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I have nothing to hide: The language of Ilongot oratory

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 December 2008

Michelle Rosaldo
Michelle Rosaldo
Affiliation:
Stanford University
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Abstract

The Ilongots of the northern Philippines traditionally value a speech style, ‘crooked language,’ rich in art, wit, and indirection, in certain situations. Purun ‘oratory’, both as event and speech style, is one of these. A brideprice meeting is recounted and examined in detail. Unique features of oratory, in contrast to everyday verbal interaction, depend on its public character, as a scheduled event with large audience (rather than special setting, personnel or ritual), and as having the purpose of achieving explicit, formal understanding and agreement. The special features of oratory include body-motion; category labels for self-reference; degree of use of deferential, self-deprecating, and qualifying phrases and terms; degree of use of metalinguistic terms generally; and rhythms. Degree of use of these features may vary in the course of the event. Acculturation has brought about conflict with the preference of newly educated and missionized Ilongots for ‘straight speech’. In effect, the indirect ‘crooked’ speech style is linked with indigenous egalitarian norms, while the public use of ‘straight speech’ is linked with externally imposed authoritarian relationships. (Speech styles and social structure; public performance everyday interaction; discourse devices; metalinguistic concepts and devices; conflict of speech norms; social change; Northern Luzon, Philippines: Malayo-Polynesian.)

Type
Articles: On the Ethnography of Oratory
Information
Language in Society , Volume 2 , Issue 2 , October 1973 , pp. 193 - 223
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1973

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