Many societies in Polynesia and Oceania more broadly are thoroughly and rigidly hierarchical. The language used by the people in those societies encodes and recreates this social hierarchy in a variety of interesting ways, thus providing fertile ground for the exploration of language (and other) ideologies in linguistic (and other) cultural practices. Indeed, some well-known works on the interactions between language and culture in Oceania have made major contributions to sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology generally, for example, Duranti (Reference Duranti1994) on Western Samoa and Keating (Reference Keating1998) on Pohnpeian. The rigid social hierarchy of the Polynesian nation of Tonga is also reflected in language use and other cultural practices, and Svenja Völkel's new monograph makes a fine contribution to this literature by focusing on the specific issues of social structure, space and place, possession and gift exchange, and the “language of respect” in Tonga.
Völkel addresses these topics from the complementary perspectives of linguistic and cultural anthropology on the one hand, and a more descriptive linguistic approach on the other. The book is thus divided into two major sections, the first addressing anthropological aspects of the subject matter (social structure, land and the symbolic meaning of space, and possession and gift exchange), while the second focuses more on linguistic aspects (spatial descriptions, so-called A- and O-possession, and the Tongan language of respect).
In Part 1, Ch. 2 introduces the important social structures that form the foundation for understanding the topics to be developed later. Drawing heavily on previous ethnographic research (but including her own observations in key places), Völkel identifies two major levels of social structure in Tongan society. The first pertains to kinship and the domestic sphere (social status) and the second to relationships within the society as a whole (societal ranking). In order to elucidate how Tongans use different conceptions of social status and societal ranking, Völkel provides a thorough overview of Tongan kinship terminology, explaining that all societal relationships hinge on the possession of mana, or spiritual power tied to the gods, which is present in all things to varying degrees. On the societal level, one's social status and societal ranking follows from beliefs about mana—those with more mana vis-à-vis ego are said to be ‘eiki ‘higher ranked,’ while those with less are tu‘i ‘lower ranked.’ In Tongan society no two people have the same ranking—an aphorism in the language states that “In Tonga nobody is equal” (27). Relative ranking is reckoned along various dimensions, including closeness of relation to the Tu‘i Tonga, sex (sisters are ‘eiki to their brothers), relative age (older siblings are ‘eiki to younger siblings of the same sex), matrilineal vs. patrilineal kin, and so on.
With this background in mind, Völkel is able to demonstrate how actual cultural practices are able to reify and reinforce the social statuses and societal rankings of individuals, which are always in play in every social situation and which are represented in each speech event. Important areas of Tongan life for which Völkel investigates these issues include: land tenure and the hereditary inheritance of estates and land allotments, and the symbolic meanings attached to place-making events, such as the relative seating and serving arrangements, flow of gifts, and the delivery of “speech preludes” required at special ceremonies (including kava ceremonies, fonos, etc.) (Ch. 3). Tongan cultural practices also reflect symbolic hierarchical social structures in areas relevant to the mutual obligations inherent to various types of gift exchanges, which have been transferred and slightly altered in the relatively recent development of a more cash-based economy (Ch. 4). Ch. 5 summarizes the book's anthropological section.
In Part 2 Völkel gives her more linguistic perspective on these topics, with Chs. 6–8 presenting detailed analyses of, respectively, spatial descriptions, A- and O-possession, and the Tongan language of respect. Since much of Völkel's first part is a thorough treatment of Tongan culture-specific instantiations of practices that readers may find somewhat familiar from other Oceanic contexts, the book's second half is Völkel's most original contribution: namely, the specific argument that the Tongan linguistic features under her focus are “perfectly designed to express the sociocultural categories adequately,” and further, since they are “deeply anchored in the sociocultural system” then “their structure and usage can only be analyzed in that context” (239).
Ch. 6 deals with spatial descriptions in Tongan, for which Völkel utilizes the conceptual framework and methods innovated by cognitive anthropologists at the Max Planck Institute in Nijmegen (cf. Levinson Reference Levinson, Gumperz and Levinson1996 and related work). Contrary to previous findings for some languages that have shown strong correlations between linguistic spatial descriptions and (nonlinguistic) cognitive coding of spatial relations (as determined through experiments such as “director/matcher” language games), Völkel's experimental results in the Tongan village of Niutoua did not yield a significant correlation. Tongan provides a variety of means for describing space (including spatial prepositions, directionals, and spatial nouns), and different speakers can utilize different tools, including an absolute frame of reference (based on an up/down axis towards the sea on this coral island, or based upon prominent landmarks on the island) or a relative frame of reference (including to the left or to the right from the speaker's point of view). Spatial descriptions may also vary based on different scales and/or for different tasks (e.g. short vs. long distances on land, and across the sea with the destination in sight vs. not in sight). Völkel performed some experiments where speakers were given a navigational description task and a director-matcher language game. Which linguistic spatial descriptions a given Tongan speaker chose to use for the navigational description did not necessarily correlate with how they oriented themselves for the experimental task of matching a constellation of a square and triangle after being re-oriented 180°—that is, an individual who chose an absolute orientation for the matching task might still give a spatial description based on relative orientation for the navigational description task, and vice versa. Völkel also shows that relative spatial descriptions can be tied to social relations and hierarchical status, as with the “front” of a building (house or church, etc.), a town, or even an island, which is determined “by the social structure and can be defined as the sitting place of the highest ranked or most prominent person” (152).
In Ch. 7 Völkel grapples with the issue of two categories of possession in Tongan, referred to as A-possession and O-possession (denoting the vowel that marks the distinction in different construction types). The former has traditionally been linked to alienable or acquired properties, while the latter has been linked to inalienable or inherent properties. Völkel contrasts competing ideas from the literature regarding the proper characterization of these categories, ultimately agreeing with Wilson's (Reference Wilson1982) semantic characterization wherein “A-possession implies the possessor's control over… the initiation of the possessive relationship (‘initial control theory’), and O-possession is used elsewhere (that is if such control is absent or if nothing is said about it)” (194). The Tongan system of kinship terminology, which utilizes A- and O-possession in ways not entirely consistent with initial control theory (or any other extant proposal), provides an interesting challenge. This, and the fact that many (most?) nouns can be used with either possession type for different semantic effects, makes it quite surprising that Völkel relies mostly on native speaker intuitions (and/or what has been reported in previous literature) on these matters, rather than examining many examples of their use in actual discourse contexts.
This lack of attention to discourse is only somewhat remedied in Ch. 8, which deals with the Tongan language of respect. There are three different classes of lexical items in Tongan that are supposed to be used to address or refer to individuals in the three major social rankings of Tonga: the king (tu‘i), nobles and chiefs (hou‘eiki), and commoners (kakai). Since no one in Tonga is at the same rank, it is surprising that commoners typically use kakai terminology amongst themselves (rather than hou‘eiki terms for fellow commoners who have a higher status). Supposedly, only among chiefs is absolute social ranking regularly enforced for lexical choice—that is, chiefs who are ‘eiki to other chiefs will use kakai terms with them and expect hou‘eiki terms in response. Everyone, however, is supposed to use tu'i terms for the king. This complicated system of linguistic deference is ripe for investigation into shifting stances and ideologies attached to language use in everyday situations, but Völkel only tantalizes the reader by suggesting that many cosmopolitan middle-age Tongans refuse to acknowledge inferior status to chiefs or show deference to them by engaging in the system—they will instead either use kakai lexical items or code-switch into English to avoid the issue altogether (229). Völkel unfortunately does not give us many ethnographically based examples of Tongan language in actual use. The sparse discourse-based examples that Völkel does provide come from relatively formal speech situations (e.g. formal addresses in courtrooms and fonos, newspaper articles, and Bible translation), where the use of such speech levels is most expected and salient.
Völkel's monograph leaves little doubt that understanding certain aspects of Tongan grammar requires the kind of thorough cultural background that she provides in the first half. Although readers wanting to see more detailed discussion of nuanced language usage in actual discourse may be disappointed by the lack of attention to this arena, Völkel still makes a very interesting contribution to the literature on language in culture by illustrating how Tongan language reflects the social hierarchy of its people.
