Language Endangerment: Disappearing metaphors and shifting conceptualizations

215 Pages·2015·2.16 MB·

by  Elisabeth Piirainen, Ari Sherris

Language Endangerment
Cognitive Linguistic Studies
in Cultural Contexts (CLSCC)
issn 1879-8047
This book series aims at publishing high-quality research on the relationship between
language, culture, and cognition from the theoretical perspective of Cognitive
Linguistics. It especially welcomes studies that treat language as an integral part
of culture and cognition, that enhance the understanding of culture and cognition
through systematic analysis of language – qualitative and/or quantitative, synchronic
and/or diachronic – and that demonstrate how language as a subsystem of culture
transformatively interacts with cognition and how cognition at a cultural level is
manifested in language.
For an overview of all books published in this series, please see
http://benjamins.com/catalog/clscc
Editors
Ning Yu and Farzad Sharifian
Pennsylvania State University / Monash University
Editorial Board
Antonio Barcelona Charles Forceville Zouhair Maalej
Universidad de Córdoba University of Amsterdam King Saud University
Erich A. Berendt Roslyn M. Frank Fiona MacArthur
Assumption University, University of Iowa Universidad de Extremadura
Bangkok
Raymond W. Gibbs, Jr. Todd Oakley
Alan Cienki University of California, Santa Case Western Reserve
VU University Amsterdam Cruz University
& Moscow State Linguistic
Masako K. Hiraga Chris Sinha
University
Rikkyo University Hunan University
Alice Deignan
Zoltán Kövecses Gerard J. Steen
University of Leeds
Eötvös Loránd University University Amsterdam
Vyvyan Evans
Graham Low Hans-Georg Wolf
Bangor University
University of York Potsdam University
Volume 7
Language Endangerment
Disappearing metaphors and shifting conceptualizations
Edited by Elisabeth Piirainen and Ari Sherris
Language Endangerment
Disappearing metaphors
and shifting conceptualizations
Edited by
Elisabeth Piirainen
Ari Sherris
John Benjamins Publishing Company
Amsterdam / Philadelphia
TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of
8
the American National Standard for Information Sciences – Permanence
of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48-1984.
doi 10.1075/clscc.7
Cataloging-in-Publication Data available from Library of Congress:
lccn 2015023211 (print) / 2015029733 (e-book)
isbn 978 90 272 0410 3 (Hb)
isbn 978 90 272 6809 9 (e-book)
© 2015 – John Benjamins B.V.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any
other means, without written permission from the publisher.
John Benjamins Publishing Co. · https://benjamins.com
Table of contents
chapter 1
Introduction 1
Elisabeth Piirainen and Ari Sherris
chapter 2
Metaphors we die by: Change and vitality in Māori 15
Jeanette King
chapter 3
Papua New Guinean sweet talk: Metaphors from the domain of taste 37
Phil King
chapter 4
Towards a taxonomy of metaphors of a curtailed language:
The case of Waray 65
John Ivan V. Palagar
chapter 5
Hot eyes, white stomach: Emotions and character qualities
in Safaliba metaphor 91
Paul Schaefer
chapter 6
Literacy and language instruction: Flathead Salish metaphor
and a task-based pedagogy for its revitalization 111
Ari Sherris, Tachini Pete and Erin Haynes
chapter 7
Idioms and proverbs in Bete language and culture:
A metaphorical analysis of their aetiology, meaning and usage 137
Jean-Philippe Zouogbo
vi Language Endangerment
chapter 8
Receding idioms in West Danish (Jutlandic) 155
Torben Arboe
chapter 9
A nation without a language is a nation without heart:
On vanishing Tatar idioms 175
Guzel Gizatova
Index of conceptual metaphors/metonymies 201
Subject index 203
chapter 1
Introduction
Elisabeth Piirainen and Ari Sherris
Steinfurt, Germany / Texas A&M University-Kingsville, USA
Languages with decreasing numbers of speakers, or decreasing domains in
which a constant or expanding number of speakers employ their languages,
have become a major focus of research. This often means developing the tradi-
tional architectures of phonetics, phonology, morphology, and syntax through
sketches, dictionaries and reference grammars. In contrast, this volume
focuses on non-literal language, including conceptual metaphors and metony-
mies, idioms and other figurative units, which are not always in the forefront
of published efforts. At the progressive edge of this research are endeavors to
document, interpret, and disseminate knowledge of a dying language, often for
maintenance and revitalization efforts. This research is often multidisciplinary
in nature for it is initiated by scholars from linguistics, education, public policy,
and sociology, as well as by scholars from hybrid epistemological spaces such
as applied linguistics and sociolinguistics (Spolsky, 2011). The popular press
(Edwards, 2011; Roberts, 2010; Tobin, 2011), scholarly journals (e.g., http://
www.elpublishing.org/), conferences (e.g., the Stabilization of Indigenous
Languages Symposium), and Internet websites (e.g., http://ethnologue.com)
reference or specialize in language endangerment with burgeoning interest.
Introductory texts on languages of the world place language endangerment
front and center, as well as advocacy for language revitalization, targeting broad
cross-sections of university students in an effort to inform and increase public
discussion (e.g., Tetel Andresen & Carter, 2015).
More importantly, efforts to arrest the trajectory of extinction are underway
on every continent with tacit support from UNESCO, language ecologists, and
an expanding civic engagement as the topic moves forward in public conversa-
tions, and to a limited extent in political discourse. Once again, however, figura-
tive language is underserved by these interests and has been virtually excluded
from language endangerment research until recently. Nevertheless, in many
places turnaround actionable plans, micro- and macro-political agendas, and
activism maintain and revitalize languages through language policy initiatives
doi 10.1075/clscc.7.001int
© 2015 John Benjamins Publishing Company
2 Elisabeth Piirainen and Ari Sherris
and bilingual and immersion schooling via acquisition planning (Combs &
Penfield, 2012). In contexts where intergenerational transmission has shifted to a
dominant language, renewed efforts at adult education under the banner of her-
itage language with themes that might initiate, increase, or encourage intergen-
erational transmission begin to appear instead of, or in addition to, acquisition
planning. Indeed, the representation of endangerment and revitalization should
not be underestimated if it is to become part of public discourse and an actionable
issue for the institutions of civil society.
In the last 500 years, approximately 50% of the known languages have become
extinct (Romaine, 2013). Today, estimates of the number of living languages hover
close to 7000 (Austin & Sallabank, 2011; Lewis, Simons, & Fennig, 2015; Romaine,
2010; Sallabank, 2012). Predictions of their sustainability are bleak. Most meas-
urements of language vitality, no matter the metric, indicate that approximately
90% will vanish within 100 or so years (Krauss, 1992; Harrison, 2007; Nettle &
Romaine, 2000; UNESCO, 2001 cited in Romaine, 2013). When a language van-
ishes knowledge of flora and fauna, culture, and language are lost. Inexorable
forces, both natural and manmade, take a heavy toll.
The majority of the world’s languages is spoken by the world’s indigenous
peoples who on every continent are themselves endangered ethnic communities.
Indeed, their languages and cultures, for the most part, have been marginalized as
they as peoples, have been minoritized by the policies of nation-states (Romaine,
2009). Direct and indirect social, political, and cultural forces of hegemony, equa-
tions of bigotry, neoliberal commodifications of culture, repression, displacement,
and linguicide have played out and continue to play out in restrained and unre-
strained ways that are visible and hidden (Phillipson & Skutnabb-Kangas, 2013;
Sherris, Pete, & Haynes, 2014).
Romaine (2013) puts the broader issues this way, “Communities can thrive
and transmit their languages only when their members have a decent environ-
ment to live in and a sustainable economic system” (p. 774). However, as long
as neoliberalism is popular (Harvey, 2014) and patrimonial capitalism threatens
democratic mechanism for social justice worldwide (Piketty, 2014), it is dubious
whether a sustainable economic system will take root in many of the indigenous
communities worldwide. This is as true of the examples in this book from uber-
neoliberal contexts such as Europe, North America, and New Zealand, as it is
from sub-Saharan Africa, and island nation-states such as Papua New Guinea and
the Philippine Archipelago, which are also represented (Wurm, 2007). When an
indigenous community cannot thrive, their metaphors cannot either.
At the same time, cosmopolitan perspectives (Canagarajah, S., 2013; Todd,
2009), as well as complex systems perspectives (Larsen-Freeman & Cameron,
2008), often take pains to articulate the facts on the ground as no less cultural
Chapter 1. Introduction 3
artifacts to be treasured: all, it is argued, sociolinguistic patterns which are urban,
rural, and cyber-spatial and that have been characterized as examples of superdi-
versity (Blommaert & Rampton, 2011). Linguistic repertoires are cited as pluralist
discourse arrangements that would include an expanding core of receptive phono-
logical skills across varieties of lingua-franca, regionally dominant languages and
languages from countervailing forces, albeit often smaller and endangered. The
global flows of people, goods, services, knowledge, and information increasingly
no longer just the preoccupations of elite, shrink the circle of nation-state power,
so the cosmopolitans argue, partially relocating to supranational levels (Wright,
2012). However these forces are as neoliberal as those of nation-states, their idea-
tional progenitors. Many argue, therein lies the danger for indigenous communi-
ties, peoples, and their languages and cultures. This is no less true of metaphors
and figurative units of endangered languages, yet they are often forgotten in the
race to construct orthographies, dictionaries, and sketch grammars.
Metaphors in flux
The disappearance of endangered metaphor and idiom is the focus of this volume.
It comprises part of a broader process of minority language loss that includes
the displacement of knowledge, ways of knowing, and habits of mind (Harrison,
2007). The non-literal language, “everyday poetry of mind” in Gibbs’ (1994)
words, of which metaphor and idiom are subsets, as it were, is put into abeyance
by contact in so many new ways today that futures become an uncertainty for
many ways of speaking and interacting throughout the world. The superdiverse
world we increasingly inhabit, where remote areas are often reached through
wireless Internet means on handheld smart devices is an advancing real-politic
(Blommaert & Rampton, 2011). In some place a smart device such as a wireless
phone is one-to-a-village, which extends the pathways languages are in contact,
however incrementally at first, rarely discussed in the literature of endangerment.
Knowledge of how this affects conceptual metaphor is a new frontier.
At the same time, and perhaps of a cosmopolitan turn, these same handheld
smart devices become ways of re-investing in the heritage language, or the disap-
pearing forms of a dialect or variety, by activists with websites and educationists
creating interactive dictionaries and language learning modules. Therefore, to
only work with a concept of language endangerment that follows a strict metric,
would not capture the shifts and loss as poignantly and fail somehow to project
the breadth of change today.
Indeed, this book explores Waray, and how some of its “everyday poetry”
is shifting despite, or because of, its high status as a language used for wider