TY - CHAP
T1 - Bwénaado
T2 - an ethnolexicological study of a culturally salient word in Cèmuhî (New Caledonia)
AU - Peeters, Bert
AU - Lecompte-Van Poucke, Margo
PY - 2020
Y1 - 2020
N2 - Ever since people have come together in communities, they have felt the need to regulate and control their relationships with members of other groups. One way of building and maintaining a stable society is by sharing wealth. New Caledonia has developed its own unique system of exchange, referred to as la coutume by its French-speaking inhabitants and by the Melanesian part of the population, which also uses indigenous terms that have relatively high cultural visibility and can thus be considered culturally salient. This paper focuses on one such word, bwénaado, and aims to demonstrate that it reflects an important cultural value in Cèmuhî, an Austronesian language spoken by approximately 3300 people dispersed along the north-east coast and in the valleys of New Caledonia’s rugged interior. To the best of our knowledge, no detailed treatment of bwénaado exists. Our semantic analysis therefore breaks new ground. Three different meanings of the word (roughly, ‘large-scale customary celebration’, ‘customary ceremony’ and ‘customary gift’) are distinguished. It will be argued that, even though the Kanak social exchange system (in which all three meanings are highly relevant) seems to be linked to a universal principle of reciprocity, it is highly culture-specific. To ensure utmost respect for this cultural specificity and to break out of the prison walls of the English language, Natural Semantic Metalanguage will be used to frame the description, and applied ethnolinguistics will form the backdrop against which the description is carried out.
AB - Ever since people have come together in communities, they have felt the need to regulate and control their relationships with members of other groups. One way of building and maintaining a stable society is by sharing wealth. New Caledonia has developed its own unique system of exchange, referred to as la coutume by its French-speaking inhabitants and by the Melanesian part of the population, which also uses indigenous terms that have relatively high cultural visibility and can thus be considered culturally salient. This paper focuses on one such word, bwénaado, and aims to demonstrate that it reflects an important cultural value in Cèmuhî, an Austronesian language spoken by approximately 3300 people dispersed along the north-east coast and in the valleys of New Caledonia’s rugged interior. To the best of our knowledge, no detailed treatment of bwénaado exists. Our semantic analysis therefore breaks new ground. Three different meanings of the word (roughly, ‘large-scale customary celebration’, ‘customary ceremony’ and ‘customary gift’) are distinguished. It will be argued that, even though the Kanak social exchange system (in which all three meanings are highly relevant) seems to be linked to a universal principle of reciprocity, it is highly culture-specific. To ensure utmost respect for this cultural specificity and to break out of the prison walls of the English language, Natural Semantic Metalanguage will be used to frame the description, and applied ethnolinguistics will form the backdrop against which the description is carried out.
KW - bwénaado
KW - Cèmuhî
KW - reciprocity
KW - applied ethnolinguistics
KW - ehnolexicology
KW - Natural Semantic Metalanguage
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85085416241&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1007/978-981-32-9975-7_7
DO - 10.1007/978-981-32-9975-7_7
M3 - Chapter
SN - 9789813299740
T3 - Studies in Ethnopragmatics, Cultural Semantics, and Intercultural Communication
SP - 123
EP - 148
BT - Studies in ethnopragmatics, cultural semantics, and intercultural communication
A2 - Peeters, Bert
A2 - Mullan, Kerry
A2 - Sadow, Lauren
PB - Springer, Springer Nature
CY - Singapore
ER -