Bronislaw Maliniowski claimed in his monograph Argonauts of the Western Pacific that to
approach the goal of ethnographic field-work requires a collection of ethnographic statements
characteristic narratives typical utterances items of folk-lore and magical formulae ... as a
corpus inscriptionum as documents of native mentality.This book finally meets Malinowski's
demand. Based on more than 40 months of field research the author presents documents and
illustrates the Trobriand Islanders' own indigenous typology of text categories or genres
covering the spectrum from ditties children chant while spinning a top to gossip songs tales
and myths. The typology is based on Kilivila metalinguistic terms for these genres and
considers the relationship they have with registers or varieties which are also
metalinguistically distinguished by the native speakers of this language. Rooted in the
'ethnography of speaking' paradigm and in the 'anthropological linguistics linguistic
anthropology' approach the book highlights the relevance of genres for researching the role of
language culture and cognition in social interaction and demonstrates the importance of
understanding genres for achieving linguistic and cultural competence. In addition to the data
presented in the book its readers have the opportunity to access the original audio- and
video-data presented via the internet on a special website which mirrors the structure of the
book. Thus the reader can check the transcriptions against the original data recordings. This
makes the volume particularly valuable for teaching purposes in (general Austronesian Oceanic
documentary and anthropological) linguistics and ethnology.
