[Mihalic] RE: katim skin

[John Burton]

It is certain that there a great many local variants like this deriving from
vernaculars, however I think it is indeed local. 

Here are some more mainstream usages conveying similar meanings:

* tok  baksait - gossip behind someone's back
* tok bilas - (i) boasting, exaggeration, elaborate but empty talk  (ii)
mockery, sarcasm to someone's face
* tokbilasim - to rubbish, mock, insult
* sutim tok long - (i) to pointedly challenge (ii) to insult someone to
their face
* tok nogutim - to swear at someone
* tok pilai long - to tease
* mekim planti toktok - to gossip, to go on and on about something someone
has done
* i gat toktok i stap  - there is an issue with something someone has done
* toktok planti - to talk unnecessarily, to nag

Of these, directing the sarcastic type of 'tok bilas' at s.o. would
definitely cut their skin.

John Burton


-----Original Message-----
From: Oceanic Anthropology Discussion Group
[mailto:ASAONET at LISTSERV.UIC.EDU] On Behalf Of Bambi Schieffelin
Sent: Tuesday, 22 January 2008 1:46 AM
To: ASAONET at LISTSERV.UIC.EDU
Subject: katim skin

Dear ASAO readers,

In the mid-1980s, Bosavi speakers who had exposure to Tok Pisin used a new
vernacular phrase "do:go:f gedian" literally 'cuts the skin' to mean gossip
or insult, usually as a negative imperative. This loan translation or calque
was from the Tok Pisin katim skin which the Mihalic 1971 Jacaranda (and the
online Tok Pisin) Dictionaries gloss as circumcise or scarify. In Bosavi,
this vernacular innovation was only used to refer to talk, never to the
other two activities, (there was no circumcision in Bosavi).

Since the skin is such a potent affective site in PNG, I was wondering if
others either heard the Tok Pisin expression katim skin used for gossip or
insult, or like Bosavi, picked up as a loan translation and expressed in the
vernacular. 

Thanks -

Bambi B. Schieffelin