ABSTRACT
This chapter describes some technologically induced changes in the languages of Papua New Guinea (PNG), and their social implications, such as shifts in people's attitudes and perceptions of traditional cultural values and national identity. Digital technologies have connected the world, erasing geographical and political barriers that had separated societies and cultures. The Internet and mobile phones have transformed traditional series of exchanges in PNG. The story of this transformation can be best told through the words people use in conducting their exchanges. Social exchanges are inconceivable without language, whose social function is to communicate meaning. In a country as linguistically diverse as Papua New Guinea, false appeals to emotion must give way to pragmatism. Modern linguistic theory is the product of a deeply rooted tradition of scientific analysis of observable facts, which has dominated linguistic inquiry since the Enlightenment, particularly in the past century.
