This dissertation research will produce the first extensive documentation and description of the Cha'palaa language, spoken by the indigenous Chachi people of the coastal lowlands of northwestern Ecuador. It will link this linguistic data to an ethnographic account of Chachi constructions of race and ethnicity in Latin America, examining how social categories are produced and reproduced through social interaction. The primary research question asks how the resources of Cha'palaa grammar are activated in Chachi people's discourse about themselves and other social groups. Answering this question requires combining traditional long-term ethnographic research living in Chachi communities with the methodologies of descriptive linguistics, including new technologies such as digital recording and archiving and computer transcription and database programs. The primary data to be considered will be a broad, transcribed, translated and analyzed corpus of video recordings of natural discourse in Cha'palaa. This corpus will provide both rich data for linguistic description and a documentation of cultural knowledge, including traditions of storytelling, oral history, ecological knowledge, handcrafts, agriculture, political organization, and the ritual calendar. The corpus will be archived in several sites for safeguarding and future use by researchers and community members.
The dissertation will undertake an analysis of a special subset of this corpus, focusing on interviews and everyday conversation in which Chachi people discuss themselves relative to other social groups such as their Afro-Ecuadorian neighbors. The analysis will produce an ethnographic account of language situated in cultural context and a grammatical sketch of Cha'palaa that will later form the basis of a full grammar. Much of the data entry and analysis will be done with the help of native speaker consultants who receive support and training for college. The dissertation research will form the basis for future work with Ecuadorian institutions to increase educational opportunities for indigenous students.
