Restoring the Aboriginal Voice: Language and Identity in The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith

Authors

  • Pengkang Liu

    Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Johor Bahru 81310, Malaysia
  • Norhanim Abdul Samat

    Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Johor Bahru 81310, Malaysia
  • Faraha Hamidi

    Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Johor Bahru 81310, Malaysia

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.30564/fls.v7i12.11408
Received: 31 July 2025 | Revised: 22 September 2025 | Accepted: 25 September 2025 | Published Online: 24 November 2025

Abstract

This paper examines how Thomas Keneally's The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith engages with the restoration of Aboriginal voice and identity within the context of Australian colonial discourse. Specifically, the novel addresses the historical silencing of Aboriginal people and highlights the tension between imposed European language and enduring Aboriginal oral traditions. The central objective of this study is to explore how linguistic hybridity—particularly Aboriginal English and ceremonial chanting—functions as a tool of identity assertion and resistance against colonial authority. Employing close textual analysis informed by postcolonial theory, the paper draws on Said's concept of colonial discourse, Bhabha's notion of hybridity, and Ashcroft's idea of linguistic resistance. This analysis demonstrates how Aboriginal English, with its hybridised grammar and vocabulary, alongside chants rooted in kinship and cultural memory, operate subversively within the English novel form. Furthermore, the study situates Keneally's novel alongside Indigenous-authored works such as Alexis Wright's Carpentaria and Kim Scott's Benang: From the Heart. This comparative perspective underscores both the contributions and the limits of settler-authored attempts to “restore” Aboriginal voice, contrasting them with Indigenous narrative sovereignty that reconstitutes English from within Aboriginal epistemologies. The findings conclude that while Keneally's novel functions as a counter-narrative that unsettles colonial silencing, its mediation through settler authorship leaves it marked by ambivalence. Ultimately, the enduring reclamation of Aboriginal voice and identity in literature is most powerfully enacted in Indigenous-authored narratives, which reshape language, memory, and representation on their own terms.

Highlights:

  • Aboriginal voice restoration (it examines how The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith restores Aboriginal voice and identity within Australian colonial discourse).
  • Linguistic hybridity (it demonstrates how linguistic hybridity functions as a means of survival, identity assertion).
  • Counter-narrative discourse (it argues that the novel operates as a counter-narrative, asserting Aboriginal agency and reframing dominant historical accounts).

Keywords:

Identity; Aboriginal English; Aboriginal Chanting; Linguistic Hybridity; Colonial Discourse; Counter-Narrative

References

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How to Cite

Liu, P., Abdul Samat, N., & Hamidi, F. (2025). Restoring the Aboriginal Voice: Language and Identity in The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith. Forum for Linguistic Studies, 7(12), 1581–1593. https://doi.org/10.30564/fls.v7i12.11408

Issue

Vol. 7 , Iss. 12 (December 2025): In progress

Article Type

Article

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Copyright © 2025 Pengkang Liu, Norhanim Abdul Samat, Faraha Hamidi

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This is an open access article under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) License.