Historical sociolinguistics in colonial New Guinea: The Rhenish mission society in the Astrolabe Bay

Artikel

The Rhenish Mission Society, a German Protestant mission, was active in a small part of northern New Guinea, the Astrolabe Bay, between 1887 and 1932. Up until 1914, this region was under German colonial rule. The German dominance was also reflected in rules on language use in official contexts such as schools and administration. Missionaries were strongly affected by such rules as their most important tool in mission work was language. In addition, they were also responsible for school education as most schools in the German colonial areas in the Pacific were mission-run. Thus, mission societies had to make decisions about what languages to use, considering their own needs, their ideological convictions, and the colonial government’s requirements. These considerations were framed by the complex setting of New Guinea’s language wealth where several hundred languages were, and still are, spoken. This paper investigates a small set of original documents from the Rhenish Mission Society to trace what steps were taken and what considerations played a major role in the process of agreeing on a suitable means of communication with the people the missionaries wanted to reach, thereby touching upon topics such as language attitudes, language policies and politics, practical considerations of language learning and language spread, and colonial actions impacting local language ecologies.

Angaben zum Objekt

• Sprache: Englisch

Klassifikation und Themen

• Thema: Kolonialismus

Beteiligte, Orts- und Zeitangaben

• Ereignis: Geistige Schöpfung
• (wer): Stolberg, Doris
• (wann): 2017-04-28
• Ereignis: Veröffentlichung
• (wer): Berlin : de Gruyter

Weitere Informationen

• URN: urn:nbn:de:bsz:mh39-61052
• Letzte Aktualisierung: 14.09.2023, 08:26 MESZ