LINGUIST List 23.4553
Wed Oct 31 2012
Diss: Socioling/ Tok Pisin: Walczynski: 'A living language. Selected aspects of Tok Pisin...'
Editor for this issue: Lili Xia
<lxialinguistlist.org>
Date: 29-Oct-2012
From: Marcin Walczynski <marcinwalus
o2.pl>
Subject: A living language. Selected aspects of Tok Pisin in the press (on the basis of ''Wantok'' newspaper)
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Institution: Wroclaw University
Program: Linguistics
Dissertation Status: Completed
Degree Date: 2009
Author: Marcin Walczynski
Dissertation Title: A living language. Selected aspects of Tok Pisin in the press (on the basis of "Wantok" newspaper)
Dissertation URL:
http://www.pwsz.nysa.pl/oficyna/a_living_language.php
Linguistic Field(s):
Sociolinguistics
Subject Language(s):
Tok Pisin (tpi)
Dissertation Director:
Dissertation Abstract:
The book strives to fulfil five main aims and objectives:1. It is an attempt to demonstrate that pidgins and creoles are worthy ofserious linguistic study as in the past they used to be criticised as well asridiculed and if some mentions of them were made, they were usually in theforms of humorous references and anecdotes told by the speakers ofEuropean languages who, by doing so, wanted to show that pidgin speakerswere barbarous and primitive people, incapable of any reasonable thought.
2. The study aims at showing the role of Tok Pisin in one of the mostmultilingual countries of the world - in Papua New Guinea. This is done bydiscussing Tok Pisin internal history - i.e. the linguistic growth - and externalhistory - i.e. the socio-cultural factors underlying the emergence anddevelopment of Neomelanesian Pidgin English. The role of this pidgin in theregion of Melanesia is discussed against the background of the linguisticsituation of the area, where so many different languages are used.
3. Owing to the fact that Wantok - the newspaper which the research parts ofthis book are based on - is claimed to be written in the standard form of TokPisin, the next goal is to assess whether Wantok is really an example of aprinted medium with standard Tok Pisin in use.
4. Tok Pisin is used in so many areas of social life that it is definitely moreexpanded than other pidgins. This has been confirmed by another analysiscarried out in Chapter 6 which has shown that Neomelanesian Pidgin Englishlexicon and grammar are adequately developed to realise the majority oflanguage functions (i.e. emotive, referential, phatic, conative). However, onthe basis of the corpus, it can be concluded that the poetic and metalinguisticfunctions have not yet been fully developed.
5. The fifth aim of this book is to answer the question of why certain types ofWantok writing - or more precisely, advertisements, public notices andannouncements - are published in English. Wantok is sometimes referred toas a Tok Pisin-only newspaper but it is not really so. The coexistence of TokPisin and English in this newspaper can be called textual diglossia.
Page Updated: 31-Oct-2012