He Suffocates Me: A Playful Dimension of Exact Transcription, and of Being an Iluraq

Abstract

A fragment of conversation is presented demonstrating Joel Sherzer's premise that discourse is ‘the nexus, the actual and concrete expression of the language‐culture‐society relationship’. The passage passes from commentary to metacommentary and from humor and teasing, to personality, social and cultural relationships among intimates and strangers, respect, and even philosophies of language and linguistic representation. The fragment was recorded in 1978 in Chevak, Alaska during my initial linguistic documentation of the Cup'ik variety of Central Alaskan Yupik that is spoken there. It took place among elders in a traditional communal men's house that had just been built there. The passage begins with humorous skewering of my eagerness to transcribe every sound and noise in texts I had recorded, evoking both local and academic ideologies of language and philology. It continues as the eldest man comically challenges his iluraq (male cross‐cousin of a male), typically a joking relationship, who in turn challenges his own iluraq. These parts of the text, and subsequent reflections on whether the teasing might be too harsh, nicely express the emotional flavor of the relationship, as well as its boundaries. They also show a kind of interaction often described but infrequently presented as a linguistic text.

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