Elsevier

Language & Communication

Volume 62, Part B, September 2018, Pages 119-132
Language & Communication

“We talk in saltwater words”: Dimensionalisation of dialectal variation in multilingual Arnhem Land

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langcom.2017.10.002Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Variation in Burarra does not cohere systematically into clearly identifiable lects.

  • Perceived Burarra ‘dialects’ are nevertheless central to social identity.

  • Performance of important social categories recruits linguistic variation via fractal recursivity.

  • Formerly localised variation is now recruited to index a range of supra-local categories.

  • In contexts of small-scale multilingualism, egalitarian ‘multi-lectalism’ may also be observed.

Abstract

In Arnhem Land, northern Australia, speakers of the Burarra language live and communicate within a highly multilingual and multilectal language ecology. This paper explores how regional ideologies of socio-cultural distinctiveness and unity are projected into the linguistic space at the level of the language (within Maningrida's language ecology), as well as at the level of the lect (in terms of dialects and sociolects within the Burarra language). Drawing from current ethnography, naturalistic interactional and elicited language data, and other existing materials, the paper considers how speakers reproduce and evaluate language-internal variation within a linguistically diverse region. These processes are contextualised within the dynamics of long-term ‘egalitarian’ multilingualism which continue to shape contemporary practices and contemporary means of social meaning-making.

Introduction

In Arnhem Land, northern Australia, speakers of the Burarra language live and communicate within a highly multilingual and multilectal language ecology. Language practices in the region index a variety of social categories, including patrilineal land-holding units and moiety groupings, and local language ideologies essentialise the connections between individual linguistic varieties and particular tracts of territory. Language affiliations are in large part inherited through kinship networks. In the following quote, Isobel, a young Martay Burarra woman, describes how she connects to languages in her repertoire through her close kin:

Jin-ngaypa mununa Martay Burarra jin-gata. Wurra, an-ngaypa jaminya, jin-nigipa mother, jin-gata An-barra. Rrapa ngaypa, like, Martay Burarra ngu-weya ngu-workiya. Rrapa minypa Djinang ng-galiyarra ngu-workiya, ngardawa an-ngaypa jaminya gu-nika wengga. Rrapa an-ngaypa ninya rrapa bapapa, jungurda apula yerrcha gun-ngayburrpa wengga Yan-nhangu, like gurda gun-gapa east, east side. Well gurdiya minypa, only like gun-ngardapa gun-guyinda marn.gi gun-gata Yan-nhangu aburr-weya, but ng-guna waya ngaypa like marn.gi ngu-nirra […] Sometimes mix up nyiburr-weya nyiburr-workiya, mix nyiburr-negarra nyiburr-workiya minypa An-barra. Gapala yerrcha aburr-weya aburr-workiya arrburrwa ‘ngika gurda wengga, gun-guna wengga! Gun-guna gun-burral, gun-derta gun-nginyipa.’

My grandmother, she's Martay Burarra. But, my grandfather, his mother, she's An-barra, and I speak Martay Burarra. And, like, I hear and understand Djinang, because that's my grandfather's language. And my father and auntie, all my grandfathers, our language is Yan-nhangu, that one over there, east side. Well that one, like, I know only a few words here and there from that Yan-nhangu that they speak, but now I understand that one. […] We sometimes speak in a mixed-up way, we're always mixing it (Martay dialect) with An-barra (way of speaking Burarra). The old people are always saying to us, ‘not that language, this language! This one's the real one (for you). Your one's a strong one.’

Isobel is multilingual, speaking a number of local Indigenous languages as well as English, but she is also multilectal within her main language, Burarra, having mastery of both the Martay and the An-barra dialects. In drawing upon her linguistic repertoire, Isobel must constantly navigate the ideological constraints that surround the appropriate use of languages and lects in her community.

Isobel lives in Maningrida – Arnhem Land's largest community, and one that represents a concentration of the linguistic diversity of the wider region. Many Indigenous languages are spoken here, alongside increasing use of English and various contact varieties. Interaction is characterised by high levels of individual multilingualism and diverse multilingual strategies (e.g. receptive multilingualism, a broad range of code-mixing practices) – practices which form a symbiotic relationship with the region's linguistic diversity. In spite of this diversity, a lingua franca has never emerged at Maningrida,2 although the impact of changes in mobility and residence patterns (among other demographic, cultural and linguistic shifts) are observable in both the functioning of language-internal variation, and in the deployment of multilingual repertoires.

In this paper, I consider how speakers like Isobel reproduce and evaluate language-internal variation within the highly multilingual language ecology of north-central Arnhem Land. These processes are contextualised within the dynamics of long-term ‘pre-existing’ multilingualism which continue to shape contemporary practices and contemporary means of social meaning-making through lived and performed sociolinguistic boundaries and affiliations. I address how regional ideologies of socio-cultural distinctiveness and unity are projected into the linguistic space at the level of the language (within Maningrida's language ecology), as well as at the level of the lect (in terms of dialects and sociolects within the Burarra language). This work is based on naturalistic interactional and elicited language data from a number of sources, especially language materials collected since the 1960s in Maningrida and surrounds by missionaries and linguists (in particular Kathy and David Glasgow, Rebecca Green and Margaret Carew), as well as my own more recent data collected over several visits in the last three years.3

Section snippets

Arnhem Land, Maningrida and Burarra

Arnhem Land is a remote Indigenous-owned territory on the northern coast of Australia's Northern Territory. Its rich natural environment has for millennia supported a network of diverse cultural groups and, concurrently, a complex multilingual and multilectal language ecology. This language ecology or multilingual ‘regional system’ (e.g. Epps, 2008, Epps) is scaffolded by a range of both long-standing and contemporary practices which contribute to maintaining, and even creating, linguistic

Multilingualism old and new

The multilingual ecology of north-central Arnhem Land long predates the arrival of English and the spread of the contact varieties that subsequently developed. At the time of the arrival of First Fleet in 1788, some 250 distinct languages (over 700 varieties) were spoken across Australia. It is possible to construct a map of the traditional boundaries of territories associated with each of these varieties, as has been done on many occasions (see e.g. Tindale, 1974), but such schemas are more

Delineating the sociolinguistic space: The Burarra ‘dialects’

Within a diverse language ecology that is characterised by extreme variety in multilingual practice, what can be said about language-internal divisions and variation? Work on the sociopsychological and interactional aspects of multilingualism typically focus on the manipulation and socio-indexicalities of entire codes, rather than of lects and linguistic variants within a single macro code (e.g. Heller, 2007, Pavlenko and Blackledge, 2004; although notable exceptions include Migge and Léglise,

Variation and lectal coherence

The sub-groups of the Burarra community are demarcated in language practice in a variety of ways. It is not clear, however, that the sets of variants attested for Burarra speakers cohere systematically into clearly identifiable lects, nor that these ‘dialects’ exhibit a significant amount of inter-systemic variation (Guy and Hiskens, 2016). Lectal variation in Burarra exists in some form within most subsystems of the language,14

Concluding comments: the functioning of variation in contemporary egalitarian multilingualism

Looking beyond the immediate context of Maningrida and the Burarra social space to further afield in Arnhem Land provides useful context for understanding the processes at play in lectal differentiation (both across and within language boundaries). Language documentation work in Arnhem Land has shown that variation may be dimensionalised along a number of lines, from patriclan-specific interjections and morphology among the Yolngu languages (e.g., Morphy, 1977; Schebeck, 2001; Wilkinson, 1991)

Acknowledgements

Sincere thanks to Maningrida community, and especially to Abigail Carter, Doreen Jinggarrabarra, Cindy Jin-marabynana, Rebecca Baker, Joseph Diddo, Alistair James, Stanley Djalarra Rankin, Mason Scholes and Jessie Webb. Thanks also to Margaret Carew, Felicity Meakins, Ruth Singer, Rebecca Green and Gillian Wigglesworth for useful conversations along the way, and to the participants in the 2016 American Anthropological Association symposium ‘Evidence of ‘Pre-existing’ Multilingual Ecologies in

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