Canadian Academy Discover, Publish, Thrive
I propose examining the ethical aspects of returning data to the research site in the Solomon Islands, focusing on the creation of the Pijin Dictionary in 2002. I explore the gap between collected linguistic data and the transformed output presented by linguists, emphasizing the influence of dictionary-making techniques and the linguistic ideologies of collaborators. Despite the dictionary being 20 years old, it remains unused by Solomon Islanders, who, instead of learning Pijin, are developing their own language spellings through social media, distinct from both Pijin and English. This raises ethical concerns about the transformation process.
Anthropologists adhere to ethical codes similar to sacred commandments, ensuring honesty, protection of informants’ interests, and safeguarding intellectual property. Notably absent is a directive to return data, reflecting the challenges involved. Sensitivity, community divisions, and lack of infrastructure may hinder data return. Some anthropologists perceive their data as inaccessible or not worthy. In certain societies, linguists create dictionaries to organize field data or respond to local needs, preserving cultural heritage, and making data available for collective benefit. This paper explores the philosophical steps in creating Pijin cultural trilingual dictionaries, emphasizing language ideologies, politics, and ethics’ interplay. While language documentation often addresses endangered languages, this case involves a non-endangered lingua franca in the Solomon Islands, presenting unique challenges in a society without national support. The article discusses the interplay of ideologies and ethics in dictionary making, introduces Solomon Islands Pijin, and analyzes how ideology and ethics influence dictionary construction and data return. It concludes with reflections on the dictionary’s role in a Pijin-speaking society that predominantly uses English.
Ideologies and knowledge:
In line with numerous linguistic anthropologists, my primary data collection involves various forms of oral language, such as narratives, interviews, life histories, stories, and conversations. The ephemeral nature of oral language poses challenges in data gathering, as spoken words vanish once uttered. Scholars attempt to capture speech through writing, tape recordings, and digital recorders, creating corpora stored in archives. Linguistic examples find their way into publications, conference materials, dictionaries, and grammars, aiming to freeze language in time. However, the fate of recorded data varies based on research objectives, community needs, and data characteristics. Dictionaries, while seemingly neutral, carry ideological implications by standardizing and detaching words from their cultural context. Such compilations can raise ethical concerns, as words hold varying grammatical, cultural, and social power. In the context of endangered languages, linguists navigate tensions surrounding language preservation, acknowledging societal complexities. Notably, in my work on the Pijin dictionary, the community showed limited emotional attachment to Pijin, viewing it as a practical tool rather than an object of cultural identification.
A brief note about Pijin:
The Solomon Islands, a South Pacific nation with a population of approximately 680,000, consists of urban wage earners (20%) and rural residents engaging in subsistence horticulture and fishing, supplemented by cash crops like coconuts, cocoa, and rice. With 74 recorded languages (Tryon and Hackman, 1983), Pijin, a Melanesian pidgin introduced in the late 19th century, serves as the lingua franca, spreading widely and becoming a “killer language.” Despite its oral prevalence, Pijin faces challenges in written communication due to English-medium schooling, lack of government support, and perceived linguistic and cultural inferiority. Pijin, however, is not endangered, with a growing number of speakers and ongoing changes, yet it contends with the coexistence and prestige of English, the official language of the Solomon Islands.
The making of the dictionary:
In the realm of lexicography, researchers face the formidable task of creating dictionaries that encapsulate their accumulated knowledge, not only about words but also about culture. While young researchers may embark on dictionary-making, true competency requires years of immersion in a language’s cultural contexts. Various techniques, detailed in language documentation journals, aid in finding and understanding words, yet nuances often elude those unfamiliar with the cultural intricacies. Compiling a dictionary raises inevitable questions about what to include, such as sociolinguistic notations and essential senses of words. The pivotal question, however, revolves around the dictionary’s purpose.
Drawing from personal experiences in the Solomon Islands, the dynamic evolution of the Pijin language became evident, with rapid changes necessitating the recording of cultural variations. The decision to create a dictionary stemmed from a desire to preserve the cultural richness conveyed through Pijin. Unlike some compilers who omit obscure terms, the author’s approach was driven by a romantic notion of collecting words before they vanished, viewing them as carriers of knowledge and social systems.
The tension between professional duties to list everything and ethical considerations arises, especially when dealing with taboo or secret words. The entry of a word into a dictionary confers legitimacy, transforming it into an official part of the language. However, this act risks creating a false sense of neutrality and turns the dictionary into a reference tool with authoritative power. The impact of including words in a dictionary on language ideologies and societal perceptions is a complex dynamic that merits further exploration.
In compiling a dictionary, it is essential to consider the target audience, traditionally including the local population, colleagues, and the global community. The author’s primary focus was on the Solomon Islanders, aiming to showcase the richness of their language, Pijin. Despite the population’s familiarity with the language, the dictionary aimed to present a comprehensive view. The tool also served the purpose of aiding people in checking words, understanding meanings, and learning to spell and write Pijin. The trilingual nature of the dictionary, including Pijin, English, and French, catered to foreigners learning Pijin and Solomon Islanders learning English and French. Additionally, the dictionary evolved into an ethnographic representation, capturing both ancestral and emerging urban cultures, reflecting the author’s belief in the centrality of culture in language. Despite challenges, the ethnographic descriptions, including illustrations, became a beloved feature among the Solomon Islanders.
The making of the dictionary and its structure:
Sources for words:
The dictionary I created serves as a comprehensive collection of Pijin words and their usage, encompassing diverse cultural contexts associated with Pijin. It includes a wide range of words, both old and new, from rural and urban settings, and is not limited by gender or age distinctions. To compile this resource, I utilized various sources such as 200 tape-recorded interviews, systematic word elicitation based on semantic fields, radio programs, lyrics of songs and poetry, natural conversations, recorded stories and myths, and contributions from friends and colleagues. These spoken words were supplemented by written sources, including existing Pijin dictionaries and publications predating mine.
Words and examples:
The author highlights the necessity of going beyond mere word lists in a dictionary and emphasizes the interconnectedness of language and grammar. To provide a comprehensive view, parts of speech revealing grammar and additional information, such as scientific names for fauna or flora, were incorporated. The goal was to imbue the dictionary with an encyclopedic dimension. Moreover, the author emphasizes the importance of not limiting translations to Pijin words and includes examples from natural speech, drawn primarily from 200 taped interviews in the Solomon Islands, aiming to showcase usage and offer ethnographic insights whenever possible.
Ethnography:
Words exist within sentences and are inherently tied to culture, constantly evolving within its context. This ethnographic dictionary focuses on Pijin, capturing cultural practices sustained by the language. It transforms into a mini-encyclopedia by incorporating substantial information on various aspects such as lifestyles, behavior, customs, fauna, flora, geography, and history, drawing from a diverse range of sources listed in the bibliography.
Etymology:
Languages carry a historical narrative that reflects the evolution of their speakers. In the case of Pijin, a creole language, its vocabulary is derived from two main sources: English, contributing 80%, and Melanesian languages, particularly Eastern Oceanic, contributing 20%. While Melanesian languages offer terms linked to cultural elements and local flora/fauna, some words have a complex trajectory, entering Pijin through languages that borrowed them earlier. Recording this linguistic history is crucial, especially as young Pijin speakers, lacking formal education in the language’s history and grammar, may propose inaccurate folk etymologies. This underscores the importance of providing accurate etymological information.
Pijin or English?
The challenge of distinguishing between English and Pijin posed a significant difficulty, as highlighted in the dictionary’s introduction. Similar challenges were faced by Lichtenberk in compiling the Toqabaqita dictionary. Both Pijin and Toqabaqita undergo rapid lexical changes and coexist with other languages. English, while occupying a different sociolinguistic niche, heavily influences the usage of Toqabaqita and Pijin. Lexicographers grapple with questions about including loanwords and deciding if they fit phonological patterns. In the case of the Pijin dictionary, the lexical proximity to English and the evolving variations in urban Pijin complicate decisions on what to include. The approach taken involved considering widespread usage among diverse individuals as a criterion for inclusion, reflecting the evolving nature of language.
Variants:
Languages, including Pijin, are cultural entities with regional accents reflecting speakers’ diverse origins within the Solomon Islands. Pijin, spoken by people from different parts, incorporates phonological nuances from various mother tongues, allowing identification of speakers’ cultural backgrounds. To faithfully represent regional and social variations in Pijin, the author recorded diverse pronunciations, such as the replacement of ‘p’ with ‘f’ in Kwaio and the reverse in Tolo. While acknowledging the lack of formal standardization in Pijin, the author employed a standardized spelling for consistency, drawing from urban varieties that have gained social prominence. The dictionary aims to encompass prevalent phonetic rules, with the main entry providing comprehensive information on each word, reflecting ethical and pragmatic considerations in linguistic representation.
Description vs prescription:
The original plan for the dictionary was to be descriptive rather than prescriptive, focusing on meanings, translations, and examples while avoiding sociolinguistic registers. However, this proved unrealistic as Pijin became socially marked, necessitating the recognition of various social registers for words. Following Terry Crowley’s model for Bislama, the dictionary now indicates usage sparingly (e.g., archaic, slang, urban Pijin, offensive) to provide additional information without being overly normative.
Language contact:
In the Solomon Islands, language dynamics reflect a hierarchical structure, with English holding the highest prestige and Pijin positioned at the bottom, facing competition from French and English. Despite negative stereotypes associated with Pijin, including labels like “broken English” and “a jargon,” efforts have been made to elevate its status. The trilingual nature of the Pijin dictionary, incorporating Pijin, English, and French, addresses the requests of Solomon Islanders and individuals from French-speaking regions in the Pacific. This inclusion not only fulfills linguistic demands but also aligns with an ideological goal of placing Pijin on equal footing with the esteemed lingua francas of the Pacific—French and English.
Conclusion:
In this article, I initially addressed ethical concerns surrounding the return of data to research communities, emphasizing the challenges in determining what data to return, the appropriate medium for return, and the fate of the data post-return. The ethical dilemma was accentuated by linguistic ideologies of both researchers and their collaborators during data collection and return. Using the example of creating a trilingual Pijin dictionary, I illustrated the ethical tensions between ideologies and ethical considerations throughout the dictionary-making process. Unfortunately, the dictionary faces limited usage due to its high price and unavailability in the Solomon Islands. Despite efforts to promote accessibility through online platforms, the dictionary lacks relevance and utility for Solomon Islanders, especially as Pijin primarily thrives in oral communication and informal texting, rendering the written dictionary obsolete. Despite these challenges, the article reflects the author’s ethical commitment to sharing data, and future technological advancements may facilitate improved accessibility. The concluding remarks acknowledge the evolving nature of Pijin and recognize the dictionary’s value as a reference tool for tracking linguistic changes, despite its limitations in keeping up with the language’s rapid evolution over nearly two decades.
Source:
Jourdan, C. (2020). Restituting Language: Ethics, Ideology and the Making of a Dictionary. Journal de la Société des Océanistes, 151, 285-296. https://doi.org/10.4000/jso.11791