{"id":111994,"date":"2022-07-27T11:00:35","date_gmt":"2022-07-27T16:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/news.olemiss.edu\/?p=111994"},"modified":"2022-07-27T11:14:48","modified_gmt":"2022-07-27T16:14:48","slug":"professor-using-neh-summer-stipend-for-language-study","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web20.olemiss.edu\/news\/wordpress\/professor-using-neh-summer-stipend-for-language-study\/","title":{"rendered":"Professor Using NEH Summer Stipend for Language Study"},"content":{"rendered":"
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UM professor Stephen Fafulas is continuing his study of Spanish dialects in the Loreto area of the Peruvian Amazon this summer, thanks to a National Endowment for the Humanities stipend. He is using data he collected during a 2011 visit to the region. Submitted photo<\/p><\/div>\n

OXFORD, Miss. \u2013 A University of Mississippi<\/a> professor is spending his summer translating Spanish transcriptions of his interviews with members of indigenous communities in the Peruvian Amazon into English, thanks to a summer stipend from the National Endowment for the Humanities<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Stephen Fafulas, associate professor of Spanish and linguistics, is using data he collected during fieldwork in 2011 to complete “Documenting Language Practices, Cultures and Ideologies among Indigenous Communities in the Peruvian Amazon.” The data comes from interviews within communities of three distinct indigenous languages in the Peruvian Amazon.<\/p>\n

Numerous indigenous languages coexist with Spanish, the national language of Peru. Fafulas hopes to use what he learns to publish his research and then identify funding to keep going back to continue his investigation.<\/p>\n

“Peru’s indigenous languages are steadily losing status and power to Spanish as speakers look to increase their upward social mobility and gain access to the greater health care, educational and economic sectors of the country,” he said. “My project documents the linguistic, cultural and social aspects of indigenous communities undergoing language shift in the Peruvian Amazon.<\/p>\n

“The linguistic structures of indigenous languages are of great scientific interest for a host of theoretical and typological reasons.”<\/p>\n

Additionally, so are the cultural practices of the local communities, given their place within the rich biodiversity of the Amazonian region, he said.<\/p>\n

“It is timely to document the linguistic and cultural practices of the Amazonian communities, including language samples of the indigenous languages and their emerging Spanish dialects before they are gone,” Fafulas said. “By valorizing the indigenous languages and having the community’s needs acknowledged, these communities may be able to reverse the tide of losing their cultural legacy.”<\/p>\n

His project empirically documents the linguistic, ideological and cultural legacies of indigenous populations in the Peruvian Amazon to show:<\/p>\n