Phraseology and Culture in English

Greetings as an act of identity in Tristan da Cunha English 
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Notes
1. The author wishes to acknowledge the valuable input of Koenraad Kuiper and 
Dennis R. Preston, who kindly provided additional material and shared their 
personal views on greeting formulae, Penny Lee for comments on an earlier 
draft of the paper, and to Karen Lavarello Schreier, whose insider knowledge 
and native intuitions contributed considerably to the points discussed. 
2. The fact that such expressions are group-specific becomes obvious by the reac-
tions they evoke when they are used by outsiders. German tourists in Switzer-
land (or for that matter, northern German tourists in Bavaria, or Northern 
Americans in the US rural South) attempting to pronounce local greeting for-
mula are immediately caught out, and the most common result is mild amuse-
ment on the part of the locals. On an anecdotal level, I noticed that one of our 
local Bavarian radio stations makes use of such ill-fated accommodation at-
tempts for humoristic purposes. During the 2003 Oktoberfest in Munich (lo-
cally known as Wiesn), they air every day a conversation between locals and 
outside visitors (locally known as Preissn, ‘Prussians’) who dress in traditional 
Bavarian garments and desperately try to sound like Bavarians, using a variety 
of local expressions with a strong non-local accent. The popularity of the radio 
show is an attestation to the strong group-specific interpretation of language 
features, and also to the reactions such usage evokes when used by outsiders. 
3. The list of candidates in such a list is of course much more extensive, particu-
larly if we include recent formulae such as what’s up?/whassup?, which repre-
sent of course a distinct and more extensive field of investigation. 
4. Tristanians commonly display non-inverted question type sentences, e.g., “Where 
they was?” or “What she’s doing out there now?” 
5. The kinship terms buddy and brother are frequent in Tristan da Cunha Eng-
lish (Schreier and Lavarello Schreier 2003: 77). 
6. The 
term 
station fella is used on Tristan da Cunha for visitors and expatriates 
staying on the island. It originally derives from soldiers and other army per-
sonnel stationed on the island during World War II. They were informally 
known as the “fellas what stay in the station” and finally as the station fellas.
After the garrison was withdrawn in 1945, the term was maintained and se-
mantically broadened to include all non-locals on the island. 
7. This objective is based on the assumption that all linguistic features, no matter 
whether they are phonetic, phonological, morphosyntactic or pragmatic, may 
undergo transformation and change, and that all linguistic features therefore 
carry the potential of becoming socially significant for the speakers and com-
munities who use them. 
8. There are countless stories told by Tristanians who could not make them-
selves understood abroad, or who were asked about the whereabouts of their 
unusual (and to unfamiliar ears, curious) accent. 

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Daniel Schreier