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Article published In:
Ideophones: Between Grammar and Poetry
Edited by Katherine Lahti, Rusty Barrett and Anthony K. Webster
[Pragmatics and Society 5:3] 2014
► pp. 431–444

Rex Lee Jim’s ‘Mouse that Sucked’

On iconicity, interwoven-ness, and ideophones

| University of Texas at Austin

This article explores the ways that Navajo poet Rex Lee Jim uses ideophony in one of his poems. I argue that Jim’s use of an ideophone in its myriad forms (from nominalized noun to independent ideophone to verb stem) creates an interwoven-ness across lines that evokes an iconicity of sound and sense. I begin by describing something of the grammatical structuring and uses of Navajo ideophony. I then turn to a discussion of contemporary written Navajo poetry that uses ideophony and especially Jim’s poetry. I follow this with a discussion of the use of Navajo ideophony in literacy education and in competing views about the appropriateness of using ideophony in Navajo written literature.

Keywords: Navajo, intimate grammars, poetry, aesthetics, ideophony
Published online: 14 November 2014
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ps.5.3.07web
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