Narratives of Navajo-ness: An ideological analysis of Navajo language shift

Abstract

Despite the many factors that contribute to the maintenance of their language, the Navajo people are experiencing a rapid shift from Navajo to English. My research points to an ideological component in this shift, defining ideology as a self-interested pattern of thoughts and beliefs about the hierarchical relationship with others that is held by people individually or as members of a specific group. This project concludes that the diverse and contradictory ideologies held by Navajo people about their unequal relationship to the dominant American society have led to language (and cultural) choices and behaviors that have contributed to the current alarming language situation and that will, if unchecked, result in further erosion of the language. These ideologies are organized around a powerful oppositional dichotomy that represents the Navajo and the United States as essentialized opposites, with the Navajo occupying the positive end of the spectrum and the United States the negative end. This dichotomy shapes and is shaped by the content of Navajo counter-hegemonic discourse. The pervasive existence and consequences of the friction between these ideological positions are further substantiated through an analysis of the content and contexts of language use by Navajos in a contemporary Navajo school setting.