Country, People and Language in Carpentaria

This chapter concentrates on the representation of language in Carpentaria, and how this contributes to shaping the story and its literary significance. The Aboriginal residents of Desperance mostly speak English throughout the novel. Some characters, particularly the ‘old people’ use words from Waanyi, a language which was spoken in the region in which the novel is placed, and which is an ancestral language of Alexis Wright. In order to contextualize this usage, we will first summarize some of the linguistic history of Australia, and especially around the southern coast of the Gulf of Carpentaria. In the second part of the chapter, we examine the use of the Waanyi language and other Aboriginal languages within the novel.