Colonial texts in post-colonial contexts
a genre in the contact zone
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/lhs.v3i1.87Keywords:
Genre, Language, Law, Treaties, Canada, New ZealandAbstract
This paper applies genre theory to nineteenth-century deeds used to appropriate land from indigenous people in British Columbia, Canada, and in Aotearoa New Zealand. These deeds have been the subject of intense scrutiny in legal and other settings via twentieth century interpretive strategies complicated and modified by postcolonial politics and cross-cultural pragmatics. Although focusing mainly on deeds used in B.C. in the 1850s, the paper also has in its purview other deeds and treaties in NZ and Canada. The analysis of these documents’ actions in colonial and postcolonial contexts concludes with a framing of genre that is not based on the mutual recognition of form and situation by genre participants, and indeed may even preclude it. This necessitates a further discussion of Miller’s (1984[1994]) conditions for making a genre claim, and ends with the positing of a special category of genres called contact genres.
References
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Toolan, M. J. (2002) The language myth and the law. In R. Harris (ed.) The Language Myth in Western Culture. Richmond: Curzon.
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Waitangi Tribunal. (1991) Ngai Tahu Land Report. (Wai 27) Wellington, NZ: Department of Justice.
Weaver, J. C. (2003) The Great Land Rush and the Making of the Modern World, 1650–1900. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press.
Austin, J. L. (1962) How to Do Things with Words. William James Lectures, 1955. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Bakhtin, M. M. (1986) The problem of speech genres. In C. Emerson and M. Holquist (eds) Speech Genres and Other Late Essays. (Translated by V. W. McGee.) Austin: University of Texas Press.
Bazerman, C. (1994) Systems of genres. In A. Freedman and P. Medway (eds) Genre and the New Rhetoric. Bristol, PA: Taylor & Francis.
British Columbia. Papers Connected with the Indian Land Question: 1850–1875, Victoria.
Burke, K. (1962) A Grammar of Motives and a Rhetoric of Motives. Cleveland, OH: Meridian.
Dawson, R. M. (2001) The Treaty of Waitangi and the Control of Language. Wellington, N.Z.: Institute of Policy Studies Victoria University of Wellington.
Duff,W. (1969) The Fort Victoria Treaties. BC Studies 3, Fall.
Evison, H. C. (2006) The Ngai Tahu Deeds: A Window on New Zealand History. Christchurch: Canterbury University Press.
Fish, S. E. (1989) Doing What Comes Naturally: Change, Rhetoric, and the Practice of Theory in Literary and Legal Studies. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Foster, H. (1989) The Saanichton Bay Marina case: imperial law, colonial history and competing theories of aboriginal title. UBC Law Review 23.3: 629–50.
Freadman, A. (2002) Uptake. In R. Coe, L. Lingard and T. Teslenko (eds) The Rhetoric and Ideology of Genre: Strategies for Stability and Change. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press.
Giltrow, J. (1994) Genre and the pragmatic concept of background knowledge. In A. Freedman and P. Medway (eds) Genre and the New Rhetoric. Bristol, PA: Taylor & Francis.
Hancher, M. (1979) The classification of cooperative illocutionary acts. Language in Society 8: 1–14.
Hanks, W. F. (1987) Discourse genres in a theory of practice. American Ethnologist 14(4): 668–692.
Harring, S. L. (1998) White Man’s Law: Native People in Nineteenth-Century Canadian Jurisprudence. Toronto: University Of Toronto Press.
Harris, R. (1981) The Language Myth. New York: St. Martin’s Press.
Harris, R. (ed.) (2002) The Language Myth in Western Culture. Richmond: Curzon.
Henderson, G. (1993) Austin, J(ohn) L(angshaw) In I. R. Makaryk (ed.) Encyclopedia of Contemporary Literary Theory: Approaches, Scholars, Terms. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Kurzon, D. (1986) It is hereby performed…: Legal Speech Acts. Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
Lash, S. and Featherstone, M. (eds) (2002) Recognition and Difference: Politics, Identity, Multiculture. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Miller, C. R. ([1984] 1994) Genre as social action. In A. Freedman and P. Medway (eds) Genre and the New Rhetoric. Bristol, PA: Taylor & Francis.
Paré, A. and Smart, G. (1994) Observing genres in action: towards a research methodology. In A. Freedman and P. Medway (eds) Genre and the New Rhetoric. Bristol, PA: Taylor & Francis.
Pratt, M. L. (1986) Ideology and speech-act theory. Poetics Today 7(1): 59–72.
Pratt, M. L. (1992) Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation. New York: Routledge.
R. v. White and Bob (1964) 50 D.L.R. (2d) 613, aff ’d [1965] S.C.R. Accessed on 5 June 2006 from http://library2.usask.ca/native/cnlc/vol06/629.html
Searle, J. R. (1969) Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Stein, D. (2005) On the role of language ideologies in linguistic theory and practice: purism and beyond. In N. Langer and W. V. Davies (eds) Linguistic Purism in the Germanic Languages. New York: Walter de Gruyer.
Tiersma, P. M. (1986) Offer and acceptance. California Law Review 74: 189–236.
Tiersma, P. M. (1999) Legal Language. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Toolan, M. J. (1996) Total Speech: An Integrational Linguistic Approach to Language. PostContemporary Interventions. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Toolan, M. J. (2002) The language myth and the law. In R. Harris (ed.) The Language Myth in Western Culture. Richmond: Curzon.
Vološinov, V. N., Ladislav Matejka and Titunik, I. R. (1973) Marxism and the Philosophy of Language. (Studies in Language.) New York: Seminar Press.
Waitangi Tribunal. (1991) Ngai Tahu Land Report. (Wai 27) Wellington, NZ: Department of Justice.
Weaver, J. C. (2003) The Great Land Rush and the Making of the Modern World, 1650–1900. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press.
Published
2008-09-09
Issue
Section
Articles
How to Cite
Makmillen, S. (2008). Colonial texts in post-colonial contexts: a genre in the contact zone. Linguistics and the Human Sciences, 3(1), 87-103. https://doi.org/10.1558/lhs.v3i1.87
