Description
Book SynopsisPlains Indian Sign Talk (PST), a complex system of hand signs, once served as the lingua franca among many Native American tribes of the Great Plains. Although some researchers thought it had disappeared following the widespread adoption of English, Brenda Farnell discovered that PST is still an integral component of the storytelling tradition in contemporary Assiniboine (Nakota) culture.
Trade Review“What is struggling to emerge is a theoretical framework in which the way that the different modalities of communication are articulated with one another can be understood. This book should be read by all those with an interest in the development of such a framework.”—
Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute“A major contribution to Native American studies, to cultural anthropology more generally, to linguistic anthropology, and to semiotics. . . . In one and the same book, Brenda Farnell reveals the power and precision of gesture in oral performance, makes major advances in the understanding of the storytelling process in general, and teaches us more about the world of Native Americans than we have learned in many a moon.”—James H. McNulty
Table of ContentsPrefaceAcknowledgmentsIntroduction1. The Nineteenth-Century Legacy2. Bias against the Iconic3. Geographical and Historical Spaces: Assiniboine Territory and the Embodiment of Deixis4. Moral and Ethical Spaces: Naming Practices and Visual Imagery in Nakota and PST5. Getting to the Point: Spatial Orientation and Deixis in PST and Nakota6. Storytelling and the Embodiment of Symbolic Form7. The Primacy of Movement in Assiniboine Culture8. ConclusionsAppendix A. Phonetic KeyAppendix B. Kinetic KeyNotesBibliographyIndex
