title: "His brain was wrong, his mind astray":  Families and the language of insanity in New South Wales, Queensland, and New Zealand, 1880s-1910

authors: Coleborne, Catharine

subjects: families

abstract: Family and friends made descriptions of the behavior of individuals at the time of their committal to institutions for the insane in Australasian colonies, including Gladesville Hospital for the Insane, Sydney, New South Wales; Goodna Hospital for the Insane, near Brisbane in Queensland; and the Auckland Mental Hospital in New Zealand's North Island, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. These lay descriptions of insanity, gleaned from those close to patients by doctors during initial interviews at the stage of asylum committal, eventually became marginal notes in clinical patient cases. This article seeks to understand this interplay between lay descriptions by family and friends and the asylum's use of these descriptions in its profiling and diagnosis of patients. It argues that patient case notes should be reexamined as rich sources of information about families, households, and, most importantly, the language used by ordinary people to describe mental states.

text: "His brain was wrong, his mind astray":  Families and the language of insanity in New South Wales, Queensland, and New Zealand, 1880s-1910 Family and friends made descriptions of the behavior of individuals at the time of their committal to institutions for the insane in Australasian colonies, including Gladesville Hospital for the Insane, Sydney, New South Wales; Goodna Hospital for the Insane, near Brisbane in Queensland; and the Auckland Mental Hospital in New Zealand's North Island, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. These lay descriptions of insanity, gleaned from those close to patients by doctors during initial interviews at the stage of asylum committal, eventually became marginal notes in clinical patient cases. This article seeks to understand this interplay between lay descriptions by family and friends and the asylum's use of these descriptions in its profiling and diagnosis of patients. It argues that patient case notes should be reexamined as rich sources of information about families, households, and, most importantly, the language used by ordinary people to describe mental states.

year: 2006-01-01

title: “Doing this kind of linguistics, you do feel like you're making a difference in the world” Postgraduate linguistics students learning in the field

authors: Daly, Nicola

abstract: Despite the stated importance of fieldwork within the discipline of Linguistics, and the existence of several texts about fieldwork (Thieberger, 2012; Bowren, 2008; Newman & Ratliff, 2001), there is very little literature concerning the experience of fieldwork from tertiary students' perspectives (see Macaulay, 2012). In this article, the work of four New Zealand postgraduate linguistics students working with fourteen Vanuatu teachers to translate reading materials written in Bislama into seven vernacular languages is documented. Findings indicate that students were motivated to be involved in the fieldwork by a range of factors including travel, altruism, and commitment to the communities and their languages; they drew on and, in some cases, clarified many concepts from their undergraduate studies; and that the fieldwork experiences both allowed them to gain confidence in their linguistic skills and influenced their future studies in linguistics.                      © John Benjamins Publishing Company

text: “Doing this kind of linguistics, you do feel like you're making a difference in the world” Postgraduate linguistics students learning in the field Despite the stated importance of fieldwork within the discipline of Linguistics, and the existence of several texts about fieldwork (Thieberger, 2012; Bowren, 2008; Newman & Ratliff, 2001), there is very little literature concerning the experience of fieldwork from tertiary students' perspectives (see Macaulay, 2012). In this article, the work of four New Zealand postgraduate linguistics students working with fourteen Vanuatu teachers to translate reading materials written in Bislama into seven vernacular languages is documented. Findings indicate that students were motivated to be involved in the fieldwork by a range of factors including travel, altruism, and commitment to the communities and their languages; they drew on and, in some cases, clarified many concepts from their undergraduate studies; and that the fieldwork experiences both allowed them to gain confidence in their linguistic skills and influenced their future studies in linguistics.                      © John Benjamins Publishing Company

year: 2019

title: How many deaths were caused by the Tarawera eruption?

authors: Lowe, David J.

abstract: Most texts and brochures describing the Tarawera eruption of 10 June, l 886, record that it resulted in about 150 fatalities (e.g., Scott & Nairn, 1989; Ansell & Taber, 1996). Indeed, a figure of 153 deaths is recorded at the excellent new visitors' centre at the Buried Village, Te Wairoa, and in a number of other contexts. Elsewhere, numbers ranging from as few as about one hundred to possibly 'thousands' of deaths have been suggested (e.g., Houghton & Johnston, 1999).

text: How many deaths were caused by the Tarawera eruption? Most texts and brochures describing the Tarawera eruption of 10 June, l 886, record that it resulted in about 150 fatalities (e.g., Scott & Nairn, 1989; Ansell & Taber, 1996). Indeed, a figure of 153 deaths is recorded at the excellent new visitors' centre at the Buried Village, Te Wairoa, and in a number of other contexts. Elsewhere, numbers ranging from as few as about one hundred to possibly 'thousands' of deaths have been suggested (e.g., Houghton & Johnston, 1999).

year: 2001