapter 8 “Ambiguities and Little Secrets”
- Part II Networks
- Part III Methods for Living
- Index
Chapter 4 - Vocabularies and Other Indigenous-Language Texts
from Part I - Form and Genre
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 June 2022
- American Literature in Transition, 1770–1828
- Nineteenth-Century American Literature In Transition
- American Literature in Transition, 1770–1828
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Series Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Chapter 1 Introduction
- Part I Form and Genre
- Chapter 2 The Law of Form and the Form of the Law
- Chapter 3 The Statesman’s Address
- Chapter 4 Vocabularies and Other Indigenous-Language Texts
- Chapter 5 The Genteel Novel in the Early United States
- Chapter 6 The State of Our Union
- Chapter 7 “To assume her Language as my own”
- Chapter 8 “Ambiguities and Little Secrets”
- Part II Networks
- Part III Methods for Living
- Index
Summary
This chapter examines the different kinds of Indigenous-language texts that scholars can find in the archives, including word lists, philosophical vocabularies, dictionaries, grammars, and religious texts. It provides an overview of the kinds of features scholars are likely to find in these sources and the kinds of (sometimes competing) interpretations scholars have put forward to understand them. This essay argues that Indigenous-language texts reveal the practices of intercultural communication and demonstrate the varied ways traders, missionaries, officials, and other colonizers deployed linguistic knowledge to justify dispossession and to achieve the practical goals with respect to colonization. Yet because these texts ultimately depended on willing Native participation in the production of linguistic knowledge, these sources also provide unmatched possibilities for recovering diverse Indigenous intellectual and sociopolitical frameworks.
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- American Literature in Transition, 1770–1828 , pp. 52 - 74Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2022