University of Michigan doctoral student Joshua Shapero, supervised by Dr. Bruce Mannheim, will investigate the connections among language, thought, and space. Shapero will study how spatial concepts at linguistic and cognitive levels shape -- and are shaped by -- the social actions of talking about, walking through, and working within the landscape of a Quechua-speaking community in the central Peruvian Andes. The goal of the research is to discover the degree to which spatial concepts can be separated from the individual, environmental, and stereotypical factors of particular social contexts as opposed to remaining constant across all contexts.
The investigation uses three methodological approaches: 1) ethnographic study of the spatial organization of agricultural, pastoral and ritual activities; 2) recording and analysis of interactions among speakers engaged in these activities; and 3) controlled experimental studies of spatial language and behavior. The combination of these three approaches will yield rich data, because by enlivening current experimental methods through the insights of ethnographic investigation, the project points toward ways of testing spatial conceptualization in complex social settings. The formal description this research will provide, and its focus on space at a conceptual level, is crucial to understanding the role of language in the intimate relationship between people and the space they inhabit. The focus on variation gives analytic purchase to social, linguistic, and cognitive differences manifest at an interactional rather than cross-linguistic level.
This research will contribute to the documentation of Ancash Quechua, which is an endangered language. Shapero will conduct workshops in linguistic and ethnographic methods at the Regional Academy of Ancash Quechua and at the program in intercultural education at the National University Santiago Antunez de Mayolo, and will help to develop pedagogical materials in Ancash Quechua. He will also disseminate his findings and offer his expertise to local community members. The project will also contribute to the training of a graduate student.
My project examined the centrality of the landscape in language, cognition, and cultural practices among Ancash Quechua speaking herders in the northern Peruvian Andes. Unlike speakers of most European languages, Quechua speakers habitually orient spatial representations in speech, gesture, and thought to the landscape rather than their own bodies. While recent work in linguistics and psychology has found this to be the case in a number of languages in the world, it has focused primarily on the connection between grammar and cognition. My research is unique in providing concrete evidence connecting linguistic, cognitive, and corporeal orientation with cultural patterns of environmental practice such as seasonal residence shifts. Specifically, I present ethnographic, linguistic, and psychological findings demonstrating two points. First, Quechua grammar frames spatial descriptions in terms of the landscape. Second, speakers with more extensive environmental experience (e.g., herders who regularly migrate to seasonal pastures) are significantly more likely to remember spatial arrangements in terms of the landscape rather than their own body. My analysis suggests that locals’ engagement with the landscape shapes their way of speaking and thinking about space. In this sense, my research shows that phenomena thought of as belonging to different domains, such as environmental practice and spatial memory, can be considered parts of a single process. As such, my dissertation has both methodological and theoretical significance for anthropology, linguistics, and cognitive science. In research specific to the Andean region, it helps to bridge linguistics with ethnographic observations about the landscape’s social, religious, and political importance. My project is also relevant to environmental policy, as it shows that human interactions with the environment are connected with language change and distinctive cognitive abilities. It thus suggests that shifts in environmental practice produced by high-level decisions about policy and procedures—for example for environmental conservation and mineral extraction—are also reflected in local linguistic and cognitive habits. This interface is of emergent importance, as environmental conservation displaces and reduces the mobility of indigenous people worldwide, and has been recognized as an issue of human rights. During my research period, I also organized workshops in the community of Huaripampa to present the basic foundation of the discipline of Anthropology, the basics of Quechua linguistics and history, Quechua writing and orthography, and national language policies in Peru. Furthermore, I presented at and participated in public conferences and events in Huaraz, the capital of the Ancash region, on topics ranging from climate change to Quechua orthography.
