that munanga linguist

If a government body wants to tell a community of 1000 people to boil water before drinking it because of health concerns, and pretty much everyone in the community speaks the same Language Other Than English (LOTE), why would you issue the alert only in bureaucratic/dense/formal English? The community being alerted here is chock full of Kriol speakers. If you want to communicate with them, doing it only in formal English is only going to get you so far. While NT Health and Power and Water are serving the community well in terms of their warning, the language it is communicated in is lacking. It's kinda like a cinema screening a movie onto the curtains, instead of projecting it onto a flat screen. To be fair, translation services for Indigenous languages are really lacking in the NT. There is no government agency to go to. Getting a quick turn around on translations is probably near-impossible. (See also last year's Kriol signage debacle I discussed here ). But governmen...

Part three of my examples linking sociolinguistics to popular culture kinda follows up on Part 1 which showed (via drag queens) how no two speakers are identical . (Part 2 skipped over to communities of practice in Mean Girls ). I have to confess, this episode is less about my own creativity and more about finding a pretty perfect video on YouTube that did the job of linking sociolinguistics to the real world for me. Worth sharing all the same... Key concept : Variability in language (which exists everywhere) is caused by geographic and social factors. Concept in more detail: The subfield of sociolinguistics makes no bones about the fact that language varies everywhere, all the time. No two individuals speak exactly the same way and no individual speaks the same way all the time either. Many sociolinguists are concerned with not just describing this ubiquitous variability but figuring out the causes of variation. For a long time, where someone is from (i.e. geography) was in...

"...Council is part of the Katherine community..." "... we have a social responsibility to contribute to the growth of the town..." Positive rhetoric like the above is par for the course for any Australian local government. The above quotes come from Roper Gulf Regional Council's CEO Michael Berto. Great messages? Definitely. One major problem though: the town they refer to - Katherine - isn't part of the council's area. Roper Gulf Regional Council covers a massive, sparsely populated area reaching from east of Katherine right out to the Gulf of Carpentaria coast. It came into being 10 years ago when the NT Government oversaw the establishment of 'Super Shires' - amalgamations that subsumed a stack of community government councils which were often local government areas with only a few hundred constituents. The creation of 11 'Super Shires' a decade ago was an unpopular move . Poorly consulted and hastily done, some say it ca...

As mentioned in my last post , in my lecturing this semester I've been trying to exemplify key concepts in sociolinguistics via popular culture. I have a stock of these snippets and hope to find time to share a few more. As I said previously, it's an effort to engage students and adhere to the philosophy that "when all is said and done, we study sociolinguistics because it is fun" (Meyerhoff 2011: 4) In part two, we jump to this week's lecture where we looked at various of definitions of 'speech community' and then how concepts of social networks and community of practice have built upon notions of speech community. Key concept : Social networks, unlike macro-social categories such as class, group people according to interactions (and can then tell us more about linguistic variation) Concept in more detail:  Some sociolinguistic studies have shown how important social networks are in explaining language variation and change (or lack of change). Accor...

I am currently teaching sociolinguistics. Most lectures, I have found ways to illustrate key points and concepts with short online videos - usually stuff from TV shows, YouTube and other things. It's an effort to co-opt things I already enjoy and am familiar with to make sociolinguistics and lectures fun. After all, "when all is said and done, we study sociolinguistics because it is fun" (Meyerhoff 2011: 4) So, in the name of fun, I'd like to share the videos and corresponding sociolinguistic concepts I've been using in my lectures. Others might enjoy and learn from them too. Here's part one. Key concept : Sociolinguistics is about individuals. No two speakers have the same language. Concept in more detail: Societies consist of individuals, none of whom are exactly the same. We shouldn't forget this when we study sociolinguistics. In Hudson's introductory textbook, he says: "The individual speaker is important in sociolinguistics in much ...

I recently spent a week in Ngukurr. It's the middle of the wet season and road access goes only to Roper Bar Store . After that point, two swollen rivers block the way. I flew into Ngukurr on the mail plane, which was awesome. But how to get out? The Bodhi Bus of course! Bodhi Bus provides a twice-weekly bus service between Ngukurr and Katherine, in the wet season as well as the dry. In the wet season, you pay a bit extra and get barged up the Roper River for about an hour and at the remote boat ramp, you are dutifully collected and then arrive safe'n'sound in Katherine via an air-conditioned bus. Bodhi Bus' wet season drop-offs/pick-ups at Four Mile, connecting with the barge trip up/down the Roper River. I promise you, this blogpost is in no way sponsored by Bodhi Bus. I am just a fan. Not only does it service Ngukurr and the communities between there and Katherine, it goes all over the Katherine region - Bulman (incl Beswick), Lajamanu (incl Kalkaring...

I'm knee-deep in transcribing Kriol interviews that I did last year for this Kriol Proujek , being ably assisted by some Summer Research Scholars from UQ and, before Christmas, some Kriol-speaking language workers from Ngukurr. (See here for a neat little story about their work). Pretty regularly, while transcribing, I smile, laugh and really enjoy some of the chat I hear. The lovely examples are endless really. The recordings are just wonderful (in my humble opinion). I won't go into a lot of detail (or share any examples that might be a bit too personal or identifiable), but here's one that made me giggle this afternoon, when I transcribed the part of the interview where I asked two young guys if they use a regionalised term for 'scavenge': gubarl : Q: Yu sabi det 'gubarl'? A: Yuwai! Ai oldei gubarlgubarl grawun faibsen burru eberriwe la grawun! Q: Do you know (the word) gubarl? A: Yeah! I'm always 'gubarl'-ing the ground (for) five ...

I managed to have a proper holiday and went to Perth for a few days, switching off entirely from work and linguistics which was much needed. Flying back to Darwin though, I had the most pleasurable easing back into the world of languages when I happened across the doco Language Matters on my little back-of-the-chair Qantas Inflight entertainment screen. Look who's on my Qantas flight! Nick Evans in Language Matters I was aware of Language Matters but I'd also kinda forgotten about it. Filmed in 2013 , it was made for PBS (Public TV) in America and I don't actually know anyone who has seen it. The only reason I knew of it was because it features my at-the-time PhD supervisor Nick Evans and I remember him talking about it (see also this mention in an old  ANU newsletter ). So what a pleasant surprise to be reminded of its existence by Qantas and then be able to spend the next two hours watching it while zooming over Australia. It turns out, Language Matters is wond...