Chinook Jargon Placenames as Points of Mutual Reference: Discourse, Intersubjectivity, and Environment Within an Intercultural Toponymic Complex

Abstract

Chinook Jargon, a pre-historic trade language in northwestern North America, became the primary means of communication between native and white speakers during European exploration and settlement in this region. At this time, many descriptive names taken from Chinook Jargon were assigned to landscape features. Some placenames persist as artifacts of this exchange; assessed in the light of historical and ethnographic sources, they illuminate the character of intercultural discourse on the northwestern frontier. Chinook Jargon placenames exhibit a restricted semantic range, providing intersubjective and utilitarian descriptions of the landscape to facilitate navigation and the location of particular resources. Descriptive vehicles, such as toponymic metaphors, are also reduced to certain “lowest common denominators” between the cultures in contact. It is thus suggested that, in intercultural contexts, speakers must divine certain linguistic and cultural points of mutual reference in order to discuss salient physical points of mutual reference in the landscape.