Cover not available
Part of
Constructing Collectivity: 'We' across languages and contexts
Edited by Theodossia-Soula Pavlidou
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 239] 2014
► pp. 135–158

‘We’ as social categorization in Cha’palaa, 
a language of Ecuador

| Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen, The Netherlands

This chapter connects the grammar of the first person collective pronoun in the Cha’palaa language of Ecuador with its use in interaction for collective reference and social category membership attribution, addressing the problem posed by the fact that non-singular pronouns do not have distributional semantics (“speakers”) but are rather associational (“speaker and relevant associates”). It advocates a cross-disciplinary approach that jointly considers elements of linguistic form, situated usages of those forms in instances of interaction, and the broader ethnographic context of those instances. Focusing on large-scale and relatively stable categories such as racial and ethnic groups, it argues that looking at how speakers categorize themselves and others in the speech situation by using pronouns provides empirical data on the status of macro-social categories for members of a society.

Published online: 27 February 2014
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.239.11flo
References
Allport, Gordon
. 1954. The Nature of Prejudice . Cambridge, MA: Addison-Wesley Publishing.Google Scholar
Benveniste, Emile
. 1971. “The nature of pronouns.” In Problems in General Linguistics , 217–222. Coral Gables: University of Miami Press.Google Scholar
Brewer, Marilynn and Wendi Gardner
1996. “Who is this ‘we’? Levels of collective identity and self representations.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 71(1): 83–93. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Curnow, Timothy J.
2002. “Conjunct/disjunct marking in Awa Pit.” Linguistics 40(3): 611–627. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cysouw, Michael
. 2003. The Paradigmatic Structure of Person Marking . Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
DeBoer, Warren
. 1995. “Returning to Pueblo Viejo: History and archaeology of the Chachi, Ecuador.” In Archaeology in the Lowland American tropics: Current Analytical Methods and Applications , Peter W. Stahl(ed.), 243–262. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dickinson, Connie
. 2000. “Mirativity in Tsafiki.” Studies in Language 24(2): 379–401. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2002. Complex Predicates in Tsafiki . Unpublished PhD Dissertation, University of Oregon.
Egbert, Maria
. 2004. “Other-initiated repair and membership categorization—some conversational events that trigger linguistic and regional membership categorization.” Journal of Pragmatics 36(8): 1467–1498. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Enfield, Nicholas J.
2009. The Αnatomy of Μeaning: Speech, Gesture, and Composite Utterances . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Enfield, Nicholas. J.
2011. “Sources of asymmetry in human interaction: Enchrony, status, knowledge and agency.” In The Morality of Knowledge in Conversation , Tanya Stivers, Lorenza Mondada, and Jakob Steensig(eds), 285–312. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fitzgerald, Robert and Housley, William
. 2002. “Identity, categorization and sequential organization: The sequential and categorial flow of identity in a radio phone-in,” Discourse & Society 13(5): 579–602. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Floyd, Simeon
. 2010. Discourse Forms and Social Categorization in Cha’palaa . Unpublished PhD Thesis, University of Texas, Austin, TX.Google Scholar
Hester, Stephen and Eglin, Peter
. 1997a. Culture in Action: Studies in Membership Categorisation Analysis . Washington, DC: University Press of America.Google Scholar
. 1997b. “Membership categorization analysis: An introduction.” In Culture in Action: Studies in Membership Categorisation Analysis , Stephen Hester and Peter Eglin(eds), 1–23. Washington, DC: University Press of America.Google Scholar
Housley, William and Fitzgerald, Robert
. 2002. “The reconsidered model of membership categorization analysis.” Qualitative Research 2(1): 59–83. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2009. “Membership categorization, culture and norms in action.” Discourse & Society 20(3): 345–362. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Housley, William and Smith, Robin J.
2011. “Telling the CAQDAS code: Membership categorization and the accomplishment of ‘coding rules’ in research team talk.” Discourse Studies 13(4): 417–434. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jayyusi, Lena
. 1984. Categorisation and Moral Order . London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Jijón y Caamaño, Jacinto
1914. Los Aborígenes de la Provincia de Imbabura: Los Cayapas en Imbabura . Madrid: Blass y Cía. Impresores.Google Scholar
Lerner, Gene H.
1993. “Collectivities in action: Establishing the relevance of conjoined participation in interaction.” Text . 13(2): 213–245. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Levinson, Stephen C.
2005. “Living with Manny’s dangerous idea.” Discourse Studies , 7(4–5): 431–453. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Leudar, Ivan, Marsland, Vitoria, and Nekvapil, Jirí
. 2004. “On Membership categorization: ‘Us’, ‘them’ and ‘doing violence’ in political discourse.” Discourse & Society 15(2): 243–266. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mühlhäusler, Peter and Harré, Rom
. 1990. Pronouns and People: The Linguistic Construction of Social and Personal Identity . Oxford: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar
Sacks, Harvey
. 1992. “The MIR Membership Categorization Device.” In Lectures on Conversation , Gail Jefferson(ed.), 40–48. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Schegloff, Emanuel, Gail Jefferson and Harvey Sacks
. 1977. “The preference for self-correction in the organization of repair in conversation.” Language 52(2): 361–382. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schegloff, Emanuel
. 2007. “Categories in action: Person-reference and membership categorization.” Discourse Studies . 9(4): 433–461. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Siewierska, Anna
. 2004. Person . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Silverstein, Michael
. 1976. “Shifters, linguistic categories, and cultural description,” in Meaning and Anthropology , Keith Basso and Henry Selby, (eds), 11–55. New York: Harper and Row.Google Scholar
Stokoe, Elizabeth H.
2003. “Mothers, single women and sluts: Gender, morality and membership categorisation in neighbour disputes.” Feminism and Psychology 13: 317–344. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Urban, Greg
. 1989. “The ‘I’ of discourse,” In Semiotics, Self, and Society . Benjamin Lee and Greg Urban, (eds), 27–51. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Wade, Peter
. 2010. Race and Ethnicity in Latin America . 2nd edition. London: Pluto Press.Google Scholar
Wechsler, Stephen
2010. “What ‘You’ and ‘I’ mean to each other: Person marking, self-ascription, and theory of mind.” Language 86(2): 332–365. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Whitten, Norman E., Jr
. 1974. Black Frontiersmen: A South American Case . New York: Schenkman.Google Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 2 other publications

Floyd, Simeon
2019. Body-directed gesture and expressions of social difference in Chachi and Afro-Ecuadorian discourse. Gesture 18:2-3 ► pp. 281 ff. DOI logo
Floyd, Simeon, Lila San Roque & Asifa Majid
2018. Smell Is Coded in Grammar and Frequent in Discourse: Cha'palaa Olfactory Language in Cross-Linguistic Perspective. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 28:2 ► pp. 175 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 14 september 2023. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.