| Abstract: | Drawing on classroom participant-observation and interviews conducted among the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, this article describes the ways in which literacy practices in Cherokee language education perpetuate and teach local categories of knowledge, behavior, and persons. I describe the semiotic functioning of the native-developed Cherokee syllabary, as well as its place among four Cherokee orthographies. This work contributes to our understanding of the multiple functions and meanings of writing systems in use in language education and other cultural contexts, and demonstrates the importance of analyzing the full range of semiotic implications of any particular writing system. |
