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This book brings together papers written by William F. Hanks over the last decade, organized around the three central themes that have been emerged in his work: indexicality and referential practices; discourse genres and textuality; and the historical embeddedness of language. Together, they present the main elements of a coherent, synthetic approach to language in context.
The title of Edmonson's work refers to the Mayan custom of first predicting their history and then living it, and it may be that no other peoples have ever gone so far in this direction. The Book of Chilam Balam was a sacred text prepared by generations of Mayan priests to record the past and to predict the future. The official prophet of each twenty-year rule was the Chilam Balam, or Spokesman of the Jaguar—the Jaguar being the supreme authority charged with converting the prophet's words into fact. This is a literal but poetic translation of one of fourteen known manuscripts in Yucatecan Maya on ritual and history. It pictures a world of all but incredible numerological order, slowly yie...
Classic case studies surveying the use, role and function of language and speech in social life.
Huei Tlatoani summarizes the work of U.S. scholars and develops a detailed image of the Mexican speaker. The study opens with a review of U.S. studies of the rhetorical, educational, mediated, and intercultural elements of Mexican communication. The review of U.S. studies invites closer examination and is further defined by a detailed analysis of Aztec discourse, communication education in Mexico, and contemporary Mexican address. Of interest to people who want to better understand Mexican communication. Contents: Huei Tlatoani; The Mexican Speaker; U.S. Studies of Mexican Communication; Aztec Discourse; Communication Studies at Mexican Universities; The Final Words of Jose Lopez Portillo; and The Mexican Speaker.
Identified only in 1986, the Nahuatl Holy Week play is the earliest known dramatic script in any Native American language. In Holy Wednesday, Louise Burkhart presents side-by-side English translations of the Nahuatl play and its Spanish source. An accompanying commentary analyzes the differences between the two versions to reveal how the native author altered the Spanish text to fit his own aesthetic sensibility and the broader discursive universe of the Nahua church. A richly detailed introduction places both works and their creators within the cultural and political contexts of late sixteenth-century Mexico and Spain.
During the early modern period, regional specified compendia – which combine information on local moral and natural history, towns and fortifications with historiography, antiquarianism, images series or maps – gain a new agency in the production of knowledge. Via literary and aesthetic practices, the compilations construct a display of regional specified knowledge. In some cases this display of regional knowledge is presented as a display of a local cultural identity and is linked to early modern practices of comparing and classifying civilizations. At the core of the publication are compendia on the Americas which research has described as chorographies, encyclopeadias or – more recently – 'cultural encyclopaedias'. Studies on Asian and European encyclopeadias, universal histories and chorographies help to contextualize the American examples in the broader field of an early modern and transcultural knowledge production, which inherits and modifies the ancient and medieval tradition.
Abbott's study begins with an examination of the Spanish rhetorical tradition - a tradition that would affect many aspects of the colonial enterprise, including the campaign to Christianize the New World, the European perceptions of indigenous discourse, and the effort to transplant humanistic educational institutions to Spain's two great colonies, Mexico and Peru.
Illustrated with scores of drawings and halftone photos, this guidebook to the mythology of Mexico and Central America focuses mainly on Mexican Highland and Maya areas, due to their importance in Mesoamerican history.
This volume presents a carefully edited and translated collection of Pre-Columbian ancient spiritual texts. It presents relevant examples of those sacred writings of the indigenous peoples of Central America, especially Mexico, that have survived destruction. The majority of texts were conceived in the 950-1521 A.D. period. Their authors were primarily anonymous sages, priests and members of the ancient nobility. Most were written in Nahuath (also known as Aztec or Mexican), in Yucatec and Quiche-Maya languages.
The essays in this volume document trails, paths, and roads across different times and cultures, from those built by hunter-gatherers in the Great Basin of North America to causeway builders in the Bolivian Amazon to Bronze Age farms in the Near East, through aerial and satellite photography, surface survey, historical records, and excavation.