New Lives for Old by Margaret Mead

Author:Margaret Mead
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2016-03-22T00:00:00+00:00

11

the New Way

The New Way* and the words which are used to describe it are inextricably woven together. The men and many of the women of New Peri speak two languages, Manus and Neo-Melanesian, while the young children still principally speak Manus. In describing the present social system it is easier for the people to speak in Neo-Melanesian than in Manus; in some cases one finds that there are no Manus words for what they want to say. The new words that have been added in the last fifty years, either for foreign things or for changes in their social system, are almost all Neo-Melanesian. As the grammar and syntax of the two languages are the same, people slip from one to the other without being conscious of doing so. In situations where people feel they are being watched, they may either parade their Neo-Melanesian or refuse to speak it at all—this is frequently so with women or young men in “court,” in which all the officials will speak Neo-Melanesian and the shy defendants and witnesses will reply in Manus. Degree of mixture of Manus and Neo-Melanesian is a subject of jeering comments between villages, especially by men who have been away at work for a long time and are able to make fine distinctions between Neo-Melanesian as the European speaks it and Neo-Melanesian as spoken among themselves.

So, coming to work in Manus today, one would learn Neo-Melanesian first, as one would learn standard English first to start work in a remote Yorkshire village in England or in a mountain village in Kentucky, or learn Florentine Italian to begin work in an Italian village, realizing that one would also have to learn what we call “dialect” before one could listen in on the children’s play, or collect cooking recipes from the old women, or comprehend a quarrel. Whether or not such dialects are felt to be part of the standard language is in large part a matter of definition. In the case of Manus and Neo-Melanesian, grammar and syntax are so similar that the shift is little more than a shift of vocabulary, and there are a great many Neo-Melanesian words and phrases in use in contemporary Manus.

To the question: “To what do you belong?” a Peri man answers, in 1953:

“I belong to Peri village, South Coast Manus, and I am inside the New Way of Thinking and I wait Council.”

If the investigator then asks for a definition of Peri village:

“This is the village that once lived in the old camp over there. Many people from Patusi village also live here. We live now on a site where one of the ancestors of Peri people once owned land and planted coconut palms on the island of Shallalou. However, most of the land on Shallalou belongs to the company, Messrs. Edgell and Whiteley.”

A reflective man may also add:

“They bought it a long time ago and have long since got enough return for their money. When I build a canoe, I expect

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