The Language of Dispute Managment in the Kingdom of Tonga

叙述语言可以从多种角度进行研究：作为一种形式客体，作为一种认知能力，作为一种文化产物，作为一种社会互动的媒介。这里提出的项目属于后一类。作为一项被称为传播民族志的研究，这里提出的研究是基于这样一个前提：对形式和形式-意义关系的解释，语言的实际用法是在语言所处的社会用途中发现的。该研究侧重于语言使用的一个类别，即争议管理，这已经受到了交流民族志学家的相当大的关注，因此是一个不断发展的理论框架的主题，本研究将与之相关。这项研究将提供的新维度是对一种语言和一种文化中的语言用法的考察，这种语言和文化在显著方面与西方文化有着根本的不同，而此前关于这一主题的许多研究都发生在西方文化中。研究地点将是汤加，一个西南太平洋的岛国，拥有波利尼西亚语言和文化。汤加有西方和土著混合的机构来正式解决争端，包括法院、镇民会议和教堂。汤加语中既有疑问句、引语等通用模式，也有地方特有模式，如根据对话者和被谈话者的社会地位而有不同的言语水平，这些模式在纠纷处理过程中以复杂的互动方式发挥着明确的修辞效果。这个项目的重点将是理解、描述和解释这些语言模式在社会环境中的使用。首席研究员是一位领先的人类学语言学家，在她的职业生涯中，她对传播的民族志做出了许多重要的贡献。在过去的几年里，她一直把注意力集中在语言在法律环境中的使用上。因此，这里提出的项目以一种自然的方式建立在她正在进行的研究之上。

Abstract Narrative Language can be studied from a variety of perspectives: as a formal object, as a cognitive capacity, as a cultural artifact, as a medium of social interaction. The project proposed here falls into the latter category. As a study in what has been called the ethnography of communication, the research proposed here is based on the premise that the expla- nation of the forms, and form-meaning relations, that language takes on in actual usage is to be found in the social uses to which the language is being put. The study focuses on one category of language use, dispute management, which has received considerable attention already from ethnographers of communication, and therefore is the topic of a growing theoretical framework to which this study will be related. The new dimension which the proposed study will pro- vide is examination of linguistic usage in a language and a culture fundamentally different in salient respects from the western cultures in which much of the previous research on this topic has taken place. The locale of the research will be Tonga, an island nation in the southwest Pacific with a Poly- nesian language and culture. Tonga has a mixture of western and indigenous institutions for formal resolution of disputes, including the court, the fono or town meeting, and the church. The Tongan language includes universal patterns such as inter- rogatives and quotations, and also locally specific patterns such as distinct speech levels depending on the social status of the interlocutors and the person being talked about, and these are used to definite rhetorical effect in complex inter- active ways in the dispute management process. The focus of the project will be to understand, describe, and explain these linguistic patterns in terms of the social settings in which they are used. The Principal Investigator is a leading anthropological linguist who has made a number of important contributions throughout her career to the ethnography of communication. For the past few years she has been focusing her attention on the uses of language in legal settings. The project proposed here thus builds in a natural way on her ongoing research.