Darja Hoenigman

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

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.

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. The paper contains two video links.

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.

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.
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’.