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Research report published In:
Language Ecology
Vol. 3:1 (2019) ► pp.120–132
Research note

The long and short of it

Vowel length, placenames, and ecolinguistics

| Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies

Placenames (toponyms) give insight into relationships involving people, place, and language. An exemplary placename derived from long-term engagement within the sensitive linguistic ecology of Norfolk Island in the South Pacific is used to detail how a fusing of linguistic analysis, words, and cultural memory is beneficial for what constitutes an ecolinguistic fieldwork methodology. Differences between the ethnographic method and an ecolinguistic fieldwork methodology are presented. This enduring and keyed-in commitment with Norfolk Island’s social and natural surroundings offers significant perceptiveness into and suggestions about how prolonged ecolinguistic work can be beneficial to language documentation projects, particular those incorporating lexical (word) and semantic (memory) description.

Keywords: cultural memory, ethnography, fieldwork, the Norfolk Island language, phonology, toponymy
Article outline
  • 1.Anomaly
  • 2.The scene, the people, the language
  • 3.Processes
  • 4.The results
  • 5.The ethnographic method versus an ecolinguistic fieldwork methodology
  • 6.Implications
  • Acknowledgements
  • Note
  • References
Published online: 12 June 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/le.17006.nas
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