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Part of
Cultural Keywords in Discourse
Edited by Carsten Levisen and Sophia Waters
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 277] 2017
► pp. 83–106

Chapter 4
Social keywords in postcolonial Melanesian discourse

Kastom ‘traditional culture’ and tumbuna ‘ancestors’

| Roskilde University
| University of Wollongong

In postcolonial Melanesia, cultural discourses are increasingly organised around creole words, i.e. keywords of Bislama (Vanuatu) and Tok Pisin (Papua New Guinea). These words constitute (or represent) important emerging ethnolinguistic worldviews, which are partly borne out of the colonial era, and partly out of postcolonial ethno-rhetoric. 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 keywords in postcolonial discourse form a fertile ground for understanding how speakers in Melanesia conceptualise the past as a vital part of the present.

Keywords: Bislama semantics, Tok Pisin semantics, ethnolinguistics, postcolonial discourse, sociality, kastom , tumbuna
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Bislama and Tok Pisin
  • 3.Social semantics and the discourse of sociality
  • 4. Kastom in discourse
  • 5.The semantics of kastom
    • 5.1 “Local” kastom
    • 5.2The kastom of “heathenism”
    • 5.3 Kastom as a cultural value
  • 6.The Tok Pisin discourse of pasin bilong tumbuna ‘the ways of the ancestors’
  • 7.Discussion and directions
  • 8.Concluding remarks
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 19 October 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.277.04lev
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