{"id":427,"date":"2020-06-18T05:38:09","date_gmt":"2020-06-17T20:08:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lod.cdu.edu.au\/?page_id=427"},"modified":"2020-10-16T17:37:56","modified_gmt":"2020-10-16T08:07:56","slug":"nori","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/lod.cdu.edu.au\/index.php\/nori\/","title":{"rendered":"Languageness"},"content":{"rendered":"

Making and doing \u2018languageness\u2019 in the Yol\u014bu Studies Centre<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

This page talks a little bit about doing multiplicity in the Yol\u014bu Studies program established in 1994 at Charles Darwin University and collaboratively nurtured both by Yol\u014bu Aboriginal language authorities and non-Yol\u014bu academics. Teaching and learning Yol\u014bu languages<\/a>, Yol\u014bu language resource<\/a> and Yol\u014bu research<\/a> are on-going interest in its history. However, language doesn’t always seem to be a matter of fact<\/em> in-place where different knowers and learners of the same language go on and work together.<\/span><\/p>\n

By Yasunori Hayashi<\/p>\n

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Texts don\u2019t hold <\/em>their<\/em> meaning, <\/em>they need to be pronounced. <\/em>S<\/em>ay the word, <\/em>then <\/em>the meaning comes out.<\/em>1<\/sup><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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Djiliwirri, the homeland of Waymamba Gaykama\u014bu<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

In post-colonial Australia, the commitment to \u2018re-imagine\u2019 the quality of being serious about Aboriginal landscape is mandatory in wildlife management, organisational policy, and natural philosophy of science, but not only; it could extend to Aboriginal languages.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Waymamba

Dr Waymamba Gaykama\u014bu<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cI [Waymamba Gaykama\u014bu] have been sharing the knowledge of my homeland, Djiliwirri for more than 25 years with students and researchers at uni [Charles Darwin University]. I bring my knowledge from Djiliwirri to uni in Darwin [the land of Larrakia people]. Darwin is ‘dhul\u014bu\u014bu’ \u2013 not belonging to me because I am not the traditional owner of the land or the language.<\/em> Being so far away from my land, I need to take the responsibility on behalf of my clan group and teach students and researchers the reality of how we [Yol\u014bu people of east Arnhemland] live, sleep, walk, run, and dream; I am sharing everything that I am allowed to. Bringing my knowledge to uni was not easy and often confusing task: what sort of pathway I could find, how I should teach students and researchers, where, what, and how they learn from me, see what I mean? It was challenging, but wasn’t impossible.\u201d<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

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Translated title: Gupapuy\u014bu words and stories with inside meaning<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

G<\/em>upapuy\u014bu Go\u1e0fu-Mayali\u2019mirri Dh\u00e4ruk ga Dh\u00e4wu <\/em>Mala<\/em><\/a>2<\/sup> is a careful and ongoing work of meaning-making with Waymamba Gaykama\u014bu as a Yol\u014bu Aboriginal elder and Yasunori Hayashi, a non-Indigenous coordinator of Yol\u014bu Studies Centre (YSC) at Charles Darwin University (CDU). Accompanied with narratives and illustrations, this language resource comprises of more than two hundred idioms in particular body-part related in Waymamba\u2019s Gupapuy\u014bu Dhuwala, one of Yol\u014bu Aboriginal languages from East Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory, Australia.<\/span><\/p>\n

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” When I (Yasunori Hayashi), as a long-term Yol\u014bu language enthusiast and a supervisee of my Yol\u014bu auntie, Waymamba, first read Go\u1e0fu-mayali\u2019mirri mala dh\u00e4ruk<\/a><\/em>3 <\/sup>many years ago, I was profoundly startled by the unfamiliar meaning-making of Yol\u014bu body parts in language use. The direct translation of compound words, such as m\u00e4rr-dharrwa (emotional state \u2013 many, which I presumed meant indecisive) and \u014burru-\u1e3bupthun (nose \u2013 bathe, wash one’s face) does not convey the appropriate meaning. I recognised that my logical understanding of Yol\u014bu language, built on grammatical learning and analysis, needed to pause\u2014I wondered how I could better commit myself to the reality of the Yol\u014bu body and its related compound words, or idioms. <\/span><\/em><\/span>This aesthetic and deeply culturally oriented language practice has been luring idiom researchers and lovers (including me) from around the world particularly interested in body-part related idioms.”<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

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A Gupapuy\u014bu initiate wearing the knowledge of basket and clan design from Djiliwirri<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

Two video files available to watch at the bottom of this page guide you to witness the landscape of Djiliwirri where she and her Gupapuy\u014bu ancestors and emerging generation come from. Waymamba describes her cultural institutions: language, songline, knowledge basket, kin, and clan designs were once invested in Djiliwirri by an ancestral being while its landscape was emerging. In present, the place of Djiliwirri is still becoming together with Waymamba and her kin; the owners and caretakers of the institutional knowledge.<\/span><\/p>\n

Doing Waymamba’s languageness as and in Djiliwirri, and her languageness at CDU is not an easy task due to the inseparabiity amidst the cultural institutions ancestrally invested to the land and ongoingly enacted with the knowing of kin, clan designs, songlines and so forth. To a great extent, knowing ways of doing Yol\u014bu language: the one becoming when it is uttered, sung and keened in the place of Djiliwirri and the other becoming when typed and printed at CDU Uniprint are different.<\/span><\/p>\n

As such, Yol\u014bu language work in YSC at CDU requires doing languageness as an object together. In doing so, working with care and responsibility between authorities and learners of the same language, but with different languageness becomes very important. It is about exploring with respect and seriousness what practices strengthen ways of living and doing language together.<\/span><\/p>\n

In this display here, talking about ‘languageness’ as an analytic concept, allows different practices of the language breathe and go on together. Languageness holding different ways of doing the same language becomes a reality in particular place by particular attendees, but also disappear from its practice at another engagement. The engagement with the languageness is not a stable<\/em> fact, rather persistent to be mobile<\/em> and just durable<\/em> enough to relate the different ways of knowing the language together. Such languageness could be contesting, but just hanging together while keeping a productive tension between Waymamba (and indeed many other Yol\u014bu language authorities) and me (and many other enthusiastic Yol\u014bu language learners).<\/span><\/p>\n

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  1. Tommy Riyakurray Munyarryun reiterated when observing some Yol\u014bu language work at YSC (pers. comm. 2019).<\/span><\/li>\n
  2. Gaykama\u014bu, W., & Hayashi, Y. (forthcoming). Gupapuy\u014bu Go\u1e0fu-Mayali’mirri Dh\u00e4ruk ga Dh\u00e4wu Mala<\/em>. CDU Uniprint.<\/span><\/li>\n
  3. M\u00e4tjarra, & Rrikili (1982). Go\u1e0fu-mayali’mirri mala dh\u00e4ruk<\/em>. Milingimbi, N.T. Milingimbi Literature Production Centre<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

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    https:\/\/lod.cdu.edu.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/YN_4Smaking_doing_2020.mp4<\/a><\/video><\/div>\n

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    Yasunori Hayashi is a coordinator of Yol\u014bu Studies Centre<\/a> at Charles Darwin University. His research interest involves collaborative work with Yol\u014bu knowledge authorities in East Arnhemland in the area of Yol\u014bu governance and decision making process, which he believes, embedded in Yol\u014bu world making-and-knowing, including the use of Yol\u014bu languages.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Making and doing \u2018languageness\u2019 in the Yol\u014bu Studies Centre This page talks a little bit about doing multiplicity in the Yol\u014bu Studies program established in 1994 at Charles Darwin University and collaboratively nurtured both by Yol\u014bu Aboriginal language authorities and non-Yol\u014bu academics. Teaching and learning Yol\u014bu languages, Yol\u014bu language resource and Yol\u014bu research are on-going…
    Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-427","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lod.cdu.edu.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/427","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lod.cdu.edu.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lod.cdu.edu.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lod.cdu.edu.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lod.cdu.edu.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=427"}],"version-history":[{"count":92,"href":"https:\/\/lod.cdu.edu.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/427\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1359,"href":"https:\/\/lod.cdu.edu.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/427\/revisions\/1359"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lod.cdu.edu.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}