postcolonial realitiesin language, culture, and cognition

outline

• Intro to Cognitive-linguistic perspectives on colonialism

• Shapshots of postcolonial cognitive realities

• Danish and/in the postcolonial perspective

Language as unconscious art

”Language is the most massive and inclusive art we know, a mountainous and anonymous work of unconscious generations”. —Edward Sapir

postcolonial blurbs

Cognitive v. Critical

Cognitive - Representational• Everyday language• Folk models• Folk theory• Experience-near• Naïve picture of the world• The insider perspective

Critical - Descriptive• Terminology• Expert models• Expert theories• Experience-distant• Sophisticated picture of the world• Outsider perspective

Exercise

Mexico and Mexicans• The Euro-Spanish folk

model of meaning

Greenland and Greenlanders• The Danish folk model of

meaning

Cultural cognition

and linguistic worldviews

Different languages, different interpretations of the world

• In natural language, meaning consists in human interpretation of the world. It is subjective, it is anthropocentric, it reflects predominant cultural concerns and culture-specific modes of social interaction as much as any objective features of the world ‘as such’. (Wierzbicka 1988:2)

Linguistic worldviews as socialization

• “As a young child is acquiring language, she or he is simultaneously developing a repertoire of social skills and a culturally specific world view. In learning how to use the language(s) of their community, children also learn to think, how to comport themselves, even how to feel in particular situations and how to express (or otherwise manage) those feelings.” (Garrett 2006:605)

Linguistic-conceptual flexibility and change

“All languages are fit to express the concepts of those who use them, and if they should chance not to be, they make them so”(Hall 1966:90).

• Anger, sadness, happiness, …• Mind, heart, soul, …• Colour, black, white, …• Costums, countries, colonies, …• Experience, evidence, sense• Politeness, fairness, honesty, … • Cannibals, slaves, missionaries, …• God, the Devil, ghosts,…

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ENGLISH (COLONIAL) WORLDVIEW

Tanna Island, Vanuatu

The Arctic

Greenland

• A classical Danish school yard riddle

– Question: • Hvad var den største ø i verden før Grønland blev

opdaget?

– Answer:• Grønland!!!

Danish in greenlandicGreenlandic DanishglossGuuti Gud

‘God’juulli jul

‘Christmas’tupak tobak

‘tobacco’eertat ærter

‘peas’grønlangkåli grønlangkål ‘stewed kale’

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GREENLAND (DISCUSSION based on JENSEN)

• Why has Greenland been largely absent from Danish postcolonial discourses?

• What is the linguistic folk view of Greenland and Greenlanders?

The story of Negerhollands

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• -

CONTEXT for Negerhollands

– 1666 Danish West Indies– 1673-1803 Atlantic slave trade:

85.000 West Africans– 1732 Herrnhut missions– 1733-34 St. John Slave Rebellion– 1916 Danish West Indies -> US

Virgin Islands– 1987 Last speaker of

Negerhollands dies

St. Thomas, 1688

• Households– 66 Dutch – 32 English– 20 Danish– 8 French– 3 German– 3 Swedish– 1 Holstein– 1 Portuguese

Fragments of a rebel song

Adjo my Mester Neeger, e-SamjaDa lob my lo lob, e-SamjaMy nöy kan hau di uit mer, e-SamjaDi Blanco no frey, e-Samja

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Lexical input in Negerhollands

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Dutch English, FrenchDanish, German, etc.

Twi? Papiamento?

New Worlds, New Concepts

The concept of caníbales in colonial Spanish

Diego Garcia, The Indian Ocean

The sagren concept in Chagossian Creole

• An older man told of how his father died of sagren in 1970 when he was prevented from returning to Diego Garcia. I asked him to define sagren. The man replied: it is not having work, lacking food, drink, education for yourself and your children, and not becoming abitye – being unable to adjust – to life in Mauritius (Singer & Hotch 2010)

Singapore

Singlish

The Singlish discourse particle lah

Her price is too high for me lah Dun worry, he can one lahGo and die lah!Drink lah!

• What’s the story of lah?– What does it mean?– How does it work?

Human social categories: Exercise

• Chaperone (Colonial English)• Conquistador (Colonial Spanish)• Raskol (Tok Pisin, Papua New Guinea)• Moko Jumbie (Trinidadian Creole English)