Consequences of Contact: Language Ideologies and Sociocultural Transformations in Pacific Societies – Edited by Miki Makihara and Bambi B. Schieffelin

Abstract

Consequences of Contact: Language Ideologies and Sociocultural Transformations in Pacific Societies . Miki Makihara and Bambi B. Schieffelin , eds. Oxford : Oxford University Press , 2007 . ix + 234 pp. In the region of Oceania, a long and complex history of intercultural contacts has led to a vast diversity of interlingual relationships. In an effort to bring greater understanding to these phenomena, Makihara and Schieffelin present eight cases of language contact and change from this region, each serving to demonstrate that local language ideologies shape the course of linguistic change. Makihara and Schieffelin introduce the volume with a helpful overview of the demographic, linguistic, and social background of the Pacific region and why they wish to consider the role of linguistic ideology. As the discussion of the phenomenon has grown, in both linguistic as well as cultural anthropology, the term language ideology has taken on a number of connotations. The chapters of this volume illustrate the full range of application of the concept. What Makihara and Schieffelin argue, and each of the authors helps to support, is that a focus on language ideologies in the study of language contact is important because language ideologies are forms of metacommunicative action which ties communication to its social and cultural context. Language contact occurs in the midst of cultural contact. Language ideologies illustrate how the two interact and influence each other (p. 14). The chapters by Jourdan, Makihara, and Riley each deal with situations in which foreign and local codes come into contact through colonialism. Jourdan describes changes in the use of Pijin in urban Solomon Islands. She argues that a generation of young urban residents, having grown up speaking Pijin and having tenuous grasp of their parents' vernaculars, are mobilizing Pijin as a way of expressing their “urban self,” an unprecedented cultural situation in this mostly rural country (p. 30). Young people self-consciously make their Pijin sound more English to distinguish it from rural-sounding varieties. Typical of the kind of analytic move that each author tries to make, Jourdan argues that Pijin is not merely the outcome of contact between English and local vernaculars, but a resource through which speakers position themselves in a heteroglossic universe. With a similar intent, Riley contrasts alternative valuations of the perception in French Polynesia that the Marquesan indigenous language, 'Enana, is being corrupted by contact with the more widely spoken and prestigious Tahitian and French. The official view is that the corruption of 'Enana is a social “problem” which threatens Marquesan identity (p. 73). Contemporary speakers of 'Enana seem unconcerned about this problem. In childrens' socialization to 'Enana, Riley explains, mixing languages is a rather important skill. Children acquire culturally valued forms of humor and disposition by learning to code-switch between French and 'Enana. Makihara shows how the recently developed practice of speaking pure Rapa Nui (Easter Island) language owes to the emergence of Rapa Nui as an ethnic national identity. Rapa Nui political speech, she claims, is dominated by two distinct registers of Rapa Nui, one pure and one syncretized with Chilean Spanish. The use of these alternatives is shaped by the different kinds of political identities which people invest them with. Like Jourdan's approach to Pijin as a mode of action, Makihara argues that Rapa Nui is not so much dying as it is being differentiated into two alternative ways of being Rapa Nui by actors' strategic use of Rapa Nui language. Local ideologies about the link between language and identity are motivating a new linguistic division of labor in which pure Rapa Nui indexes ethnic authenticity and mixed Rapa Nui indexes egalitarian democratic participation. In each of these cases, the authors argue for a view of language contact, shift and change as a kind of practice. In speaking, people exploit linguistic variation as a symbolic resource, and thereby actively create the interlingual relationship. Following this group, chapters by Stasch, Robbins, Schieffelin, and Handman present cases of interlingual and intercultural relationships in rural New Guinea societies. The politics of heteroglossia is not the main issue in these cases. Nonetheless the authors each show how local ideologies of language shape people's relationships to their own and other cultures. Stasch describes how the Korowai of the interior of Papua regard Indonesian language. Korowai conceptualize linguistic difference as part of innate, essential differences between populations. Indonesian, like other foreign goods, is called a “demon” language, a figure of its essential opposition to “human” Korowai speech. Korowai regard it as incomprehensibly foreign and potentially dangerous. Yet Stasch shows that this conceptualization of linguistic difference also explains why co-speakers of Korowai sometimes use Indonesian words with each other. The uncanny foreignness conveyed by Indonesian expresses an estrangement which Korowai find important to their social relationships. In this respect, Stasch's chapter marks a transition in the volume from the discussion of ideologies of linguistic variation to a discussion of how different cultures value communication itself. The chapters by Robbins, Schieffelin and Handman all discuss how the expansion of European Christianities in Papua New Guinea (PNG) societies has led to a shift of language ideology in this sense. Robbins describes this shift as from a traditional value of language as a mode of making and maintaining harmonious social relations, much like reciprocal exchange, to a Protestant Christian value of language as vehicle for truth. Schieffelin examines the practice of oral translation from Pidgin to a local PNG vernacular, Bosavi. Schieffelin finds that preachers have developed a new Bosavi metalanguage of inner mental states on which the Gospel of Mark hinges. She links these changes in epistemology to the link between speech and intentionality implicit in the Pidgin and English translations of the Gospel. Handman discusses the language ideology behind Bible translation projects in PNG. Bible translation is carried out now mainly by native speakers of the recipient population with training and guidance by the Summer Institute of Linguistics, because it is thought that native speakers can make a more accurate and culturally relevant translation. In practice, Handman argues, the belief in native speakers' presumed direct access to their “heart language” is predicated on the idea that languages do not change nor can they be influenced by other languages (p. 171). The final chapter by Philips is the hardest to classify and the most wide-ranging. Her discussion links changes in Tongan honorifics to changes in language ideology. She argues that the ideological change is hard to see because of the ideological bias of scholars implicit in their conceptualization of honorific language, that is, that it marks honor, or the prestige of the target relative to the speaker. Older systems of honorification are better described as indexes of the degree of sacredness of the target. She suggests that the scholarly model of honorification is complicit in naturalizing the secular character of modern usage, which is linked to the formation of the Tongan monarchy as a modern, secular nation-state. As the political influence of Protestant Christian missionaries grew in the 19th and 20th centuries, it became important for chiefs to distinguish religious and political functions. Errington, whose own work on the subject is a touchstone for many of the authors, has contributed a postscript for the volume which situates it in terms of the study of language contact and change. He sees the authors as united in their attention to the cultural and social particularities of communicative action. The authors' sensitive and detailed ethnographic descriptions of communicative practices, he notes, bolsters the claim that the interlingual situation is constituted through local language ideologies. In this context, Errington also makes an intriguing reference to Marshall Sahlins' theory of cultural change. He suggests that the authors and Sahlins similarly focus on the local actors' agency in situations of cultural contact and influence, and reject models which reduce change to cultural domination. I would question whether all the authors do agree on this point. I see at least two distinct conceptions of agency at work in the descriptions of the process of linguistic change. On the one hand, Jourdan, Makihara, and Riley each describe how individuals reflexively exploit interlinguistic relationships. While the practice of language contact is situated in social contexts, they put more emphasis on individuals' strategies for accruing prestige or stabilizing their social position. On the other hand, Stasch, Schieffelin, Robbins, and Handman treat language ideology as the tip of a cultural iceberg of representations of personhood, self, mind, and sociality. They find that situations of language contact often involve a much deeper epistemological and ontological shift between cultures. For the latter three especially, this kind of cultural alterity is iconized by Christianity's influence on non-Western cultures. Perhaps this contrast of perspectives is the greatest challenge of this volume. Having shown that contact between languages is always reflexively mediated by cultural ideas and sociohistorical dynamics, we are led to consider what contact means, either between languages or cultures. There is an invitation here for a larger conversation between linguistic and cultural anthropology about the nature of intercultural relations. For this reason, this volume will be of wide interest to linguistic and cultural anthropologists, especially those interested in intercultural relations and processes of cultural change. One could even see it working well as a required text for an undergraduate course on language and society. Although it focuses on a single region of the world, the differences within the societies of this region open up comparative perspectives on its common theme. The chapters read together very well and thus collectively present a useful work. The volume represents a lasting contribution to the anthropological study of language and linguistic change.