Browsing by Author "Donald E"

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    Transcribing Tonkinson's Southeast Ambrym recordings: first impressions and community experiences
    Ridge E; Donald E; Wase S
    This paper will discuss our experiences of transcribing audio recordings made by anthropologist Bob Tonkinson (1967) in Southeast Ambrym and Mele Maat between 1966 and 2002, archived with the Vanuatu Cultural Centre and Paradisec. The 75 hours of recordings include musical performances, custom celebrations, church services, community meetings, and interviews, in Vatlongos (aka. Southeast Ambrym), Bislama and occasional English, as well as Tonkinson’s anthropological observations. As part of a wider project looking at young people’s language use and attitudes, we have worked with young speakers of Vatlongos (aged 18-30) to transcribe these archival recordings, in order to make the archived materials more available to the wider community, and investigate longitudinal language change. While language use in the past is often held up as a standard that the young people of today are falling short of, it is hoped that this experience will instead position young community members as experts on historical language use, demystifying language change in Vatlongos and Vatlongos-speaking communities. This is also an opportunity for training and practice in using written Vatlongos, identified as a priority for community language goals, especially to support Vatlongos-medium education in early school years, and increased use of the Vatlongos Bible translation. Responding to Himmelmann’s (2018) call for closer attention to be paid to transcription in language documentation, this paper will discuss the rationale, methods and logistics for conducting a large transcription project across multiple locations, remotely and with inexperienced transcribers, including ethical considerations and support systems. We will focus on experiences of running transcriber training sessions, transcribers’ experiences of engaging with recordings of their ancestors, and our first impressions of possible evidence of language change and changing language use in Vatlongos-speaking communities.