'The talk goes many ways' : registers of language and modes of performance in Kanjimei, East Sepik Province, Papua New Guinea

This thesis focuses on language and modes of performance in Kanjimei village, a small, largely endogamous community in East Sepik Province, Papua New Guinea. The approximately 300 members of this community speak Awiakay, a Papuan language belonging to the Arafundi group, and call themselves Awiakay. Based on 23 months of fieldwork, and drawing material from video recordings of natural speech situations, the thesis analyses the form and social functions of a range of different linguistic registers and the ways in which each of them reflects - and is itself a part of - socio-cultural continuity and change. Each of the five main chapters between the Introduction and Conclusion deals with a different linguistic register and its role in Awiakay society. Chapter 2 treats two historically related registers, 'mountain talk' and 'hidden talk' in which ordinary vocabulary is replaced by secret vocabulary, known only to the Awiakay. Mountain talk is the older genre, used during hunting trips in the mountains, in order to avoid the anger and potential malicious actions of the mountain spirits. The Awiakay have recently transferred this practice of lexical replacement to a different social setting, in which they try to avoid the dangers presented by raskols (Tok Pisin for 'criminals') in the provincial capital when they go to town. Chapter 3 analyses the language of disputes and fighting. It examines both domestic and village-internal fights and demonstrates the importance of language use in traditional conflict resolution. Chapter 4 examines Catholic charismatic spirit possession, which temporarily legitimises two otherwise condemned social practices: gossip and public criticism. Through video-recorded case study the chapter demonstrates the role of language use and language ideologies in patching the previously torn social fabric. Chapter 5 deals with laments, or 'sung-texted melodic weeping'. A person's weeping for a deceased relative or a dog is at the same time used as an indirect public call for help, or as a subtle airing of grievances about other people's wrongdoings (with or without a direct connection to the deceased). The melody which accompanies these complaints makes other people sympathise with the person weeping, so their laments are heard and taken seriously by other members of the society rather than condemned as malicious provocations. The last ethnographic chapter (6) is on Kaunjambi, an all-night song/dance cycle of 43 songs, which were, in the Awiakay view, composed by their ancestral spirits. Linguistic, musical and ethnographic analyses of the verbatim transcripts and the video and audio recordings of several performances of this song/dance cycle lead to the argument that Kaunjambi is an indigenously-composed auto-ethnography. The text of the thesis is intertwined with observational ethnographic film. The video clips are an integral part of the thesis; they are recordings of events that are analysed in individual chapters, and are thus intended to be watched while reading. All chapters are placed within the broader ethnographic literature on Melanesia and linguistic anthropology

From mountain talk to hidden talk: Continuity and change in Awiakay registers

When the Awiakay of East Sepik Province in Papua New Guinea left their village or bush camps and went to the mountains, they used a different linguistic register, ‘mountain talk’, in which several lexical items are replaced by their avoidance terms. In this way the Awiakay would prevent mountain spirits from sending sickness or dense fog in which they would get lost on their journeys. Over the last decade people’s trips to the mountain have become more frequent due to the eaglewood business. However, Christianity caused a decline in the use of ‘mountain talk’. Yet a linguistic register similar in its form and function has sprung up in a different setting: kay menda, ‘different talk’, or what people sometimes call ‘hidden talk’, is used when the Awiakay go to the town to sell eaglewood and buy goods. Like other cultural phenomena, linguistic registers are historical formations, which change in form and value over time. This paper aims to show how although in a different social setting, with an expanded repertoire and a slightly different function, kay menda is in a way a continuity of the ‘mountain talk’.National Foreign Language Resource Cente

Election Fever: Kanjimei, East Sepik 2012

Public screening What do elections really mean in a small, isolated village in PNG? This observational film focuses on Kanjimei village in East Sepik Province, Papua New Guinea, picking up at the time when outsiders arrive to campaign for candidates in a national election. Disillusioned by governmental neglect the Awiakay people of Kanjimei follow the enthusiastic campaigners with cynicism and astute observations about PNG politics and politicians. The film was shot towards the end of Darja’s recent return fieldtrip to Kanjimei village in East Sepik Province, as a part of a bigger project of making a film ethnography of the Awiakay people, which will be intertwined with her PhD thesis in Anthropology

A Battle of Languages: Spirit Possession and Changing Linguistic Ideologies in a Sepik Society, Papua New Guinea

In October 2009, a dramatic event shook the existing sociolinguistic setting in Kanjimei village in East Sepik Province of Papua New Guinea. Possessed by a Christian spirit, a woman harshly reproached the most important village leaders. The ensuing verbal fight between 'the spirit' and the village prayer leader became a battle of languages: the Christian spirit spoke the community's native language, Awiakay, overpowering those in authority, who are the most frequent users of the national lingua franca Tok Pisin. As it was believed that it was the spirit of the Virgin Mary who channelled herself through the possessed woman, it was legitimate for people to discuss her words. The spirit possession thus enabled the otherwise condemned social practices: gossip and public criticism, which have the power of changing existing power relations in the village. The analysis of this event shows the complexity behind the ever-changing linguistic ideologies

From mountain talk to hidden talk: Continuity and change in Awiakay registers

When the Awiakay of East Sepik Province in Papua New Guinea left their village or bush camps and went to the mountains, they used a different linguistic register, �mountain talk�, in which several lexical items are replaced by their avoidance terms. In this way the Awiakay would prevent mountain spirits from sending sickness or dense fog in which they would get lost on their journeys. Over the last decade people�s trips to the mountain have become more frequent due to the eaglewood business. However, Christianity caused a decline in the use of �mountain talk�. Yet a linguistic register similar in its form and function has sprung up in a different setting: kay menda, �different talk�, or what people sometimes call �hidden talk�, is used when the Awiakay go to the town to sell eaglewood and buy goods. Like other cultural phenomena, linguistic registers are historical formations, which change in form and value over time. This paper aims to show how although in a different social setting, with an expanded repertoire and a slightly different function, kay menda is in a way a continuity of the �mountain talk�

'Are my brothers fucking your sister?' Shaming and being (a)shamed in a Sepik society

Some months after being verbally abused by his wife in a domestic quarrel, an Awiakay man died. One of the rumours that circulated about his death was that it was caused by his having been so badly shamed. The Awiakay people of East Sepik Province in Papua New Guinea use the same verb root, munjoko-, to express what translates into English as both ‘feeling shame’ and ‘feeling fear’. Based on video recordings and verbatim transcripts of a number of domestic and intra-village fights, as well as subsequent discussions with all involved parties, this article examines the ways the Awiakay people use their language to shame one another and tries to explain why they are afraid of being (a)shamed

Talking about strings: The language of string figure-making in a Sepik society in Papua New Guinea

The practice of making string figures, often called cat’s cradle, can be found all over the world and is particularly widespread in Melanesia. It has been studied by anthropologists, linguists and mathematicians. For the latter, the ordered series of moves and the resultant string figures represent cognitive processes that form part of a practice of recreational mathematics. Modern anthropology is interested in the social and cultural aspects of string figures, including their associations with other cultural practices, with the local mythology and songs. Despite this clear link to language, few linguists have studied string figures, and those who have, have mainly focused on the songs and formulaic texts that accompany them. Based on a systematic study of string figures among the Awiakay, the inhabitants of Kanjimei village in the Sepik region of Papua New Guinea, with six hours of transcribed video recordings of the practice, this paper argues that studying string figure-making can be an important aspect of language documentation – not just through the recording and analysis of the accompanying oral literature, but also as a tool for documenting other speech genres through recordings of the naturalistic speech that surrounds string figure-making performances. In turn, analysing the language associated with string figure-making offers valuable insights into the meaning of string figures as understood by their makers.National Foreign Language Resource Cente

Laments and relational personhood: case studies from Duna and Awiakay societies of Papua New Guinea

[Extract] Lamenting is a very important aspect of musical culture across Papua New Guinea, a country of more than 800 indigenous language groups and a vast variety of cultural practices. Many anthropological texts address the lament across the country. In Papua New Guinea, laments - which we define for our purposes as verbal expressions that are performed at death of a person or other living things (as opposed to verbal expressions about loss more generally) - are established genres that usually have a name or category attached to them. Although lamenting is typically the domain of women, an older women in particular, who bring to the genre a great body of knowledge and considerable skill accumulated over years of mourning, both adult men and women can be composers and performers of laments, particularly in Awiakay society. Laments in Papua New Guinea can be microcosms of a culture; they contain within them detail about the life of the deceased, and the lamenter, listing the places of their heritage, the activities they once performed and their role within the community, as well as pointing to any exiting tensions in relationships between the lamenter and other members of the community, and thus aiming at socially appropriate actions that need to be taken in order to re-establish distorted relationships. Laments are thus as much a part of the present (and consequently the future) as they are of the past. Therefore, to examine a lament closely is to learn much about Papua New Guinean cultures

Getting the Story Straight: Language Fieldwork Using a Narrative Problem-Solving Task

We describe a structured task for gathering enriched language data for descriptive, comparative, and documentary purposes, focusing on the domain of social cognition. The task involves collaborative narrative problem-solving and retelling by a pair or small group of language speakers, and was developed as an aid to investigating grammatical categories relevant to social cognition. The pictures set up a dramatic story in which participants can feel empathetic involvement with the characters, and trace individual motivations, mental and physical states, and points of view. The data-gathering task allows different cultural groups to imbue the pictures with their own experiences, concerns, and conventions, and stimulates the spontaneous use of previously under-recorded linguistic structures. We argue that stimulus-based elicitation tasks that are designed to stimulate a range of speech types (descriptions, dialogic interactions, narrative) within the single task contribute quantitatively and qualitatively to language documentation, and provide an important means of gathering spontaneous but broadly parallel, and thus comparable, linguistic data. [pictures used in these tasks are available here http://hdl.handle.net/10125/4504]National Foreign Language Resource Cente