Glocal Semantics of “Home” in Emergent Children's Literature: a Passage towards Indigenous Intangible Heritage?

Abstract

This paper presents key features of my PhD research, which was conducted between Université de Nantes (France) and Macquarie University (Australia), in the fields of language sciences and international studies.

Drawn on cognitive poetics and linguistics, my work looks ahead to the process of intangible cultural heritage (ICH) in emergent children’s literature in Oceania. I deal with a French-Kanak book (Mèyènô, 2004) written by Ponga, an indigenous author from New Caledonia, in order to illustrate the relevance of my methodology, showing the cultural innovation vs. preservation paradigm of ICH. The word ‘«home‘» is the focus of this study: the renewal vs. preservation of its meaning reveals ICH and the liquid identities of our glocal (local and global) world