Niko Besnier

Information Withholding as a Manipulative and Collusive Strategy in Nukulaelae Gossip.

This article examines the organization and function of information-withholding sequences, a conversational strategy used by participants in gossip interactions on Nukulaelae, a Polynesian atoll of the Central Pacific. A withholding sequence is a three-turn sequence whereby a piece of information is withheld in the first turn, an other-repair is initiated in the second turn, and the withheld material is provided in the third turn. Information-withholding sequences thus involve moves that in other contexts would be construed as face-threatening. They have a dual function: they provide speakers an opportunity to manipulate their audiences into becoming coproducers of the gossip, and they reinforce the status of their initiator as controller of the floor. Withholding sequences illustrate how ambiguity and repairs can be exploited to meet the communicative demands of particular interactional contexts. They also illustrate how gossip may be framed simultaneously as group-cohesive behavior and self-serving behavior. (Conversation analysis, ethnography of speaking, gossip, conversational repair, Polynesia, Nukulaelae Tuvaluan)

Gossip and the Everyday Production of Politics

Although gossip is disapproved of across the worlds societies, it is a prominent feature of sociality, whose role in the construction of society and culture cannot be overestimated. In particular, gossip is central to the enactment of politics: through it people transform difference into inequality and enact or challenge power structures. Based on the authors intimate ethnographic knowledge of Nukulaelae Atoll, Tuvalu, this work uses an analysis of gossip as political action to develop a holistic understanding of a number of disparate themes, including conflict, power, agency, morality, emotion, locality, belief, and gender. It brings together two methodological traditions - the microscopic analysis of unelicited interaction and the macroscopic interpretation of social practice - that are rarely wedded successfully.Drawing on a broad range of theoretical resources, Niko Besnier approaches gossip from several angles. A detailed analysis of how Nukulaelaes people structure their gossip interactions demonstrates that this structure reflects and contributes to the atolls political ideology, which wavers between a staunch egalitarianism and a need for hierarchy. His discussion then turns to narratives of specific events in which gossip played an important role in either enacting egalitarianism or reinforcing inequality. Embedding gossip in a broad range of communicative practices enables Besnier to develop a nuanced analysis of how gossip operates, demonstrating how it allows some to gain power while others suffer because of it.

The Linguistic Relationships of Spoken and Written Nukulaelae Registers

This study is an investigation of the structural relationships between spoken and written Nukulaelae Tuvaluan, a Polynesian language spoken in a restrictedly literate society in the Central Pacific. The results of a factor analysis of the frequency of co-occurrence of 42 linguistic features across a computerized corpus of naturalistic spoken and written texts show that three dimensions must be identified to account for variation between Nukulaelae registers: attitudinal vs. authoritative discourse; informational vs. interactional focus; and rhetorical manipulation vs. structural complexity. Contrary to claims advanced for English and tacitly for speaking and writing in general, spoken Tuvaluan is not necessarily more involved, less complex, and more context-dependent than written Tuvaluan. These characteristics are a function of the communicative norms at play in each register. The structural relationships of spoken and written language must be explained in terms of the social context of orality and literacy in different literacy traditions, rather than the cognitive demands of language production and comprehension in the spoken and written modes.*

Literacy and feelings: The encoding of affect in Nukulaelae letters

The primäry purpose of literacy production on Nukulaelae Atoll (Central Pacific) is to write letters. Nukulaelae letters are sent to relatives on neighboring atolls, and serve a variety offunctions: monitoring economic reciprocity; informing kin of family events; and admonishing younger people. Permeating every aspect of letters is a heavy emphasis on the overt expression of affect, of a nature notfound in any other arena of Nukulaelae social life. This paper describes the way in which affect is encoded in the text of these letters, and shows how the topics addressed in letters are emically defined äs affectively charged. A content and historical-ethnographic analysis of letter-writing on the atoll indicates that letters have been defined äs cathartic events from the very introduction of literacy. It is suggested that the metaphorical affiliation of letter-writing with parting is in large pari responsihle for letters having become qffect-display context. This case study challenged traditional views that Dritten communication is universally less affective than spoken communication. Tapauta, Sept. 13, 1897 To Mrs. David, the lady,— My love to you! alas my mother! The thought weeps when I think of you, together with the others, because of your kindness to me. Alas for my love! Dear, oh dear, my heart is füll of love, but it is difficult because I cannot speak; but I thought I would try and send this small piece of paper to make known to you my love. Alas my mother! my love is very great, and it is difficult and hard because we shall be so soon parted. Grief continues to grow in my heart when I think of the days we were together in Funafuti. Alas! I do not forget them and you all. I feel I want to be still with you. It is hard that we have been so soon parted on shore. May you return with blessing to your home. This love of mine has nothing with which to make itself known, but I have striven to make appear before you that which was hidden, namely, my love to you. Alas, my parents, love is difficult. 01655-4888/89/0009-0069

Sluts and superwomen: The politics of gender liminality in urban Tonga*

2.00 Text 9 (l) (1989), pp. 69-91

Involvement in linguistic practice : An ethnographic appraisal*

In urban Tonga, certain men identify themselves and are identified by others as taking on some attributes of womanhood on a regular basis. This process, however, yields a heterogeneous category of persons, who are variously positioned in the socio‐economic structure and moral order. At one extreme, some transgendered men are highly productive individuals in the market economy, while, at the other extreme, others are principally preoccupied by their sexual conquests amongst non‐transgendered men, which brands them as unproductive consumers because of the economics of casual sex relations. The stereotypes of mainstream society focus more readily on the second pattern than on the first. Stereotypical representations also align transgendered men with modernity and the West, and this association places the target of these stereotypes in a potentially vulnerable position, both symbolically and otherwise. This analysis explores the ethnographic diversity of transgendered identities within a single society, the c...

An autosegmental approach to metathesis in Rotuman

Abstract This paper is a critical examination of ‘involvement’ as an analytic category in sociolinguistics and discourse analysis. The discussion first identifies a variety of conceptual problems associated with the nature and locus of involvement. Then a number of ethnographic studies focusing on the relationship between language use, emotionally, society, and culture are described, and the usefulness of involvement as a descriptive and theoretical tool is evaluated. This paper shows that involvement, a notion which assumes Western views of interaction, emotionality, and personhood, does not adequately capture the essence of the interactional dynamics described in these ethnographic reports. An alternative agenda is outlined, in which the relationship between emotionality and linguistic practices is solidly grounded in a critical examination of the cultural and social dynamics in which it is embedded.

Brexit Referendum: first reactions from anthropology

Abstract Rotuman phonology is characterized by a complex system of rules involving the morphologically-conditioned metathesis of word-final vowels with the immediately preceding consonant, as well as umlauting, vowel shortening, and diphthongization, which apply disjunctively to the output of the metathesis rule. This paper shows that Autosegmental Phonoly provides a simpler account of these rules than previous descriptions. Positing Rotuman to have separate vowel and consonant tiers, this analysis shows that Rotuman phonology has a rule of V-truncation at the level of the CV skeleton, which triggers the leftward reassociation of the orphaned feature matrix to the preceding V-slot. The resulting double associations are resolved with the help of a series of disjunctive rules that refer to the featural conflicts between the two vocalic segments associated to the same V-slot. This account is superior to other accounts because of its simplicity and of the fact that it captures the anticipatory nature of what is traditionally described as metathesis.

The social production of abjection. Desire and silencing among transgender Tongans

My immediate reaction to the results of the British Referendum on leaving or remaining in the EU was to remember Alexei Yurchak’s book, Everything was forever, until it was no more (Yurchak 2006). In the book, Yurchak describes the feeling of many people in Russia when the Soviet Union broke up: it came as a complete shock because they thought it would never happen; but once it had happened, it was not really a surprise at all. The United Kingdom has had a tempestuous relationship with the European Economic Community (EEC) and then the European Union (EU), ever since it joined in 1973. The discussions against this huge European border experiment (one of the most radical border experiments I can think of) have been unceasing, and came from left and right (and of course from anarchists), from the centre and the peripheries, from populists and internationalists. Those in favour of whatever ‘Europe’ might mean were always much less newsworthy. Anthropologists were among many who lined up to critique everything about the politics, economics, ideology, structure and especially the bureaucracy of the EU (and some of them have contributed to this Forum). Yet once the referendum result was published, I realised that there is also much material in my field notes that shows that people did not really mean that the EU should cease to exist. Like the constant complaints against the habits of one’s closest kin, roiling against the EU is serious, but it does not really mean disavowal or divorce. Until, apparently, it does. This Forum represents the immediate reactions of 24 colleagues in anthropology about ‘Brexit’. The commentaries were all written within five days of the news coming out. Apart from having to trim the texts for space reasons, they have been left as they are, documents of immediate, often raw, reactions. In that sense, these texts are as much witness statements as they are observations; as much an echo chamber of all the endless discussion that came in the aftermath of the result as it is considered observation; as much an emotional reaction as it is analysis. I did ask all contributors to think about how to engage their knowledge of anthropology in addressing this issue. As their responses describe, there are many hugely serious and frankly alarming political, economic and ideological challenges facing both Europe and the world at the moment that have become entangled with Brexit. So this is not the time to sit back and say nothing. Others have been speaking out too, of course, including Felix Stein’s

Sports Mobilities Across Borders: Postcolonial Perspectives

This paper contributes to the recent efflorescence of detailed analyses of transgender categories of various types around the world including Polynesian societies. However my analysis departs from well-trodden territory in that it explores the link between on the one hand forbidden emotional and sexual attachments and on the other hand structures of marginality exclusion and abjection with which few scholars who have explored comparable phenomena have grappled directly. Yet the social structures and dynamics that engender abjection are the subject of notable anxiety for my leiti informants. Indeed early in my fieldwork I was struck by the frequency with which they expressed concerns about their relationship to their sisters (that is female siblings and cousins) a relationship that is consequential for all Tongan males but one of the main sources of moral abjection and social marginalisation for transgender males. My surprise was compounded by the ethnographic silence about these concerns in the literature on Western Polynesian transgenderism. Anthropologists who have written on transgenderism in Polynesian societies have provided useful insights into how transgender persons represent and enact various aspects of masculinity or femininity but have glossed over transgender subjectivity and the role of kinship relations love relations and sexual and other desires in the formation of this subjectivity. Further afield we know little about transgender persons negotiations of the social tensions between kinship and desire in any society. (excerpt)