“Some Don’t Even Know Where South Is!”: Linguistic Strategies for Spatial Reference and Seasons in Ishigaki Yaeyaman and Their Disappearance

Abstract

Many inhabitants of the Yaeyama Archipelago continue to hold a low status view towards their heritage language despite current efforts to halt language shift. An ideology of inferiority stemming from the colonization of the mind renders them psychologically dependent on being Japanese and unable to see their own language as valuable. The problem is further compounded by the lack of ethnolinguistic and sociolinguistic research on the knowledge concepts of the language including the reference system despite it being a profound feature of the language. This paper first rectifies this by describing the unique conceptualizations in the orientation systems as well as the seasonal terms of Yaeyaman. The focus is then shifted to the situations and frequency of their use in Yaeyaman and in Ishigaki-substrate Japanese to look for how language shift has impacted these spatial and environmental viewpoints in the minds of Yaeyaman speakers. I show through the words of the speakers, while describing their use of these systems, how their minds have been unconsciously colonized and how this drives an automatic behavior of language accommodation towards the Japanese. I argue that language accommodation to speakers of Japanese is largely responsible for the disuse of the unique Yaeyaman worldview concepts as well as the decrease in domains where the language is spoken. As a consequence, a unique way of looking at the world and a feature to take pride in is falling into disuse.