In October 2009, a dramatic event shook the existing sociolinguistic setting in Kanjimei village in East Sepik Province of Papua New Guinea. Possessed by a Christian spirit, a woman harshly ...reproached the most important village leaders. The ensuing verbal fight between ‘the spirit’ and the village prayer leader became a battle of languages: the Christian spirit spoke the community's native language, Awiakay, overpowering those in authority, who are the most frequent users of the national lingua franca Tok Pisin. As it was believed that it was the spirit of the Virgin Mary who channelled herself through the possessed woman, it was legitimate for people to discuss her words. The spirit possession thus enabled the otherwise condemned social practices: gossip and public criticism, which have the power of changing existing power relations in the village. The analysis of this event shows the complexity behind the ever‐changing linguistic ideologies.
Lamenting is a very important aspect of musical culture across Papua New Guinea, a country of more than 800 indigenous language groups and a vast variety of cultural practices. Many anthropological ...texts address the lament across the country. In Papua New Guinea, laments - which we define for our purposes as verbal expressions that are performed at the death of a person or other living being (as opposed to verbal expressions about loss more generally) - are established genres that usually have a name or category attached to them. Although lamenting is typically the domain of women, and older women in particular, who bring to the genre a great body of knowledge and considerable skill accumulated over years of mourning, both adult men and women can be composers and performers of laments, particularly in Awiakay society. Laments in Papua New Guinea can be microcosms of a culture; they contain within them much detail about the life of the deceased, and the lamenter, listing the places of their heritage, the activities they once performed and their role within the community, as well as pointing to any existing tensions in relationships between the lamenter and other members of the community, and thus aiming at socially appropriate actions that need to be taken in order to re-establish distorted relationships. Laments are thus as much a part of the present (and consequently the future) as they are of the past. Therefore, to examine a lament closely is to learn much about Papua New Guinean cultures.
Some months after being verbally abused by his wife in a domestic quarrel, an Awiakay man died. One of the rumours that circulated about his death was that it was caused by his having been so badly ...shamed. The Awiakay people of East Sepik Province in Papua New Guinea use the same verb root, munjoko‐, to express what translates into English as both ‘feeling shame’ and ‘feeling fear’. Based on video recordings and verbatim transcripts of a number of domestic and intra‐village fights, as well as subsequent discussions with all involved parties, this article examines the ways the Awiakay people use their language to shame one another and tries to explain why they are afraid of being (a)shamed.
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