GUY BORDIN

Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales and Laboratoire d’ethnologie et sociologie comparative, Université de Paris X-Nanterre

The Inuit night: some ethnolinguistic features

Night, darkness and related phenomena have until now never been considered in their anthropological, ethnological and discourse dimensions. Arctic winter and summer have always retained the interest of scientists who found in the « extreme » climate conditions justifications to their often deterministic analysis of the Inuit life styles. On the contrary, ethnographers have largely ignored the daily night and its representations. The present research aims therefore at putting forwards some elements of reflection on the Inuit night, wishing also to contribute to making of night an anthropological object.

In this communication I will address ethnolinguistic features. To do so, I will rely on two sets of materials, one issuing from a field work carried out in Iqaluit in 2001 with interviews of several elders, the other consisting in the analysis of two specific documents, namely the two Inuit monolingual dictionaries existing today. The first one is the publication by Taamusi Qumaq, who compiled the first dictionary in syllabic characters devoted to Nunavik Inuktitut, whereas the second dictionary dedicated to north Baffin Inuktitut (Mittimatalik) is the outcome of an extensive collection of terms with several elders.

At the present stage of the research, several conclusions can already be drawn. Contrary to the general assumptions which form a stereotype (a several month long winter « night » versus a continuous bright summer « day »), lexical features tend to show that there is a day and a night every 24 hour-cycle all year around, also for Inuit living beyond the Arctic Circle. Furthermore, the discourses of several elders show that winter is not in priority associated to darkness nor is summer to brightness; indeed there are almost no reference to darkness nor to brightness in the designation of seasons and months. Night appears to be under control.