Paper short abstract:

Using a dictionary is not an obvious practice for an oral language community. To allow the Nisvai community to have a critical perspective on the written resources produced for them, I designed them as a set of inter-referenced language resources in order to preserve the enunctiative information.

Paper long abstract:

Using dictionaries requires that (i) readers have familiarity with the genre 'dictionary', and (ii) integrate its use into the local social life. Creating a dictionary for an oral language community in Vanuatu would thus require the introduction of social practices that emerged in Europe, with uncertain outcomes. Instead of a traditional dictionary, for the Nisvai community, using the transcription and annotation interviews done during the fieldwork, I propose here a set of language resources: a bilingual lexicon, a Nisvai-French narrative collection and their audio recordings. The cooperation model with the members of the Nisvai community was integrative (Mosel 2012): they proposed the topic to work on: narratives, so that we could produce language resources relevant for their local school. My hypothesis was that integrating cues of the enunciative situation (Rabatel 2009) of the recordings into the resources would allow the members of the Nisvai community to reconstruct the points of view associated with the narrative practices and would enable the Nisvai readers to have a critical perspective on the resources. To do so, I implemented a system of references between the narratives, the lexicon and the recordings as well as short descriptions of the recording situations. The audio recordings are associated with the narrative collection to help the Nisvai people interpret the texts as representations of the oral performances. During the fieldwork, the members of the Nisvai community offered critics on the draft versions of the resources. This feedback showed the understanding and interest people had in the project.