Browsing results for Bislama

(2016) Bislama – Emotions

Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on May 5, 2019.

Levisen, Carsten (2016). Postcolonial lexicography: Defining creole emotion words with the Natural Semantic Metalanguage. Cahiers de lexicologie, 109, 35-60.

DOI: 10.15122/isbn.978-2-406-06861-7.p.0035

Abstract:

The lexicographical study of postcolonial language varieties is severely undertheorized and underdeveloped. Postcolonial Lexicography is a new framework that seeks to go some way towards filling the gap. It aims at providing a new praxis of word definition for the study of creoles, world Englishes, and other languages spoken in postcolonial contexts. NSM is used as an interpretative technique for the definition of meaning. The NSM approach allows for a fine-grained lexical-semantic analysis, and at the same time helps circumvent ‘conceptual colonialism’ and the related vices of Anglocentrism and Eurocentrism, all of which hamper advances in lexicographical studies in a postcolonial context.

More specifically, drawing on advances in lexical semantics, linguistic ethnography and postcolonial language studies, the paper offers an original analysis of emotion words in Urban Bislama, a creole language spoken in Port Vila, Vanuatu. The author develops a sketch of the Bislama lexicon of emotion and provides new definitions of kros, roughly ‘angry’, les, roughly ‘annoyed’ and sem, roughly ‘ashamed’. A table of Bislama exponents of NSM primes is included, as well as some discussion on the exponents for FEEL, GOOD, and BAD.

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(2016) Bislama, English, Danish – Speech acts: lies

Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on May 1, 2019.

Levisen, Carsten (2016). The ethnopragmatics of speech acts in postcolonial discourse: “Truth” and “trickery” in a transculturated South Pacific tale. In Christoph Schubert & Laurenz Volkmann (Eds.), Pragmatic perspectives on postcolonial discourse: Linguistics and literature (pp. 41-64). Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

Abstract:

Providing a high-resolution explication of the Bislama (Vanuatu, South Pacific) speech act word giaman, from colonial English gammon (“to humbug”), the paper develops an ethnopragmatic profile of the speech act category “truth/lies/deception” and discusses the interpretative potential for a giaman-based interpretation of one of Hans Christian Andersen’s most cherished fairy tales, The Emperor’s New Clothes, which has now also been translated into Bislama. Demonstrating how giaman differs from European-type speech acts, and in particular from English and Danish semi-counterparts of the word (respectively lie and bedrage), the paper launches into a postcolonial critique of Anglo-international pragmatics and its so-called universal maxims and speech acts, showing a new way and a new synthesis called postcolonial ethnopragmatics.

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(2017) Bislama – Cultural key words: REKE

Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 13, 2018.

Levisen, Carsten (2017). The social and sonic semantics of reggae: Language ideology and emergent socialities in postcolonial Vanuatu. Language & Communication, 52, 102-116. DOI: 10.1016/j.langcom.2016.08.009

In Port Vila, Vanuatu, young Pacific Islanders with an ambivalent stance towards the value system represented by the jioj ‘church’ are forming new socialities and new ways of socializing on the fragments of kastom ‘traditional culture’. The reggae sociality stands out. As a cultural key word, reke ‘reggae’ offers a rich point for understanding local language-embedded ideologies, and also for understanding the status of Bislama, the national creole. This study breaks new ground into the emerging discipline of sonic semantics and the study of language ideologies in postcolonial contexts.


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(2017) Bislama, Tok Pisin – Cultural key words: KASTOM, TUMBUNA

Published on October 15, 2017. Last updated on September 13, 2018.

Levisen, Carsten & Priestley, Carol (2017). Social keywords in postcolonial Melanesian discourse: Kastom ‘traditional culture’ and tumbuna ‘ancestors’. In Carsten Levisen & Sophia Waters (Eds.), Cultural keywords in discourse (pp. 83-106). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI: 10.1075/pbns.277.04lev

In postcolonial Melanesia, cultural discourses are increasingly organized around creole words, i.e. key words of Bislama (Vanuatu) and Tok Pisin (Papua New Guinea). These words constitute (or represent) important emerging ethnolinguistic world views, which are partly borne out of the colonial era, and partly out of postcolonial ethnorhetoric. This chapter explores the word kastom ‘traditional culture’ in Bislama and pasin bilong tumbuna ‘the ways of the ancestors’ in Tok Pisin. Specific attention is paid to the shift from “negative “ to “positive” semantics, following from the re-evaluation of ancestral practices in postcolonial discourse. Social key words in postcolonial discourse form a fertile ground for understanding how speakers in Melanesia conceptualize the past as a vital part of the present.


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(2017) English, Creoles – NSM primes

Published on May 12, 2017. Last updated on September 13, 2018.

Levisen, Carsten; Priestley, Carol; Nicholls, Sophie; & Goldshtein, Yonatan (2017). The semantics of Englishes and Creoles: Pacific and Australian perspectives. In Peter Bakker, Finn Borchsenius, Carsten Levisen & Eeva Sippola (Eds.), Creole studies – Phylogenetic approaches (pp. 345-368). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI: 10.1075/z.211.15lev. PDF (open access)

This paper provides a lexical-semantic comparison of a selection of Englishes and English-related creoles in the Australia-Pacific area. Faced with the conundrum of sociolinguistic classificatory practice and its contested categories (“language”, “creole”, “dialect”, “variety” and English(es)”), it attempts to circumvent the problematic of metavocabulary by taking a new, two-pronged approach. Firstly, it relies on semantic primes, comparing and contrasting their lexicalizations (especially those of the prime PEOPLE) across the sample of creoles. Secondly, it uses phylogenetic networks to visualize the results and to form new hypotheses.

The results provide counter-evidence to the claim that Melanesian and Australian creoles are “varieties of English”. The creole sample displays three basic types of relations: “shared-core” types (Australian English vs. New Zealand English); “closely related core” types (Hawai’i Creole vs. Anglo Englishes); and “distantly related core” types (Tok Pisin vs. Anglo English, Kriol vs. Anglo English, or Yumplatok vs. Anglo English). The results are measured against Scandinavian languages to explore the language-dialect question, and against Trinidadian (a Caribbean creole) to explore the extent of lexical-semantic areality. It is concluded that current sociolinguistic metavocabulary is inadequate for representing the complexity of the new ways of speaking in the Australia-Pacific region, and it is suggested a principled areal-semantic investigation of words based on semantic principles is the way to go.


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(2018) Danish – Cultural key words: VOLD

Published on August 18, 2018. Last updated on September 13, 2018.

Levisen, Carsten (2018). The grammar of violence: Insights from Danish ethnosyntax and the Wierzbicka-Pinker debate. Etnolingwistyka, 30, 145-167. DOI: 10.17951/et.2018.30.145. PDF (open access)

This paper explores the Danish key word vold ‘violence, abuse’ and scrutinizes its associated ethnosyntax, which is hidden in compound morphology. Focusing on the compounds hustruvold ‘wife vold’ and politivold ‘police vold’, it explores the conceptual syntax embedded in such coinages. Exploring more recent constructs, such as forældrevold ‘parent vold’, the author argues that Danish ethnosyntax embodies a view of the world in which traditional authority figures (men, police, parents) are coded as aggressors, whereas women, citizens and children are coded as victims.

In more general terms, the paper aims to open a new ethnolinguistic research agenda for the study of negative sociality constructs and the positive value system hidden in them. It does so by drawing attention to the differences and similarities of violence-related concepts in ethnolinguistic communities, and to the key role played by ethnosyntax in the elaboration of violence, vold, and similar concepts.

The paper also proposes an explication for the Bislama word faetem ‘punch, fight physically’.


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(2020) English, Australian Aboriginal English, Bislama – Shame

Published on November 22, 2020. Last updated on November 22, 2020.

Peeters, Bert (2020). Language Makes a Difference: Breaking the Barrier of Shame. Lublin Studies in Modern Language and Literature,  44(1), 27-37.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.17951/lsmll.2020.44.1.27-37 (Open Access)

Abstract:
This paper argues against the reification of shame and the use of Anglocentric jargon to explain what it entails. It shows how the Natural Semantic Metalanguage can be used to define shame and set it apart from related concepts in Australian Aboriginal English and in Bislama, an English creole spoken in Vanuatu.

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