Abstract
This chapter argues that language ideologies and practices mediate consequences of cultural contact over time. Focusing on the Pacific, from Rapa Nui to West Papua, it highlights complex histories and variation of cultural encounters, crossings and re-crossings; cultural and political conditions of linguistic research across different colonial and postcolonial phases; the linguistic diversity of Pacific Island societies, and the social centrality of talk and other verbal practices such as literacy, in them. The chapter emphasizes variation in linguistic and cultural change, debates about modernization, missionization, and language endangerment and revitalization, and suggests strategies for understanding the dynamics of such changes by identifying key agents, institutional sites, and linguistic forms, within a wider historical and global conjuncture.
Original language | English (US) |
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Title of host publication | Consequences of Contact |
Subtitle of host publication | Language Ideologies and Sociocultural Transformations in Pacific Societies |
Publisher | Oxford University Press |
ISBN (Electronic) | 9780199869398 |
ISBN (Print) | 9780195324983 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Jan 1 2010 |
Keywords
- Colonial
- Cultural contact
- Cultural processes
- Pacific societies
- Postcolonial
- Rapa nui
- West papua
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- General Arts and Humanities