Australian Exceptionalism in the Typology of Affinal Avoidance Registers

Resource Information

The work Australian Exceptionalism in the Typology of Affinal Avoidance Registers represents a distinct intellectual or artistic creation found in Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS). This resource is a combination of several types including: Work, Language Material, Books.

Label

Australian Exceptionalism in the Typology of Affinal Avoidance Registers

Statement of responsibility

Luke Fleming

Creator

• Fleming, Luke

Subject

• Ceremonies - Initiation
• Communications - Nonverbal - Sign language and gestures
• Language - Sociolinguistics - Avoidance language
• Cultural protocols - Mourning
• Language - Sociolinguistics - Secret and special languages
• Social organisation - Avoidance rules - Language

Language

eng

Summary

This article systematizes speech registers employed in in-law avoidance into a cross-linguistic typology. Such affinal avoidance registers, consisting of lexical repertoires substituting for “everyday” speech forms tabooed for certain speakers or in certain contexts, are shown to typically diverge from one another in terms of two parameters, their context-sensitivity and the relatively idiolectal or sociolectal character of their register repertoires. Comparative data illustrate that Aboriginal Australian “mother-in-law” speech registers, which are context-sensitive and exclusively sociolectal, are highly exceptional among affinal avoidance registers cross-linguistically. In the final section of the article I seek to understand this exceptionalism in terms of the broader context of Aboriginal Australian ethnolinguistics. [Author's Abstract]

Is part of

• Anthropological linguistics

Cataloging source

AIAS

Index

no index present

Literary form

non fiction