'You're So Fat!': Exploring Ojibwe Discourse

'You're so fat!' was the greeting extended to the author's wife on her return to the Algonquin community of Pikogan in northwestern Quebec. The Anishnaabe elder was in fact complimenting her for looking robust and healthy.

Non-Natives have much to learn in order to understand Native experience and culture. Spielmann sets out to show how one might use the techniques of conversation analysis and discourse analysis to accomplish this. Ultimately, he seeks to capture the essence of Native experience by exploring how Native people talk about that experience, an approach that is missing from existing books about Aboriginal people

You're So Fat! will be of interest to linguists, anthropologists, sociologists and others interested in exploring issues in conversation analysis, ethnography, and Native studies.

Roger Spielmann is an associate professor in the Department of Native Studies at the University of Sudbury.