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Aranda, Arrernte or Arrarnta? The Politics of Orthography and Identity on the Upper Finke River
Author(s) -
Kenny Anna
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
oceania
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.356
H-Index - 25
eISSN - 1834-4461
pISSN - 0029-8077
DOI - 10.1002/ocea.5169
Subject(s) - orthography , literacy , context (archaeology) , identity (music) , politics , reading (process) , sociology , history , linguistics , political science , art , philosophy , law , aesthetics , archaeology , pedagogy
The Aboriginal people of the Upper Finke River in central Australia have followed a literacy tradition for over 130 years. When the first Lutheran missionaries arrived, they immediately started to study the local Arandic language and were teaching reading and writing by 1879. Despite this long exposure to literacy and the Lutheran influence on it, the issue of the right orthography for this Arandic language variety is emotionally charged and politically very contested. In this post‐colonial context, orthography has become a sociocultural and symbolic, rather than a phonemic, matter.