ANG 3-8 Introduction à la littérature Pacifique anglophone

Narrating Encounter in the Pacific:

Mutiny on the Bounty and Visitants

CM03-04: Randolph Stow’s Visitants

Peter Brown

Bureau P06
Tel 40803853
Recap of Previous Lecture
1. Narrative
2. Narrators
3. Structure
4. Sequence
5. Settings (Islands, Landscapes, Houses)
6. Locations
7. Senses
Outline of Today’s Lecture
Language
1. Writing
2. Speech
3. English/Tok Pisin/ Kiriwinan

4. Visitants
5. Colonial/racial relationships
Language
• Stow’s writing and his use of language
• The speech described or reported in the book
• The relationships between the different languages
in use (English / Tok Pisin / Biga Kiriwina)
• The role of language in communication (and in
misunderstanding)
"Taubada?" said Naibusi.
"Ki, Naibus'!'' said Misa Makadoneli. "You have shaved your head."
"E, taubada," said Naibusi. "It is mourning." "Truly?" said Misa
Makadoneli. "Then who has died?" "Bakalu'osi, taubada.'
"Ah, my grief for him," said Misa Makadoneli, shaking his head.
"He was my friend, that old man."

‘The names, the forms of address, the phrasing, the syntax, and the
few native words here combine to shift the language away from
English’
(Hassall 1980:452)
 Language and Communication

• Words do not ensure communication, facility in languages does not ensure

acceptance, and on any level a common language does not guarantee harmony
• Problems with translation throughout
• Osana resents and seeks to undermine Cawdor’s command of local language
• Modjeska: “a novel of voices – echoes, rumours, languages understood and
misunderstood – given to us with no controlling narrator”
• Stow tries to show that language and the appearance of communication are
counterfeit
• Shared language, even between Cawdor and Dalwood, does not create a bond
• Language used to separate, to keep distance (e.g. whispering behind backs)
• Miscommunication – Browne in his report misunderstands everyone and
everything
Cawdor’s Language
• Cawdor has the greatest fluency in language and loses the most by silence
• Cawdor’s scribbled note at his end is in Biga Kiriwina and has to be translated by Osana for
Dalwood
• Failure of messages – the megaliths, whatever the intention in their original construction,
communicate nothing to living people
• Cawdor – in search for a transcendent language, “Martian”
• Cawdor might have something in common with the “star-people”; he might be considered an
arch-visitant. He too is silent: is his difficulty to communicate because language does not allow
him to overcome the barrier between himself and other humans?
• Even when you learn the language, you discover that it’s all people talk about is “sex and yams”
[109]
 Glossary
• Stow deliberately doesn’t provide a glossary, and non-English words
are only occasionally translated – mirroring the experience of visitants
such as Dalwood.