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Vol. 40, no. 4 (Winter 1998)

Contents

Abstracts

Stages in the Obsolescence of Certain Eastern Algonquian Languages

Janie Rees-Miller
Marietta College

Abstract. The fate of the Native American languages of southeastern New England and eastern Long Island provides a case study in language obsolescence through shift, demonstrating that stages of language obsolescence documented in modern times also apply to this historical case, although specific factors varied among the different communities. The Algonquian languages of southeastern Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and eastern Connecticut and Long Island are now extinct and generally not well documented, but the process of language attrition and death over time is reconstructed here through historical documents, and a profile is drawn of the moribund language community before the death of the last productive speaker of Mohegan-Pequot in 1908.

Words for Our Lord of Huanca: Discursive Strategies in a Quechua Sermon from Southern Peru

Rosaleen Howard-Malverde
University of Liverpool

Abstract. The article looks at the language of a modern-day sermon delivered by a Spanish-Quechua bilingual priest during a popular mestizo pilgrimage in southern Peru. The study assumes that the form and content of the sermon are both shaped by and revealing of the sociocultural setting within which it arises. Thus, as an example of linguistic "hybridization" between Spanish and Quechua, the question is posed whether the text is also indicative of conceptual mixing at work within the culture, particularly as expressed through religion. The analysis also focuses on the rhetorical strategies by means of which the priest seeks to influence his audience, illustrating how religious language of this genre not only seeks to instill and maintain belief, but also serves functions of social control. Language mixture, and the exercise of power by rhetorical means in the sermon, are seen to be interrelated pragmatic functions of the communicative event, whereby the persuasive art of preaching is exercised upon a largely bilingual and culturally "mestizo" congregation. In conclusion, the language of the sermon, and the communicative strategies it exemplifies, is contextualized in relation to other genres of religious discourse in the Andes.

Media, Politics, and Artful Speech: Kuna Radio Programs

Marta Lucìa De Gerdes
Universit�t Z�rich

Abstract. This article examines the ethnographic context of radio broadcasts by the Kuna of Panama and analyzes the use of language in these speech events. Kuna radio programs contain verbally artistic features and dialogic patterning characteristic of well-studied Kuna genres, especially certain formal and ritual performances. This emerging style of discourse confirms the centrality of verbal art in Kuna society and its strategic role for internal and external Kuna politics.

Lebanese Arabic Reverse Role Vocatives

Verna Robertson Rieschild
Macquarie University, Sydney

Abstract. This examination of Lebanese Arabic reverse role vocatives necessarily entails an examination of other Lebanese Arabic nonliteral vocatives, figurative and fictive, and is framed by an explanation of the field of Lebanese Arabic address terms. These nonliteral vocatives represent three types of semantic extension and reflect in different ways transient attitudes and feelings. The findings demonstrate that figurative vocatives frame the addressee in terms of a particular attribute, fictive vocatives frame both participants in terms of conventional social relationship, and reverse role vocatives reframe the speaker. The interactive significance of these vocatives is discussed in terms of the salience of interpersonal relationships and self-presentation in Lebanese Arabic interaction.

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