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MEMOIRE M2 Language and Identity, the Case of Indigenous Australians

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MEMOIRE M2 Language and Identity, the Case of Indigenous Australians Lise Grimand Language and Identity: the case of indigenous australians ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- GRIMAND Lise. Language and Identity: the case of indigenous australians, sous la direction de Manuel Jobert. - Lyon : Université Jean Moulin (Lyon 3), 2018. Mémoire soutenu le 01/06/2018. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Document diffusé sous le contrat Creative Commons « Paternité – pas d’utilisation commerciale - pas de modification » : vous êtes libre de le reproduire, de le distribuer et de le communiquer au public à condition d’en mentionner le nom de l’auteur et de ne pas le modifier, le transformer, l’adapter ni l’utiliser à des fins commerciales. MASTER 2 D’ETUDES ANGLOPHONES LANGUAGE AND IDENTITY THE CASE OF INDIGENOUS AUSTRALIANS Lise Grimand 3130846 30 Avril 2018 Directeur de Recherche et Jury Manuel Jobert, professeur des universités à Lyon III Jean Moulin Jury externe Anne Przewozny-Desriaux, maître de conférences à l’université de Toulouse Jean Jaurès 2 Cover illustration: Grimand, L. (2018). Lyon, France. No reproduction without permission. TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgments ................................................................................................................. 6 Introduction ........................................................................................................................... 7 Part I: The Place of Traditional and New Aboriginal Language: An Introduction ...................11 1 Traditional Languages and their Endangered Status .....................................................12 1.1 The Diversity of Traditional Languages ..................................................................12 1.2 The Endangered Status of Traditional Aboriginal Languages .................................15 2 The Controversy of New Aboriginal Languages .............................................................18 2.1 The Birth of New Aboriginal Languages .................................................................18 2.1.1 Pidgins ............................................................................................................19 2.1.2 Varieties of Creoles .........................................................................................20 2.1.3 Mixed Languages ............................................................................................22 2.1.4 Aboriginal English ...........................................................................................23 2.2 The Controversial Status of New Aboriginal Languages .........................................24 3 Indigenous Languages, A Marker of Aboriginality ..........................................................29 3.1 Land and Language ...............................................................................................29 3.1.1 Multilingualism, Land, and Dreamtime .............................................................29 3.1.2 Environment within Grammar ..........................................................................32 3.1.3 Place Naming Controversy ..............................................................................33 3.2 Community, Culture and Language ........................................................................34 3.3 Language, Sense of Identity and Wellbeing ...........................................................39 Part II: Maintaining a Place within wider Australian Society ..................................... 42 4 Language Maintenance and Revitalisation ....................................................................43 4.1 Writing Oral Languages ..........................................................................................43 4.2 A Place for Indigenous Languages in Bilingual Education ......................................47 4.3 Self-Ruled Language Projects: Strengthening the Place of Indigenous Languages within Communities ...........................................................................................................50 4.4 Language Maintenance and Language Shift ..........................................................52 5 Aboriginal English: The Dialect of English Used by Indigenous Australians to Maintain, Develop and Strengthen a Place within wider Australian Society .........................................54 5.1 Linguistic Differences between Standard Australian English and Aboriginal English 55 5.2 The Ownership of English ......................................................................................60 5.3 Aboriginality Retained in Aboriginal English ...........................................................65 Part III: Non-Indigenous–Indigenous Interactions: Power, Postcolonial Discourses and Languages at Stake .............................................................................................................71 6 Power Relationships: Intercommunication between Aboriginal English and Australian English Speakers .................................................................................................................72 6.1 Pragmatics, A Way of Understanding Non-Indigenous–Indigenous Interactions .....72 6.2 Miscommunication and Their Implications ..............................................................74 7 Bicultural Competence and Discourse of Reconciliation: Moving Away from Assimilation in the Educational Sphere ....................................................................................................77 7.1 From Assimilation to Reconciliation ........................................................................77 7.2 From One-Way Education to Two-Way Education .................................................78 7.3 Bicultural Competence and Intercultural Knowledge ..............................................79 7.4 Partnerships in Bicultural Education .......................................................................81 8 Indigenous Languages and Education: Colonial Discourse Die Hard ............................84 8.1 Controversies over Partnerships and Regime of Truth ...........................................84 8.2 Representation of Indigenous Languages and Regime of Truth .............................85 8.3 Deficit Discourse ....................................................................................................86 Conclusion ...........................................................................................................................89 Appendix ..............................................................................................................................91 References ...........................................................................................................................92 Books and Book Chapters ................................................................................................92 Scholarly Articles ..............................................................................................................96 Newspaper Articles, Reports and Other Sources ..............................................................99 Sitography ...................................................................................................................... 100 Audiovisual Media ........................................................................................................... 101 Index .................................................................................................................................. 102 5 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank my research director, Manuel Jobert, for his supervision, his suggestions, and his trust. I address a special thank you to Dr Sara Ciesielski and her colleague Jill Vaughan, professors at the University of Melbourne, who gave me helpful advice and who guided me at the beginning of my research. I also thank my tutor Grace McMahon who helped me in understanding how the Indigenous voice is represented in Australian literature. And finally I would like to address a special thank you to my dear friend Melanie Weiss for her help in revising parts of this dissertation. Nonetheless, any remaining mistakes are my entire responsibility. INTRODUCTION To speak means to be in a position to use a certain syntax, to grasp the morphology of this or that language, but it means above all to assume a culture, to support the weight of a civilization. (Fanon, 1952, p. 17) In Black Skin, White Masks , Fanon makes it clear: language and identity are intertwined. Language does not exist in a void. All language systems are anchored in a much broader concept. When a people face colonisation, both their identity and language are being challenged. Derrida introduces the notion of disorder of identity (1998, p. 14) to express one of the blurred areas that is formed in the mind of the speaker who has been colonised. The effects that colonisation has on the colonised in terms of identity and language are numerous and were the subject of study of several prestigious linguists. Fanon (1952), Derrida (1996) and Saïd (1991), to name a few, tackle the subject of the oppressed language, or the language of the ‘Other’. Taking this issue to Australia, where no official language has been adopted, the subject of the study will be the Indigenous people who were met with colonisation in the late 18 th century and the question will be: does the place
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