Dogon Languages and Linguistics. An Comprehensive Annotated Bibliography

2007. - 45 p.The Dogon people of the Bandiagara cliffs in Mali’s Mopti Region are the superstars of anthropology, ethnography, and artists since Marcel Griaule’s (Griaule 1938; Griaule and Dieterlen 1965; Griaule 1965) famous studies of Dogon religion, spirituality, art, and culture. Griaule and his team of fieldworkers first encountered the Dogon on the Dakar to Djibouti mission of 1931. From that point until the death of the French anthropologist in 1956, he published multiple works about his discoveries. Even after his death, his team members, Germaine Dieterlen (no. 86), Michel Leiris (no. 92), an d his daughter, Geneviève Calame-Griaule (no. 17- 28), continued to publish data from the team’s field work. Marcel Griaule’s work is widely criticized by those who dispute his methodology, (Beek 1991), and even those from his own team (Leiris, no. 92) who found his badgering of informants to be inappropriate and unproductive; only leading to incorrect data. Many of Griaule’s Dogon informants, in fact, admit to playing games with him and misleading him with faulty information. The Dogon are well known for their protection and secrecy; even though Griaule was eventually admitted as a Dogon elder, it is possible that the stories which people believe about the culture are simply illusions.