Russel-Research-Method-in-Anthropology

Qualitative Data Analysis I: Text Analysis 477
was given his first chance to look at the Popol Vuh text, he produced a pair of
spectacles and began reading aloud, word by word’’ (ibid.:145).
Like many medieval manuscripts in Europe, Ximénez’s rendition of the
Popol Vuh was more or less an undifferentiated mass of text with almost no
punctuation. In other words, Tedlock had no clues about how a performer of
the narrative 400 years ago might have varied his timing, emphasized this or
that segment, used different intonations, and so forth.
Tedlock’s solution was to study stylized oral narratives (not just casual
speech) of modern speakers of the Quiché. He recorded speeches, prayers,
songs, and stories and looked for phrases and patterns in the wording that had
analogs in the Popol Vuh (ibid.:147). He devised special punctuation symbols
for marking pauses, accelerations, verse endings, and so on and applied them
to the Popol Vuh. It’s in the use of those written marks that we see Tedlock’s
analysis—his understanding of how a performance went.
Tedlock then made systematic comparison across other ancient texts to look
for recurrent sound patterns that signify variations in meaning. (Think of how
we use rising intonation at the end of sentences in English to signify a question,
and how some people in our society use the same intonation in declarative
sentences at the beginning of phone conversations when the object is to
jar someone’s memory, as in: ‘‘Hi, this is Mary? I was in your intro class last
semester?’’) What Tedlock found was that Quiché verse has the same structure
as ancient Middle Eastern texts—texts that, he points out, predate Homer. In
fact, Tedlock concluded it is the same structure found in all living oral traditions
that have not yet been influenced by writing (ibid.:146; and see Tedlock
1977).
Joel Sherzer (1994) presents a detailed analysis of a 2-hour performance
that he recorded in 1970 of a traditional San Blas Kuna chant (the Kuna are
an indigenous people from Panama). The chant was rendered by Chief Olopinikwa
and recorded on tape. Like many linguistic anthropologists, Sherzer had
taught an assistant, Alberto Campos, to use a phonetic transcription system.
After the chant, Sherzer asked Campos to transcribe and translate the tape.
Campos put Kuna and Spanish on left- and right-facing pages (ibid.:907).
Another chief responded to Olopinikwa, usually with some utterance like
‘‘So it is.’’ Sherzer noticed that Campos left those responses out of the translation,
but it was just those responses that turned out to be markers for verse
endings in the chant. And Campos left out words like ‘‘Thus’’ at the beginning
of a verse and phrases like ‘‘it is said, so I pronounce’’ spoken by the narrator
at the end of a verse. These phrases also contribute to the line and verse structure
of the chant. Campos, in other words, edited the chant to give Sherzer
the essentials, but it was the seemingly inessential things—those little framing