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Session LKH2: Language, kinship, heritage 2

1. Farzad Sharifian: Kinship conceptualisations in Aboriginal English spoken in the urban centre of Perth

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Abstract

This talk examines kinship in Aboriginal English in terms of a system of cultural conceptualisations (Sharifian, 2003), a term comprising cultural schemas, categories, and conceptual metaphors. It is argued that kin terms such as mum, aunie, and cousinsister are best viewed as cultural-conceptual categories in Aboriginal English and they are partly reflective of kin categories in Aboriginal languages. Such kin categorisations are associated with certain cognitive schemas that are culturally constructed and include culture-specific knowledge of, for example, who can say what to whom. Aboriginal English also shows culture-specific conceptual metaphors around the domain of kinship. This includes, for example, referring to country as ‘grandfather’, which reflects the conceptual metaphor of LAND IS KIN. Against the backdrop of the approaches described here, this session will present data from a study of word-associations with Aboriginal English speaking children in the urban centre of Perth. The data reveal how the word ‘family’ evokes Aboriginal cultural schemas and categories (for example through listing extended family members) in these children. They also reveal how kinship and family constitute the defining components of words such as ‘home’, in the sense that ‘home’ appears to be associated with members of the extended family, and family expectations, rather than a building or its content.

Sharifian, F. (2003). On cultural conceptualisations. Journal of Cognition and Culture, (3)3, 187-207

Author bio:

Farzad Sharifian is an Associate Professor and the Director of the Language and Society Centre within the School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics, Monash University. He has carried out extensive research on Aboriginal English and has widely published in many international journals such as World Englishes, Anthropological Linguistics, and Language Sciences. In particular he has explored cultural conceptualizations in Aboriginal English in Western Australia. Farzad’s research on Aboriginal English has received multiple awards such as University Research Medal (Edith Cowan University), Dean’s Prize, and Early Career Award (Western Australian Institute for Educational Research). His recent research on Aboriginal English focused on ‘sorry’ in Aboriginal English and its association with ‘apology to the stolen generation’. Farzad is the editor of (with Gary B. Palmer)  Applied Cultural Linguistics (John Benjamins, 2007), and editor (with Rene Dirven, Ning Yu, and Susanne Niemeier) of Culture, Body, and Language (Mouton De Gruyter, 2008).

2. William Journee: Staying together: Yanyuwa kinship, social change and language decline

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Abstract

Language endangerment is an issue of significant concern and thus an area of considerable focus in current linguistic research. Many minority languages throughout the world are progressing towards silence at an alarming rate. Australian languages are overrepresented in this global trend of language decline, and constitute an intrinsic and important part of indigenous culture. The Yanyuwa language (Ngarna, Pama-Nyungan) spoken in the South Western Gulf country and Sir Edward Pellew islands of Australia’s Northern Territory is a good example of many of these forces working towards the now inevitable silence of the language of the Yanyuwa people with the death of the current grandparental generation (Kirton, 1988). Although Yanyuwa is not spoken in an urban environment, its situation – from the point of view of the researcher – has much in common with languages whose speakers have become urbanised. Yanyuwa is severely endangered, to the point where there is virtually no possibility of obtaining data of spontaneous language use, and the data which does exist are problematic. Despite a relatively large collection of data related to the language, much of this data was not collected by linguists and the attached annotations are not necessarily helpful to a linguist. In addition, some parts of the data are in very poor physical condition, to the extent that it is impossible to recover any useful information. This situation presents challenges which must be overcome both in urban and more remote language situations.

This research focuses on the kinship system of the Yanyuwa language. Kinship terms represent the structurally complex and highly ordered traditional social practices in indigenous communities, and Yanyuwa is no exception to this. This research is primarily concerned with structural aspects of Yanyuwa kinship terms both semantically and morphologically as used in the township of Borroloola, to the West of the traditional land of the Yanyuwa people. Working with the full extent of data available on the language, this paper presents a linguistic analysis of the Yanyuwa kinship system framed by traditional and more contemporary experiences of Yanyuwa people reflected in the available data, and reflects on the complexities of undertaking such research with data from languages which are no longer spoken spontaneously.
Kirton, J. (1988). Yanyuwa - A Dying Language. In SIL (Ed.), Work Papers of SIL-AAIB (Vol. B-13, pp. 1-19).

Author bio:

William Journee began his Bachelor of Arts at Monash University in 2006, majoring in linguistics and English and is a current honours student in linguistics at the school of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics at Monash University. His current research focuses on description of kinship terminology in the Yanyuwa language. In addition to his current research, William's research interests include Australian languages, language endangerment and documentation, the relationship between language and culture, and the ways this relationship is influenced by language contact and decline

3. Harold Koch: Interpreting old sources for language and culture recovery

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Abstract:

Relationship terms are documented for many languages in early sources such as word lists and journal articles. Many of these are written using spellings which are not consistent and are not considered scientific in today’s terms. The meanings were often not clearly understood by the recorders, who often failed to distinguish, for example, between ‘elder sister’ and ‘younger sister’, or to specify whether an ‘auntie’ is a father’s sister or a mother’s sister, or whether ‘grandfather’ is the father of one’s father or of one’s mother or both. There may be a number of sources of kinship terminology for the same language group, and these sources may be hard to reconcile with one another. Or the group whose kin terms are given may be indicated by a name that is no longer recognized, and their language is now known by another name.

All these factors cause difficulties for anyone trying to establish what the terminology was. Our Austkin project, which is interested in documenting and comparing kinship across most of the Australian languages, has to face all these issues as well. We are putting the data onto a database, but trying at the same time to interpret the form and meaning of the terms given in the old records. We are comparing the different versions given by different recorders to establish the most likely pronunciation and the most likely meaning. We are spelling all the terms using a consistent spelling system. And we are using a consistent set of letter codes to indicate each relationship, for instance MF ‘mother’s father’, ZS ‘sister’s son’, eB ‘elder brother’.

Author bio:

Harold Koch is a Visiting Fellow in Linguistics in the School of Language Studies, Australian National University, where he has recently retired from his teaching position. Harold has been involved in Aboriginal linguistics since the 1970s. His research has focused on Kaytetye and the other Arandic languages of Central Australia and issues in the historical-comparative linguistics of the Australian languages in general. During the last few years he has been investigating the historical documentation on the Indigenous languages and placenames of southeastern NSW, and is supervising the research of two PhD students working with historical materials on NSW languages to aid language revitalisation projects. He edited, with Luise Hercus, a recent book, Aboriginal placenames: naming and re-naming the Australian landscape (Aboriginal History Monograph series) Canberra; ANU E Press. He is currently part of the research team for the project “Tracing change in family and social organization in Indigenous Australia, using evidence from language” (see http://austkin.pacific-credo.fr/).