The grammar of politics: Morality, agency, and voice selection in toraja political discourse

Voice alternations in Austronesian languages have typically been explained either in terms of clausal transitivity or in terms of nominal pragmatic salience. Here I combine grammatical and ethnographic analysis to argue that speakers of Toraja (a language of Sulawesi) select grammatical voice forms to represent moral and political stances with respect to ongoing actions; voice selection is connected to the micropolitics of situated interaction and to the broader cultural context (vernacular moral theories and local styles of selfpresentation). Patient voice mitigates the assignment of agency, and thus aids in reproducing local models of the disinterested and subdued political self; conversely, actor voice projects an agentive and authoritative speaking subject. Such integrated analysis not only reveals the essential role of linguistic practices in reproducing a community’s moral system, but also advances the understanding of voice alternation.