Language shift among the Nyulnyul of Dampier Land

Abstract

Like many other Australian Aboriginal languages, Nyulnyul (Dampier Land, far northwest of Western Australia) is effectively dead: no full speakers survive, and it is nowhere used as a medium of everyday communication. In this paper I describe its modern sociolinguistic situation, comparing and contrasting it to the situations of nearby languages; I also attempt to piece together a historical picture of the shift away from using the language in post-contact times, and its possible causes. Three main types of factor appear to be relevant: demographic and other socio-cultural changes in the community; a generational hiatus that affected the transmission of the language; and changes in the symbolic values of the languages in the speech repertoire of the community. None of these components are unique to the Nyulnyul situation — though the details of their composition and interaction is — and they have been invoked in explanations of language shift and death elsewhere in Australia and the world.