Narrative and Identity Construction in the Pacific Islands

Description

Comprising of more than twenty five percent of the world’s known languages, the Pacific is considered to be the most linguistically diverse region in the world. What unifies the region is the culture of storytelling, which provides a fundamental means for perpetuating cultural knowledge across generations. The volume brings together linguists, literary theorists, anthropologists and historians to explore the Pacific peoples’ constructions of identities through narrative. Chapters are organized under three themes: fine grained analysis at the storyworld level, the interactional context of narrative telling, and finally, the interconnections between narrative and cultural memory. The volume reflects the Pacific region’s rich linguistic and cultural diversity, with discussions on the narrativization patterns in Australian and New Zealand English, Palmerston Island and Pitkern-Norfl’k English, Fiji Hindi, Hawaiian, Samoan, Solomon Island Pidgin, the Australian Aboriginal languages Jaminjung and Kriol, the Micronesian languages Mortlockese and Guam Chamorros, and the Vanuatuan languages Auluan, Neverver and Sa. Table of contents Editor’s note Glossing abbreviations About the authors Introduction References Part I Inside the storyworld 1 Moving through space and (not?) time: North Australian Dreamtime Narratives 2 We’ve never seen a cyclone like this: Exploring Self-Concept and Narrator Characterisation in Aulua Part II Telling narratives, constructing identities 3 Local ecological knowledge in Mortlockese narrative: Stance, Identity, and Knowing 4 Small stories and associated identity in Neverver 5 “Sometime is lies”: Narrative and Identity in Two Mixed-Origin Island Languages Part III Narrative memories, cultures and identities 6 Constructing Kanaka Maoli identity through narrative: A Glimpse into Native Hawaiian Narratives 7 ‘Stories of long ago’ and the forces of modernity in South Pentecost 8 Australian South Sea Islanders’ narratives of belonging 9 Avatars of Fiji’s Girmit narrative 10 Samoan narratives: Sociocultural Perspectives 11 “[P]ulling tomorrow’s sky from [the] kete”: Culture-Specific Narractivw Representations of Re/membering in Contemporary Maori and First Australian Novels 12 Beyond exile: The Ramayana as a Living Narrative Among Indo-Fijians in Fiji and New Zealand 13 Embodied silent narratives of masculinities: Some Perspectives from Guam Chamorros Index