Greeting and social change

Overview & Synopsis

This paper discusses greeting routines in the Eastern Maroon community of Suriname and French Guiana. The paper argues that there are two broad sets of greeting routines. They have different origins, linguistic structures and distinct social meanings (e.g. setting, social groups, social relationship). As a result of social changes in the community, their social distribution, frequency and their social meanings are currently changing. The ‘urban’ greetings are being extended to all kinds of new social spheres and are increasingly losing their negative or subculture connotations while the ‘village’ greetings are becoming restricted to a relatively small set of situations and kinds of interactions. Moreover, new kinds of greeting practices emerge to symbolically assert existing social distinctions and to mark newly emerging social realities.