Soundscapes of two rural communities in Papua New Guinea

Abstract

This article presents an analysis of the soundscapes in two rural communities in northwestern Papua New Guinea where the endangered languages Srenge and Walman are spoken. These languages have no written tradition and therefore are not publicly displayed in signage. In the last few years, the discipline of linguistic landscape studies has fostered the study of aspects of the visual semiotics of public signs together with aspects of other semiotic modalities including interactional semiotics and auditory semiotics. By discussing the sounds of instruments, conch shells, place names, recitations, and messenger birds in areas where Srenge, Walman, and other languages are spoken, the aim is twofold. The first goal is to fill a gap in the study of semiotic systems that play a role in linguistic landscapes by focusing on a rural area and on auditory semiotics. The second goal is to document anthropological knowledge in an area that is extremely rich culturally and linguistically but where language attrition and cultural loss have been greatly accelerated in the last few decades.