Exploring Languages Preservation in Kham Tibet, Learning From “Discourse in the Novel,” and Writing a Dialogical/Bakhtinian Ethnography

Abstract

This essay pursues three interrelated and reflexively challenging objectives. First, we celebrate Mikhail Bakhtin’s “Discourse in the Novel” as constituting a singular primer for writing and accomplishing dialogical ethnography. Second, we exemplify and dramatize its lessons by relating stories and practices of the first author’s 4-year ongoing field study and involvement with languages preservation, community enhancement, and social transformation in Kham Tibet. Finally, we accomplish these first two purposes in a self-consciously reflexive manner seeking to embody Bakhtin’s suggestions even as we describe them. We close with a tentative description of languages and voices we notice in writing this essay.