On üksainuke keel Ventsel, Aimar
Mäetagused,
04/2024, Volume:
88
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
“In today’s world much depends on whether you are able to develop the computer in the direction beneficial for the mother tongue or end up as a speaker of a mega-language,” Mare Kõiva, head of the ...Department of Folkloristics, founder and chief editor of many journals, a European and Estonian academician, summarises the conversation on the topics of the past, present and future on the eve of her jubilee.
In recent decades, the focus of Folklore Studies has shifted from analysing the products of oral traditions as texts to examining the ways in which people use and produce these items, and the areas ...of study have broadened to include vernacular cultures and genres in diverse verbal and material forms. As evident from the introduction and twelve chapters of this collection, these interests are today shared by several disciplines that cooperate in the area of cultural studies. This book provides insights into current questions about the “nature” of words: it discusses both the inherent essence of vernacular expression and how that essence is tied to various genre-ecological, performative, and material environments. The chapters include studies on the poetics, form, function, performance, and composition of traditional and new vernacular forms, including explorations of hybridity, materiality, and change, as well as critical examinations of archival practices and publication processes.
Storytelling is a culturally universal phenomenon deeply intertwined with human language communication and social cognition. This paper explores the cultural evolution of stories from two ...perspectives: (1) their adaptive function for humans and (2) the cognitive and environmental constraints for humans transmitting and consuming stories. Drawing on empirical studies, the paper discusses how stories encapsulate valuable knowledge that aids adaptation to social and natural environments. Then, the interplay between the cognitive basis and the adaptive function of stories is discussed, especially focusing on their role in facilitating language communication. Finally, we present a hypothesis that stories have made it possible to transmit information more efficiently, and that the existence of these stories may have influenced the way humans are. We emphasize the importance of interdisciplinary research to test this hypothesis.
The study aims to present certain methodological approaches used in the research of dialect narratives. In the introductory part of the article, the author discusses the links between the related ...sciences, analysing oral text: traditional dialectology, oral history and ethnolinguistics. The concept of cultureme as the unit describing realia, deeply entrenched in a certain type of culture, composing a certain identity of an ethnic group, is also introduced. The notion of a cultureme is very close to the notions of a keyword, described by Anna Wierzbicka, and a stereotype or concept, described by the ethnolinguistic school of Lublin. The difference, however, is that that the description of concepts is aimed at reflecting the folk or nationwide worldview and human view, while culturemes are used to identify a specific community, show the specificity of a certain region and its values. The example of the description of one cultureme (the manor) is used to provide the complicated structure of dialect narrative, its stylistic values, types of a narrator, and subjective way of perceiving and assessing the reality.
This article explores various dimensions of the memory-folklore nexus to contribute to interdisciplinary dialogues between folkloristics and memory studies by drawing on a shared paradigm; examining ...the historical, theoretical, and methodological intersections; and mapping out overlapping approaches in each area. It thus establishes and introduces the concept and approach of folkloric memory to provide broader perspectives on common issues such as referential, migratory, transmedial, mimetic, aesthetic, schematic, and procreative aspects of collective and cultural narratives. The article ultimately aims to review the correlation between memory and folklore, delve into previously unexplored aspects of this connection, develop an interdisciplinary approach, and establish a groundwork for future research.
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The professorship of Estonian and Comparative Folklore was established at the University of Tartu in 1919. Among others, Eduard Laugaste (1909–1994) studied folkloristics here. His first research ...studies, including his master’s thesis titled “The Song of the Nightingale”, which he defended in 1937, mainly dealt with bird sounds. This topic guided the researcher to use the historic-geographic method, a widespread method in folkloristics at the time, but also to reflect on the relationships of literature and folklore. He studied archival materials that had been created in the course of pupils’ folklore collecting campaigns. It turned out that many of the texts written for the archives did not come from songs of oral tradition, but rather from textbooks. Laugaste also studied the international counterparts of Estonian bird sounds. After defending his master’s degree, Laugaste stayed at the university to write his doctoral dissertation on songs of lamentation. At the same time, he was working as a schoolteacher. The situation changed drastically with the Soviet occupation in 1940 and the events of World War II in Estonia in 1941–1944. In this period, Laugaste remained away from the university. After the front had moved across the city of Tartu, and the Soviets had reinstated their power, the university continued operation. As the former scholars of folklore, Professor Walter Anderson and Acting Professor Oskar Loorits, had emigrated to the West, Eduard Laugaste was invited to teach folklore. Due to his educational background, he leaned on continuity in folkloristics. Yet he had to adapt to the principles of Soviet folkloristics (which viewed folklore as a part of literature), as well as to Marxist-Leninist ideology. The article deals with Laugaste’s activities from 1944 to the end of the 1950s, based on three sources: the university documents of these years, Laugaste’s research studies, and memoirs of that time. The paper reveals Eduard Laugaste’s commitment to teaching (translating and preparing teaching materials, using modern means to make educational or documentary films) and research (studies of folk songs, folk narratives, and the history of folkloristics). The evolution of Eduard Laugaste’s folkloristic views can be followed from his student years to the end of the 1950s. This is characterised by the defining of folklore in the narrower and wider sense (in the former case, the folklore genres that could be investigated using methods of literary research – in line with the principles of the Soviet folkloristics; in the latter, folklore encompassed the whole cultural tradition). He maintained the position that folklore belonged to the past (as opposed to recognising the existence of the contemporary Soviet folklore). His interest in literary research and the changes in the theory of folklore in the pre-war period led him to study the folk song – its imagery and the information contained in songs about social relationships. In the research of folk narratives, he focused on the delimitation of genres of different types of folk narratives. For example, he distinguished everyday life stories ‘pajatus’ from legends ‘muistend’ (Laugaste’s teacher Oskar Loorits had classified such stories as personal and domestic life narratives). In humour, besides the classical joke ‘naljand’ he also pointed out a relatively later type of folklore, the punchline joke ‘anekdoot’. In conclusion, it might be said that on the one hand, the observed period in Laugaste’s work represents the ensuring of continuity in folkloristics, and on the other hand, the preparation of the ground for the emergence of the next generation of folklorists in the 1960s.
Birds are present in everyday life, in forests, parks, cities, in fields and on playgrounds, by rivers and at entrances to stores, etc. Their ubiquity in human everyday life all through history leads ...to “birds” developing metaphorical meanings and producing powerful stereotypical images, which also motivate wider conceptual meanings. This article focuses on the lexeme ptica “bird” in Slovenian short folklore forms, its stereotypical representation and its metaphorical meanings. The ethnolinguistic approach will provide insight into the characteristics ascribed to birds as well as personifications and metaphorical transfers in short folklore forms, i.e., it will show what the bird symbolizes.
Ptice su prisutne u našoj svakodnevici: u šumama, parkovima, gradovima, poljima i igralištima, uz rijeku, na ulazu u trgovinu itd. Budući da su kroz povijest ptice bile sveprisutne u svakodnevnom životu ljudi, jasno je da će “ptice” imati metaforička značenja kao i izrazite stereotipne predodžbe, koje će motivirati i šira konceptualna značenja.Ovaj se članak bavi leksemom “ptica” u slovenskim jednostavnim usmenoknjiževnim oblicima, stereotipnim prikazom ptica kao i metaforičkim značenjima. Etnolingvistički pristup pružit će uvid u karakteristike koje se pripisuju pticama kao i u personifikacije i metaforički prijenos koji se javlja u jednostavnim oblicima, odnosno pokazat će što sve ptica simbolizira.
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