Precisions Given by Inuit Language Concerning the Notion of Remembering
Referring to the Series Innarnik apiqsuqattarniq/Interviewing Elders produced since 1999 by the Language and Culture Program at the Nunavut Arctic College in Iqaluit, I will try to analyze a few aspects of this new oral “genre”. Taking into account the specific context of oral transmission within an institutional frame, I will focus on the way interviewed Inuit Elders speak about memory. Relying on short excerpts of their discourse concerning remembering, retaining, refreshing one’s memory, forgetting, I will try to answer the following questions: What can we learn by paying attention to the words chosen by the Elders? Which notions and concepts the terminology related to “remembering” can shed light on? What expressive linguistic elements illustrate the role played by the speaker in a given testimony about the past? The enquiry seems legitimate, taking into account the fact that all languages show interesting distinctions concerning knowledge. I will also take into account the following hypothesis: conceptualization is both linked to universal and cultural constraints. We will see how these are expressed in the actual context of oral knowledge transmission.