Darja Hoenigman – författare

Talk Goes Many Ways is a fascinating anthropological study of language use among the Awiakay, a small village society in the Sepik region of Papua New Guinea. Innovative in the way it integrates written analysis with segments of observational film, the book pairs key social themes with corresponding linguistic registers. It discusses ‘hidden talk’, the language of domestic and intra-village fights, instances of spirit-possession and glossolalia, laments for the dead and the cultural concepts in a ‘spirit-composed’ song cycle. Based on twenty years of ethnographic and linguistic fieldwork, this study also bears witness to dynamic processes including the formation of new registers and the eclipsing of others. It is the first comprehensive study of language registers for any Papuan language. The film segments that are interwoven with the text serve to immerse the viewer in Awiakay life and times, and anchor the analysis in everyday experience.