Alune incantations

Continuity or discontinuity in verbal art

Bibliographic Data

ID3667690
AuthorsMargaret J Florey (La Trobe University, corresponding author)
Year1998
Volume2
Issue2
Pages205-231
Publication date1998-06-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Sociolinguistics (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1360-6441 • E-ISSN: 1467-9841
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/1467-9481.00041
OpenAlexW2084030585
LanguageEN
Citations received2

Throughout this century some Alune-speaking villages in the eastern Indonesian province of Central Maluku have experienced rapid sociopolitical and ecological change. Concomitant with these changes, language shift from Alune to the regional Malay variety, Ambonese Malay, is also occurring. This paper draws on a corpus of 45 incantations collected in two Alune villages which have been dissimilarly affected by the processes of change. The utilisation of a limited corpus of modern incantations in one village indicates a substratum of specialised indigenous sociocultural knowledge which has persisted in that site despite language shift and sociopolitical change. Comparison between traditional and contemporary forms of this genre of verbal art reveals structural differences and the extensive use of lexical items from languages other than Alune. Despite linguistic discontinuity, the endurance of incantations in this contemporary Christian society provides some continuity with pre-Christian Alune practices and may be viewed as a response to external events which are driving social, cultural and linguistic change

Incantation · Indigenous · Indonesian · Language shift · Linguistics · Malay · Sociocultural evolution · Sociology · Variety (cybernetics · Anthropology · History · Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies · Linguistic Variation and Morphology · Multilingual Education and Policy · Ecology

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