The Sociolinguistics of Navajo Literacy

This article describes uses for English and Navajo literacy in one small community on the Navajo reservation. The research works from a prevailing view developed by Spolsky and Irvine (1982), which posits the existence of a diglossia. The notion is that Navajos speak Navajo but read and write English, with church- and school-related exceptions. At churches and schools, functions for the written vernacular have developed but remain stigmatized and limited, the thinking goes, due to the alien nature of Christian and academic institutions in traditional Navajo society. Based on two years of ethnographic study (McLaughlin 1989), this article develops a critique of the special diglossia idea. In the sections that follow, I will summarize uses for Navajo print. I will show how individuals in one community use Navajo literacy for a variety of purposes unconnected to church and school domains, and I will point out how these same individuals express opinions that Navajo print is useful for maintaining traditional culture and for promoting self-understanding. I will identify processes that have underpinned the spread of written Navajo, and I will make connections between its use and individuals' empowerment. What accounts for these uses and beliefs are processes of indigenization at a mission church and community-controlled school. Over a period of three decades, the two institutions first structured uses and values for Navajo literacy, prefiguring private, indigenous functions that have allowed for the development of a limited range of public uses, all of which have mapped onto institutional procedures of local