Paper short abstract:

I present the results of the analyses conducted on linguistic data collected in the Kingdom of Tonga, Polynesia. These results allow me to hypothesize a Cultural Model of Nature for the community investigated.

Paper long abstract:

A cultural model (CM) of Nature is a fundamental part of the local knowledge of a community as it is engaged with and challenged by many aspects of current climate change. To obtain insights into CMs of Nature in several communities around the world, we collected a variety of data, both linguistic and experimental. I present an example from my research in the Kingdom of Tonga, Polynesia. The analyses conducted on the Tongan linguistic data collected include a gist analysis, a key words analysis, a reasoning analysis, a causality analysis, and a metaphor analysis. The results provided reliable findings that allowed me to hypothesize more than one Tongan CM of Nature utilized by the community in understanding and interpreting their surrounding environment, both social and physical. The two CMs of Nature hypothesized for the Tongan community investigated include two distinct causal models.