Cover not available
Article published In:
International Journal of Language and Culture
Vol. 5:1 (2018) ► pp.94–111

Cultural conceptualisations of language and country in Australian Indigenous languages

| Monash University

This article presents a Cultural Linguistics perspective on the enduring and multifaceted relationship between people, language and country in Indigenous Australia. It builds on a substantial body of work in Cultural Linguistics that has examined the cultural conceptualisations present in Aboriginal English, but shifts the focus to exploring how such conceptualisations are also encoded in ancestral Indigenous languages. The article provides linguistic and ethnographic data from a number of Indigenous language groups to explicate the notions of language as a ‘cultural schema’ and country as a ‘cultural category’ in Indigenous languages. It also posits a number of conceptual metaphors that relate to country and language, namely country is a sentient being, country is a rational being, and country is a linguistically competent being.

Keywords: Australian Indigenous languages, language, country, cultural schema, cultural category, cultural conceptual metaphor
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.‘Language’ as a cultural schema in Indigenous Australia
    • 2.1Language and territoriality
    • 2.2Rights to language
    • 2.3Language and kinship
      • 2.3.1Dyad and tri-relational kinship terminology
      • 2.3.2Respect registers
      • 2.3.3Non-human kinship
  • 3.‘Country’ as a cultural category in Indigenous Australia
  • 4.Cultural conceptual metaphors relating to language and country
  • 5.Concluding remarks
  • References
Published online: 18 May 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ijolc.17006.rus
References
Alpher, B.
(1993) Out-of-the-ordinary ways of using a language. In M. Walsh & C. Yallop (Eds.), language and culture in Aboriginal Australia (pp. 97–106). Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press.Google Scholar
Anderson, C.
(2016) Multiple views of paradise: Perspectives on the Daintree rainforest. In J. C. Verstraete & D. Hafner (Eds.), Land and language in Cape York Peninsula and the Gulf Country (pp. 263–284). Amsterdam; Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bird Rose, D.
(1992) Dingo makes us human: Life and land in an Australian aboriginal culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
(1996) Nourishing terrains: Australian Aboriginal views of landscape and wilderness. Canberra: Australian Heritage Commission.Google Scholar
(1999) Indigenous ecologies and an ethic of connection. In N. Low (Ed.), Global ethics and environment (pp. 175–187). London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Blythe, J., & Wightman, G.
(2003) The role of animals and plants in maintaining the links. In J. Blythe & R. M. Brown (Eds.), Maintaining the links: Language, identity and the land; proceedings of the Seventh FEL Conference, Broom, Western Australia, 22–24 September 2003 (pp. 69–77). Bath: Foundation for Endangered Languages.Google Scholar
Bradley, J., Holmes, M., Norman Marmgawi, D., Isaac Karrakayn, A., Miller Wuwarlu, J., & Ninganga, I.
(2006) Yumbulyumbulmantha Ki-Awarawu, all kinds of things from country: Yanyuwa ethnobiological classification. Brisbane: University of Queensland.Google Scholar
Bradley, J.
(2010) Singing saltwater country: Journey to the songlines of Carpentaria. Crows Nest, NSW: Allen & Unwin.Google Scholar
Brandl, M. M., & Walsh, M.
(1982) Speakers of many tongues: Toward understanding multilingualism among Aboriginal Australians. International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 361, 71–82.Google Scholar
Couzens, V. L., Eira, C., & Stebbins, T.
(Eds.) (2014) Tyama-teeyt yookapa: Interviews from the Meeting Point Project. Melbourne, Victoria: Victorian Aboriginal Corporation for Languages.Google Scholar
Dabbagh, A.
(2016) Cultural Linguistics as an investigative framework for paremiology: Comparing time in English and Persian. International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 1–19.Google Scholar
Evans, N.
(1995) A grammar of Kayardild. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2001) The last speaker is dead – long live the last speaker!. In P. Newman & M. Ratliff (Eds.), Linguistic fieldwork (pp. 250–281). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2003) An interesting couple: The semantic development of dyad morphemes. Encyclopaedia of Language and Linguistics, 471.Google Scholar
(2010) Dying words: Endangered languages and what they have to tell us. Malden, MA; Oxford: Blackwell PublishingGoogle Scholar
(2016) Born, signed and named: Naming, country and social change among the Bentinck Islanders. In J. C. Verstraete & D. Hafner (Eds.), Land and language in Cape York Peninsula and the Gulf country (pp. 305–337). Amsterdam; Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fleming, L.
(2014) Australian exceptionalism in the typology of affinal avoidance registers. Anthropological Linguistics, 56(2), 115–158. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Garde, M.
(2008) Person reference, proper names and circumspection in Bininj Kunwok conversation. In I. Mushin & B. J. Baker (Eds.), Discourse and grammar in Australian languages (pp. 203–233). Amsterdam; Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Goddard, C.
(1992) Traditional Yankunytjatjara ways of speaking: A semantic perspective. Australian Journal of Linguistics, 12(1), 93–122. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Godelier, M.
(1998) Afterword: Transformation and lines of evolution. In M. Godelier, T. R. Trautmann, & F. E. Tjon Sie Fat (Eds.), Transformations of kinship (pp. 386–413). Washington & London: Smithsonian Institution.Google Scholar
Haviland, J. B.
(1979) Guugu Yimidhirr brother-in-law language. Language in Society, 8(2–3), 365–393. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lakoff, G. & Johnson, M.
(1980) Metaphors we live by. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
McConvell, P.
(1982) Neutralisation and degrees of respect in Gurindji. In J. Heath, F. Merlan, & A. Rumsey (Eds.), Languages of kinship in Aboriginal Australia (pp. 86–106). Australia: University of Sydney.Google Scholar
Merlan, F.
(1981) Land, language and social Identity in Aboriginal Australia. Mankind, 13(2), 133–148.Google Scholar
(1982) “egocentric” and “altercentric” usage of kinship in Maŋarayi. In J. Heath, F. Merlan, & A. Rumsey (Eds.), Languages of kinship in Aboriginal Australia (pp. 125–140). Australia: University of Sydney.Google Scholar
Meakins, F., & Nordlinger, R.
(2014) A grammar of bilinarra: An Australian Aboriginal language of the Northern Territory. New York: Walter De Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Newry, D., & Palmer, K.
(2003) “whose language is it anyway?” Rights to restrict access to endangered languages: A North-East Kimberley example. In Maintaining the links: Language, identity and the land; proceedings of the Seventh FEL Conference, Broom, Western Australia 22–24 September 2003 (pp. 101–106). Bath: Foundation for Endangered Languages.Google Scholar
Rumsey, A.
(1993) Language and territoriality in Aboriginal Australia. In M. Walsh & C. Yallop (Eds.), Language and culture in Aboriginal Australia (pp. 191–206). Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press.Google Scholar
Sharifian, F.
(2001) Schema-based processing in Australian speakers of Aboriginal English. Language and Intercultural Communication, 1(2), 120–34. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2003) On cultural conceptualisations. Journal of Cognition and Culture, 3(3), 187–207. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2005) Cultural conceptualisations in English words: A study of Aboriginal children in Perth. Language and Education, 19(1), 74–88. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2008) Aboriginal English in the classroom: An asset or a liability? Language Awareness, 17(2), 131–138. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2010) Cultural conceptualisations in intercultural communication: A study of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians. Journal of Pragmatics, 42(12), 3367. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2011a) Cultural conceptualisations and language: Theoretical framework and applications. Amsterdam; Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2011b) “They felt sorry about our Sorry”: Indigenising English by Aboriginal Australians. Asian Englishes, 14(1), 70–73. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2015a) Cultural Linguistics. In F. Sharifian (Ed.), The Routledge handbook of language and culture (pp. 473–492). London, New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
(2015b) Cultural Linguistics and world Englishes. World Englishes, 34(4), 515–532. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(Ed.) (2017a) Advances in Cultural Linguistics. New York/London/Singapore: Springer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2017b) Cultural Linguistics. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sharifian, F. & Palmer, G.
(Eds.) (2007) Applied Cultural Linguistics: Implications for second language learning and intercultural communication. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sharp, J.
(2003) Karajarri historical and contemporary connections with country and kin. In J. Blythe & R. M. Brown (Eds.), Maintaining the links: Language, identity and the land; proceedings of the Seventh FEL Conference, Broom, Western Australia, 22–24 September 2003 (pp. 20–25). Bath: Foundation for Endangered Languages.Google Scholar
Smith, B. R.
(2016) Groups, country and personhood on the upper Wenlock River, Cape York Peninsula. In J. C. Verstraete & D. Hafner (Eds.), Land and language in Cape York Peninsula and the Gulf Country (pp. 139–158). Amsterdam; Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Smyth, D.
(1994) Understanding country: The importance of land and sea in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander societies. Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service.Google Scholar
Spencer, B., & Gillen, F. J.
(1904) The northern tribes of Central Australia. London: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Strehlow, T. G. H.
(1971) Songs of central Australia. Sydney: Angus and Robertson.Google Scholar
Sutton, P.
(1982) Personal power, kin classification and speech etiquette in Aboriginal Australia. In J. Heath, F. Merlan, & A. Rumsey (Eds.), Languages of kinship in Aboriginal Australia (pp. 182–22). Australia: University of Sydney.Google Scholar
Trigger, D. S.
(1987) Languages, linguistic groups and status relations at Doomadgee, an Aboriginal settlement in North-West Queensland, Australia. Oceania, 57(3), 217–238. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Walsh, M.
(1997) The land still speaks? Language and landscape in Aboriginal Australia. In D. Rose & A. Clarke (Eds.), Tracking knowledge in North Australian landscapes (pp. 105–120). Canberra; Darwin: The Australian National University.Google Scholar
Xu, Z.
(2014) A cultural linguistics approach to Asian Englishes. Asian Englishes, 16(2), 173–179. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 1 other publications

Ferguson, Jenanne & Marissa Weaselboy
2020. Indigenous sustainable relations: considering land in language and language in land. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability 43 ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 31 march 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.