Tedlock examined how linguistic conventions mediate the performance and interpretation of dream experience. She explored how communications about dreams reveal patterns and variations around how different cultures perceive the role and significance of dreaming. For example, the KʼicheʼMaya people use the first-person pronoun "I" to narrate dreams with the understanding that this "I" does not necessarily relate to the conscious self of the dream teller. Likewise, the use of third person pronouns, particularly in relating negative dreams, communicates distance between the dream teller and the experience of the dream self.[5]
Tedlock rejected the existence of any hard boundary between anthropologist and the peoples with whom they interact in the field. She advocated for narrative ethnography as a methodological innovation that honored and more accurately represented the intertwining, interdependent relationship between anthropologist and the subjects of their research.[6]
Tedlock, B. (1984). The Beautiful and the Dangerous Zuni Ritual and Cosmology as an Aesthetic System. Conjunctions, (6), 246-265. jstor.org/stable/24515110
Tedlock, B. (1985). Hawks, meteorology and astronomy in Quiché-Maya agriculture. Archaeoastronomy, 8, 80.
Tedlock, B. (1986). Keeping the breath nearby. Anthropology and Humanism Quarterly, 11(4), 92-94. doi.org/10.1525/ahu.1986.11.4.92
Tedlock, B. (1987). An interpretive solution to the problem of humoral medicine in Latin America. Social science & medicine, 24(12), 1069-1083. doi.org/10.1016/0277-9536(87)90022-0
Tedlock, B. (1992). The role of dreams and visionary narratives in Mayan cultural survival. Ethos, 20(4), 453-476. jstor.org/stable/640279
Tedlock, B. (1999). Maya Astronomy: what we know and how we know it. Archaeoastronomy, 14(1), 39.
Tedlock, B. (1999). Sharing and interpreting dreams in Amerindian nations. In D. Schulman & G.G. Stroumsa (Eds.), Dream cultures: Explorations in the comparative history of dreaming, (pp. 87–103.) Oxford University Press.[14]
Tedlock, B. (2001). Divination as a way of knowing: Embodiment, visualisation, narrative, and interpretation. Folklore, 112(2), 189-197. doi.org/10.1080/00155870120082236
Tedlock, B. (2004). Narrative ethnography as social science discourse. Studies in Symbolic Interaction, 27, 23-32. doi.org/10.1016/S0163-2396(04)27004-1
Tedlock, B. (2004). The poetics and spirituality of dreaming: A Native American enactive theory. Dreaming, 14(2-3), 183–189. doi.org/10.1037/1053-0797.14.2-3.183
Tedlock, B. (2006). Toward a theory of divinatory practice. Anthropology of Consciousness, 17(2), 62-77. doi.org/10.1525/ac.2006.17.2.62
Tedlock, B. (2007). Bicultural dreaming as an intersubjective communicative process. Dreaming, 17(2), 57–72. doi.org/10.1037/1053-0797.17.2.57
Tedlock, B. (2009). Writing a storied life: Nomadism and double consciousness in transcultural ethnography. Etnofoor, 21(1), 21-38. jstor.org/stable/25758148
Tedlock, B. (2013). Braiding evocative with analytic autoethnography. In S.L. Holman Jones, T.E. Adams, & C. Ellis (Eds.), Handbook of autoethnography, 358-362.[15]
Co-authored articles
Tedlock, B., & Tedlock, D. (1985). Text and textile: Language and technology in the arts of the Quiché Maya. Journal of Anthropological Research, 41(2), 121-146. doi.org/10.1086/jar.41.2.3630412
Tedlock, D., & Tedlock, B. (2002). The Sun, Moon, and Venus Among the Stars: Methods for Mapping Mayan Sidereal Space. Archaeoastronomy, 17.
^Tedlock, Dennis; Tedlock, Barbara (1975). Teachings from the American earth: Indian religion and philosophy. Liveright. ISBN978-0-87140-097-0. OCLC1174588.
^Tedlock, Barbara (1987). Dreaming: anthropolog. and psychology. interpretations. Cambridge u.a.: Cambridge Univ. Pr. ISBN978-0-521-34004-5. OCLC230895960.