Amdo Lullaby
An Ethnography of Childhood and Language Shift on the Tibetan Plateau
Seiten
2024
University of Toronto Press (Verlag)
978-1-4875-5867-3 (ISBN)
University of Toronto Press (Verlag)
978-1-4875-5867-3 (ISBN)
This book analyses the everyday conversations of children in eastern Tibet (contemporary People’s Republic of China) to demonstrate how they use language to navigate the social and cultural changes caused by rural to urban migration.
In Amdo, a region of eastern Tibet incorporated into mainland China, young children are being raised in a time of social change. In the first decades of the twenty-first century, Chinese state development policies are catalysing rural to urban migration, consolidating schooling in urban centres, and leading Tibetan farmers and nomads to give up their traditional livelihoods. As a result, children face increasing pressure to adopt the state’s official language of Mandarin.
Amdo Lullaby charts the contrasting language socialization trajectories of rural and urban children from one extended family, who are native speakers of a Tibetan language known locally as “Farmer Talk.” By integrating a fine-grained analysis of everyday conversations and oral history interviews, linguistic anthropologist Shannon M. Ward examines the forms of migration and resulting language contact that contribute to Farmer Talk’s unique grammatical structures, and that shape Amdo Tibetan children’s language choices. This analysis reveals that young children are not passively abandoning their mother tongue for standard Mandarin, but instead are reformatting traditional Amdo Tibetan cultural associations among language, place, and kinship as they build their peer relationships in everyday play.
In Amdo, a region of eastern Tibet incorporated into mainland China, young children are being raised in a time of social change. In the first decades of the twenty-first century, Chinese state development policies are catalysing rural to urban migration, consolidating schooling in urban centres, and leading Tibetan farmers and nomads to give up their traditional livelihoods. As a result, children face increasing pressure to adopt the state’s official language of Mandarin.
Amdo Lullaby charts the contrasting language socialization trajectories of rural and urban children from one extended family, who are native speakers of a Tibetan language known locally as “Farmer Talk.” By integrating a fine-grained analysis of everyday conversations and oral history interviews, linguistic anthropologist Shannon M. Ward examines the forms of migration and resulting language contact that contribute to Farmer Talk’s unique grammatical structures, and that shape Amdo Tibetan children’s language choices. This analysis reveals that young children are not passively abandoning their mother tongue for standard Mandarin, but instead are reformatting traditional Amdo Tibetan cultural associations among language, place, and kinship as they build their peer relationships in everyday play.
Shannon M. Ward is an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of British Columbia, Okanagan.
List of Figures and Tables
Acknowledgements
Preface
Narrative and Transcription Conventions
Introduction
1. Local Histories and Language Variation in Amdo
2. The Grammar of Belonging: Spatial Deixis in Situated Family Interaction
3. Socializing Compassion: Buddhist Theories of Emotion and Relationality in the Production of Social Difference
4. Learning Standard Language Ideologies: Education Policy and Colonial Alienation between the Homeland and the City
5. Reading in the City: Literacy as Belonging in Urban China
Conclusion
Appendix: Annotated Transcripts
Notes
Glossary
References
Index
| Erscheinungsdatum | 29.02.2024 |
|---|---|
| Reihe/Serie | Anthropological Horizons |
| Verlagsort | Toronto |
| Sprache | englisch |
| Maße | 152 x 229 mm |
| Gewicht | 1 g |
| Themenwelt | Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Sprachwissenschaft |
| Sozialwissenschaften ► Ethnologie | |
| Sozialwissenschaften ► Pädagogik ► Vorschulpädagogik | |
| Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie | |
| ISBN-10 | 1-4875-5867-8 / 1487558678 |
| ISBN-13 | 978-1-4875-5867-3 / 9781487558673 |
| Zustand | Neuware |
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