“We talk in saltwater words”: Dimensionalisation of dialectal variation in multilingual Arnhem Land

• Published in: Language & communication Vol. 62; pp. 119 - 132
• Main Author: Vaughan, Jill
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford Elsevier Ltd 01-09-2018; Pergamon Press Inc
• Subjects: Burarra; Culture; Ecolinguistics; Ecology; Ethnography; Human communication; Ideology; Indigenous Australia; Language diversity; Language variation; Multilingualism; Regional dialects; Saline water; Sociolects; Terminology; Australia; Language variation; Burarra; Multilingualism; Indigenous Australia
• ISSN: 0271-5309; 1873-3395
• DOI: 10.1016/j.langcom.2017.10.002

In Arnhem Land, northern Australia, speakers of the Burarra language live and communicate within a highly multilingual and multilectal language ecology. This paper explores how regional ideologies of socio-cultural distinctiveness and unity are projected into the linguistic space at the level of the language (within Maningrida's language ecology), as well as at the level of the lect (in terms of dialects and sociolects within the Burarra language). Drawing from current ethnography, naturalistic interactional and elicited language data, and other existing materials, the paper considers how speakers reproduce and evaluate language-internal variation within a linguistically diverse region. These processes are contextualised within the dynamics of long-term ‘egalitarian’ multilingualism which continue to shape contemporary practices and contemporary means of social meaning-making.
•Variation in Burarra does not cohere systematically into clearly identifiable lects.•Perceived Burarra ‘dialects’ are nevertheless central to social identity.•Performance of important social categories recruits linguistic variation via fractal recursivity.•Formerly localised variation is now recruited to index a range of supra-local categories.•In contexts of small-scale multilingualism, egalitarian ‘multi-lectalism’ may also be observed.