Language and Place-knowledge on Norfolk Island

ABSTRACT

Using the place-naming practices in the small settler society of Norfolk Island, the home of Anglo-Polynesian descendants of the Bounty mutineers, we advance a linguistic argument against Saussure's claims concerning the arbitrariness of signs. When extended to place names, Saussure's claims about language in general imply place names in themselves hold no significance for how people interact with places. In contrast, we use ethnographic examples to show that people of Norfolk Island interact with the significance of the names themselves. Arguments for an integrated approach to toponymy in which place names are considered alongside other relational (cultural, economic and historical) factors that influence their use and meaning are put forward. We propose ‘toponymic ethnography’ as a useful methodology for understanding the connectedness of toponyms to people, place, and social networks.

KEYWORDS:

• Norf'k
• toponymy
• ecologically embedded language
• emplacement
• naming practices

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Michael Goddard and Deborah Van Heekeren for offering comments on an earlier version of this paper. We also thank the two anonymous reviewers of Ethnos who gave us constructive advice on how to strengthen the paper's argumentation.

Notes

1. Nash (a linguist) and Low (an anthropologist) have conducted separate periods of fieldwork on Norfolk Island since 2006. Our fieldwork has focused on creating long-term links with an insular community where social delineations based on descent and language are integral to carving up societal and cultural space. Our analysis draws on a large place name database compiled by Nash (2013) and anthropological data collected by Low during several periods of extended research on Norfolk Island.

2. In the case of the Norf'k language and how the Pitcairners adapted linguistically once they arrived on Norfolk, it has been shown that it took very little time to adjust to this new and foreign environment (Mühlhäusler 2002b, 2006, 2008).

3. We do, however, recognise that despite being subject to rigid periodisation, all of Norfolk's settlements remain interconnected.

4. Without entering into a detailed discussion about the multitude of definitions of ‘ecology’ and ‘ecological’ phenomena with respect to language and culture, in this paper we use the term ‘ecology’ and ‘ecological’ to refer specifically to the relationship between linguistic and natural environments as discussed in Pennycook (2004) and Mühlhäusler and Peace (2006).