Pub Date : 2020-12-01DOI: 10.7592/fejf2020.80.novik
A. Novik
The article deals with the rite of circumcision among the Muslims in the Western Balkans, one of the most widespread ritual practices, held with some variations mostly at the age of 3 to 7. The tradition that never gets explicitly brought up in the sacred text of the Quran has become practically mandatory. Among the rites of passage, circumcision is considered by Muslims a significant act, as it symbolizes the transition from the status of a child to the status of an adult who has all the rights of a “full-fledged” man. In the Balkan Muslim community, an uncircumcised man is regarded as an exception to the rule. In the second half of the twentieth century, the technical side of the rite was radically changed, but it has not affected its sacred and traditional elements. Nowadays, in its origins, its religious roots, its folk depictions and its place in the relations between “us” and “them”, the circumcision ceremony is a rite of initiation and is one of the most remarkable ritual practices that demonstrates committal to Islam. The article is mainly based on the actual field data gathered by the author in Albania, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Montenegro, and other countries of the region during the last three decades.
{"title":"The Rite of Male Circumcision among the Muslim Population in the Western Balkans","authors":"A. Novik","doi":"10.7592/fejf2020.80.novik","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7592/fejf2020.80.novik","url":null,"abstract":"The article deals with the rite of circumcision among the Muslims in the Western Balkans, one of the most widespread ritual practices, held with some variations mostly at the age of 3 to 7. The tradition that never gets explicitly brought up in the sacred text of the Quran has become practically mandatory. Among the rites of passage, circumcision is considered by Muslims a significant act, as it symbolizes the transition from the status of a child to the status of an adult who has all the rights of a “full-fledged” man. In the Balkan Muslim community, an uncircumcised man is regarded as an exception to the rule. In the second half of the twentieth century, the technical side of the rite was radically changed, but it has not affected its sacred and traditional elements. Nowadays, in its origins, its religious roots, its folk depictions and its place in the relations between “us” and “them”, the circumcision ceremony is a rite of initiation and is one of the most remarkable ritual practices that demonstrates committal to Islam. The article is mainly based on the actual field data gathered by the author in Albania, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Montenegro, and other countries of the region during the last three decades.","PeriodicalId":42641,"journal":{"name":"Folklore-Electronic Journal of Folklore","volume":"2 1","pages":"151-168"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2020-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75348923","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-12-01DOI: 10.7592/fejf2020.80.ukraine
Oksana Labashchuk, H. Derkach, Tetiana Reshetukha
The article focuses on the manner natal narratives accumulate and transmit prevailing traditional ideas about motherhood and the baby in modern society. It lists and exemplifies the major motifs that are typical of oral tradition of the Ukrainians, Slavs, and other peoples. This research is based on stories of more than 500 women about personal experience of pregnancy and childbirth, which were recorded using the narrative interview method. The thick description method (Clifford Geertz 1973) has been applied for material interpretation. The authors analyse animal–child symbolism in the narration of pregnancy, the accents on weather and time while telling about the moment of birth, and the manifestation of each child’s uniqueness in the mother’s interpretation.
{"title":"Child in the Natal Narratives of Modern Ukrainian Mothers: Folkloric Symbols and Frequent Motifs","authors":"Oksana Labashchuk, H. Derkach, Tetiana Reshetukha","doi":"10.7592/fejf2020.80.ukraine","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7592/fejf2020.80.ukraine","url":null,"abstract":"The article focuses on the manner natal narratives accumulate and transmit prevailing traditional ideas about motherhood and the baby in modern society. It lists and exemplifies the major motifs that are typical of oral tradition of the Ukrainians, Slavs, and other peoples. This research is based on stories of more than 500 women about personal experience of pregnancy and childbirth, which were recorded using the narrative interview method. The thick description method (Clifford Geertz 1973) has been applied for material interpretation. The authors analyse animal–child symbolism in the narration of pregnancy, the accents on weather and time while telling about the moment of birth, and the manifestation of each child’s uniqueness in the mother’s interpretation.","PeriodicalId":42641,"journal":{"name":"Folklore-Electronic Journal of Folklore","volume":"38 1","pages":"69-96"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2020-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76514773","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-12-01DOI: 10.7592/fejf2020.80.gramatchikova
N. Gramatchikova
This article is dedicated to the research of the structures and meaningful concepts of women’s stories about the first childbirth, obtained by their personal experience in the governmental obstetrical system. Narratives of childbirth contain complex knowledge including description of physiological and emotional reactions and characteristics of Russian maternal initiation practices, culminating in the maternity ward. Similar narratives posted on social network and web pages of family portals reveal elements of hypertext and several leading factors of their origin, such as being the consolidation of a new identity through a retrospective autobiographical story, joining the community of motherhood, broadcasting experience to its new members, etc.
{"title":"“How I Gave Birth” (and Why I Am Writing about It): Women’s Narratives of First Childbirth Experiences from Internet Publications","authors":"N. Gramatchikova","doi":"10.7592/fejf2020.80.gramatchikova","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7592/fejf2020.80.gramatchikova","url":null,"abstract":"This article is dedicated to the research of the structures and meaningful concepts of women’s stories about the first childbirth, obtained by their personal experience in the governmental obstetrical system. Narratives of childbirth contain complex knowledge including description of physiological and emotional reactions and characteristics of Russian maternal initiation practices, culminating in the maternity ward. Similar narratives posted on social network and web pages of family portals reveal elements of hypertext and several leading factors of their origin, such as being the consolidation of a new identity through a retrospective autobiographical story, joining the community of motherhood, broadcasting experience to its new members, etc.","PeriodicalId":42641,"journal":{"name":"Folklore-Electronic Journal of Folklore","volume":"51 1","pages":"97-124"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2020-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89503224","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-08-01DOI: 10.7592/fejf2020.79.korolainen
Kari Korolainen
This paper discusses mobility within early twentieth-century folklore descriptions. Mobility is approached in terms of the culture of motion (Naukkarinen 2006), and in relation to borders and borderscapes (Brambilla 2015; Dell ́Agnese & Amilhat Szary 2015; Perera 2007; Rajaram & Grundy-Warr 2007) as well as stretched environments (Povrzanović Frykman & Humbracht 2013). The objective is to examine how mobility appears in former folklore contexts in case the viewpoint of drawing is concerned. Another aim is to combine art making with the analysis. The material is based on a folklore survey conducted by the Finnish Literature Society. The focus is on those survey responses that relate to eastern Finland and Finnish and Russian Karelia. Multimodal analysis is used for analyzing the relationship between the featured drawings and texts. Thus, the results demonstrate how the analysis, when accompanied by art making, could provide a point of departure for developing a multidisciplinary approach to discuss mobility and borders. The article illustrates how the materials, the analysis, and creative work intertwine in assessing presumptions and redirecting interpretations.
{"title":"Graphic Aspects of Mobility: Folkloristic-Ethnological Drawings as a Starting Point for Discussing Mobility and Borders","authors":"Kari Korolainen","doi":"10.7592/fejf2020.79.korolainen","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7592/fejf2020.79.korolainen","url":null,"abstract":"This paper discusses mobility within early twentieth-century folklore descriptions. Mobility is approached in terms of the culture of motion (Naukkarinen 2006), and in relation to borders and borderscapes (Brambilla 2015; Dell ́Agnese & Amilhat Szary 2015; Perera 2007; Rajaram & Grundy-Warr 2007) as well as stretched environments (Povrzanović Frykman & Humbracht 2013). The objective is to examine how mobility appears in former folklore contexts in case the viewpoint of drawing is concerned. Another aim is to combine art making with the analysis. The material is based on a folklore survey conducted by the Finnish Literature Society. The focus is on those survey responses that relate to eastern Finland and Finnish and Russian Karelia. Multimodal analysis is used for analyzing the relationship between the featured drawings and texts. Thus, the results demonstrate how the analysis, when accompanied by art making, could provide a point of departure for developing a multidisciplinary approach to discuss mobility and borders. The article illustrates how the materials, the analysis, and creative work intertwine in assessing presumptions and redirecting interpretations.","PeriodicalId":42641,"journal":{"name":"Folklore-Electronic Journal of Folklore","volume":"15 1","pages":"115-136"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2020-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79074231","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-08-01DOI: 10.7592/fejf2020.79.toulouze_anisimov
E. Toulouze, N. Anisimov, Russia Literature Izhevsk
The Eastern Udmurt are a peripheral Udmurt ethnographic group whose members live mostly in Bashkortostan. This article introduces the reader to the migrations that led to the formation of this group, and to the main cultural characteristics that determine the originality of the Eastern Udmurt. Their settling in the Bashkir lands took place due to the penetration of the Russian power in the Volga region, which happened in the sixteenth century through warfare that damaged the local population. They started to settle in more peaceful regions, and the migration was continued in the subsequent centuries, reaching the peak with the forceful Evangelisation of the eighteenth century. This culture is rich and original: it has retained many Udmurt features as the ethnic religion that is still alive, and has merged with Turkic features in several important aspects, such as language, costume, and music. This is the first part of a study that will continue with the observation of Eastern Udmurt organisations and the relation to their core territory, nowadays the Republic of Udmurtia.
{"title":"An Ethno-Cultural Portrait of a Diaspora in Central Russia: The Formation and Culture of the Eastern Udmurt","authors":"E. Toulouze, N. Anisimov, Russia Literature Izhevsk","doi":"10.7592/fejf2020.79.toulouze_anisimov","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7592/fejf2020.79.toulouze_anisimov","url":null,"abstract":"The Eastern Udmurt are a peripheral Udmurt ethnographic group whose members live mostly in Bashkortostan. This article introduces the reader to the migrations that led to the formation of this group, and to the main cultural characteristics that determine the originality of the Eastern Udmurt. Their settling in the Bashkir lands took place due to the penetration of the Russian power in the Volga region, which happened in the sixteenth century through warfare that damaged the local population. They started to settle in more peaceful regions, and the migration was continued in the subsequent centuries, reaching the peak with the forceful Evangelisation of the eighteenth century. This culture is rich and original: it has retained many Udmurt features as the ethnic religion that is still alive, and has merged with Turkic features in several important aspects, such as language, costume, and music. This is the first part of a study that will continue with the observation of Eastern Udmurt organisations and the relation to their core territory, nowadays the Republic of Udmurtia.","PeriodicalId":42641,"journal":{"name":"Folklore-Electronic Journal of Folklore","volume":"3 1","pages":"31-58"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2020-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80903529","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-08-01DOI: 10.7592/fejf2020.79.introduction
L. Kurvet-Käosaar, T. Ojamaa
The introduction to the second part of the special issue, titled “On the Move: Migration and Diasporas”, focuses on current methodological advances in the field, in particular on mixed-methods approaches and methods for studying digital diasporas as well as some related conceptual concerns, for example, the reemergence and critical revision of the concept of cosmopolitanism. The relevance of the contributions of the current issue to larger tendencies and theoretical debates on mobility and migration is outlined. Similar to the first part of the special issue (Folklore: Electronic Journal of Folklore, Vol. 78), the included articles address a variety of questions and problems concerning migration processes in Eastern European, Baltic, and Nordic contexts, methodologically engaging with virtual and multi-sited ethnography, autoethnography, multimodal analysis, and typologies of multilingual socialization, and utilizing a variety of sources, including archival materials, life writings, and literary production.
{"title":"Towards New Methodologies in Migration and Diaspora Studies: An Introduction","authors":"L. Kurvet-Käosaar, T. Ojamaa","doi":"10.7592/fejf2020.79.introduction","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7592/fejf2020.79.introduction","url":null,"abstract":"The introduction to the second part of the special issue, titled “On the Move: Migration and Diasporas”, focuses on current methodological advances in the field, in particular on mixed-methods approaches and methods for studying digital diasporas as well as some related conceptual concerns, for example, the reemergence and critical revision of the concept of cosmopolitanism. The relevance of the contributions of the current issue to larger tendencies and theoretical debates on mobility and migration is outlined. Similar to the first part of the special issue (Folklore: Electronic Journal of Folklore, Vol. 78), the included articles address a variety of questions and problems concerning migration processes in Eastern European, Baltic, and Nordic contexts, methodologically engaging with virtual and multi-sited ethnography, autoethnography, multimodal analysis, and typologies of multilingual socialization, and utilizing a variety of sources, including archival materials, life writings, and literary production.","PeriodicalId":42641,"journal":{"name":"Folklore-Electronic Journal of Folklore","volume":"40 1","pages":"7-30"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2020-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85800126","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-08-01DOI: 10.7592/fejf2020.79.wolf_knuts
U. Wolf-Knuts
There are innumerable nuances in people’s behaviour when they become frustrated. In this article I analyse interviews about a specific case when, in a relatively small Lutheran community, it turned out that a highly respected person, a leader and preacher, was a paedophile. The reluctant accepter, the disappointed accepter, and the explaining accepter are three types of narrators. What were their reactions, what resources did they apply in our conversation? Partly, religion played the role of an obstacle for further belief, but partly it was also a support for the members of the community.
{"title":"“Still, I Can Hardly Believe It”: Reactions, Resources, and Religion in Conversations about Sexual Abuse of Children among Laestadians in Finland","authors":"U. Wolf-Knuts","doi":"10.7592/fejf2020.79.wolf_knuts","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7592/fejf2020.79.wolf_knuts","url":null,"abstract":"There are innumerable nuances in people’s behaviour when they become frustrated. In this article I analyse interviews about a specific case when, in a relatively small Lutheran community, it turned out that a highly respected person, a leader and preacher, was a paedophile. The reluctant accepter, the disappointed accepter, and the explaining accepter are three types of narrators. What were their reactions, what resources did they apply in our conversation? Partly, religion played the role of an obstacle for further belief, but partly it was also a support for the members of the community.","PeriodicalId":42641,"journal":{"name":"Folklore-Electronic Journal of Folklore","volume":"236 1","pages":"203-218"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2020-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77474239","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-08-01DOI: 10.7592/fejf2020.79.sakova_laak
A. Sakova, Marin Laak
The paper explores the relational ways in how the identity of a creative person is constructed in exile, in dialogue with the relational environments and proximate others. The case study for the article is the writer and literary scholar of Estonian and Latvian heritage, Ivar Ivask (1927–1992), who fled Latvia during World War II, spent some years in displaced persons’ camps in Germany, later on studied German literature and art history in Marburg (Germany), and starting from 1950 lived and worked in the United States. Ivask’s journey suggests that at points in his life he could have been a Latvian, an Estonian, a Baltic-German or even an English-speaking American. The paper attempts to demonstrate the reasons why Ivask became, despite everything, an Estonian writer and how this had a great deal to do with the relational understanding of himself: his sensorial childhood experiences in southern Estonia and his mentors and other writers he admired (e.g. Bernard Kangro), who played a crucial role in his choosing Estonian to be the language of his poetry as well as his diaries. We further contend that by engaging himself with different literatures and authors from around the world in different languages, Ivask was constantly looking for new poetic and literary discoveries and perhaps therefore insights into himself. Reading other authors’ work and relating himself to their writings meant he was therefore also engaging with his own identity. In this light, we contend that Ivask’s literary criticism of other authors’ work as well as his literary correspondences with them provides a model of how the social and http://www.folklore.ee/folklore/vol79/sakova_laak.pdf 72 www.folklore.ee/folklore Aija Sakova, Marin Laak literary self can be constructed in exile, in dialogue with the relational environments and influences of proximate others, including respected authors, some of whom served as role models and mentors.
{"title":"Situating Oneself Within the Estonian Language and World Literature: Ivar Ivask’s Relational Ways of Self-Understanding","authors":"A. Sakova, Marin Laak","doi":"10.7592/fejf2020.79.sakova_laak","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7592/fejf2020.79.sakova_laak","url":null,"abstract":"The paper explores the relational ways in how the identity of a creative person is constructed in exile, in dialogue with the relational environments and proximate others. The case study for the article is the writer and literary scholar of Estonian and Latvian heritage, Ivar Ivask (1927–1992), who fled Latvia during World War II, spent some years in displaced persons’ camps in Germany, later on studied German literature and art history in Marburg (Germany), and starting from 1950 lived and worked in the United States. Ivask’s journey suggests that at points in his life he could have been a Latvian, an Estonian, a Baltic-German or even an English-speaking American. The paper attempts to demonstrate the reasons why Ivask became, despite everything, an Estonian writer and how this had a great deal to do with the relational understanding of himself: his sensorial childhood experiences in southern Estonia and his mentors and other writers he admired (e.g. Bernard Kangro), who played a crucial role in his choosing Estonian to be the language of his poetry as well as his diaries. We further contend that by engaging himself with different literatures and authors from around the world in different languages, Ivask was constantly looking for new poetic and literary discoveries and perhaps therefore insights into himself. Reading other authors’ work and relating himself to their writings meant he was therefore also engaging with his own identity. In this light, we contend that Ivask’s literary criticism of other authors’ work as well as his literary correspondences with them provides a model of how the social and http://www.folklore.ee/folklore/vol79/sakova_laak.pdf 72 www.folklore.ee/folklore Aija Sakova, Marin Laak literary self can be constructed in exile, in dialogue with the relational environments and influences of proximate others, including respected authors, some of whom served as role models and mentors.","PeriodicalId":42641,"journal":{"name":"Folklore-Electronic Journal of Folklore","volume":"85 1","pages":"71-90"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2020-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85986872","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-08-01DOI: 10.7592/fejf2020.79.fiadotava
Anastasiya Fiadotava
The paper discusses the status of mother-in-law humor in the context of humorous family communication in contemporary Belarusian families. The humorous communication is represented by widespread canned jokes that portray the wife’s mother as an ill-natured and imperious character, and by personal humorous stories and other personal forms of humorous communication. Canned joke texts reflect structural issues and are impersonal, but the practice of joke-telling is not. During my fieldwork among Belarusian couples, motherin-law jokes were often contextualized in the tellers’ own family relationships. Thus, no clear-cut distinction was made between canned jokes, teasing, and other forms of family humor. The examples of mother-in-law jokes and other forms of mother-in-law humor, as well as the practices and reflections connected to them, open up the floor for discussing the interconnections between the cultural codes that lie at the basis of the jokes and the emic practices of joke-telling. The paper also explores the ways in which mother-in-law humor adds a new dimension to the anthropological concept of joking relationships.
{"title":"Where the Structural Meets the Personal: Mother-In-Law Humor Between a Joke Cycle and Joking Relationships in Belarus","authors":"Anastasiya Fiadotava","doi":"10.7592/fejf2020.79.fiadotava","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7592/fejf2020.79.fiadotava","url":null,"abstract":"The paper discusses the status of mother-in-law humor in the context of humorous family communication in contemporary Belarusian families. The humorous communication is represented by widespread canned jokes that portray the wife’s mother as an ill-natured and imperious character, and by personal humorous stories and other personal forms of humorous communication. Canned joke texts reflect structural issues and are impersonal, but the practice of joke-telling is not. During my fieldwork among Belarusian couples, motherin-law jokes were often contextualized in the tellers’ own family relationships. Thus, no clear-cut distinction was made between canned jokes, teasing, and other forms of family humor. The examples of mother-in-law jokes and other forms of mother-in-law humor, as well as the practices and reflections connected to them, open up the floor for discussing the interconnections between the cultural codes that lie at the basis of the jokes and the emic practices of joke-telling. The paper also explores the ways in which mother-in-law humor adds a new dimension to the anthropological concept of joking relationships.","PeriodicalId":42641,"journal":{"name":"Folklore-Electronic Journal of Folklore","volume":"102 1","pages":"157-182"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2020-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84831288","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-08-01DOI: 10.7592/fejf2020.79.mikkila
Elina Mikkilä
The article portrays an emerging generation of authors who have acquired a foreign language (in this case German) as a means of their literary expression. Firstly, endeavors of literary scholars to describe the currently booming ‘migration literature’ in its historical development are introduced. I then go on to propose a typology of non-monolingual literary writing based on such authors’ language biographies. By considering the underlying (socio)linguistic contexts, this approach mirrors my personal experience as a Finnish researcher-author writing in an acquired language, German. It draws attention to the role that a language – i.e. the very instrument of authors’ expression – takes in the ongoing process of non-monolingual literary identity formation. By linking the poetological reflections of the long-established, naturally bilingual ‘migration authors’ with my (autobiographical) observations on the gradually emerging discourse of ‘culturally bilingual writers’, the second part of the paper addresses the following issues: the repercussions of normative language learning on the literary writing process; the effects of writing in an acquired language on the literary practice; the impressions of non-belonging and disorientation triggered by the sensation of (socio)linguistic inferiority; the ever-changing construction of meaning in a rhizomatic/hybrid creation process and the emergence of a unique voice out of the multitude of possible combinations; the creative and empowering potential of minority discourses in a world on the move, in which non-monolingual writing is seen as one of the most significant contributions to contemporary literature.
{"title":"Literary Biographies Without a Fixed Linguistic Abode","authors":"Elina Mikkilä","doi":"10.7592/fejf2020.79.mikkila","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7592/fejf2020.79.mikkila","url":null,"abstract":"The article portrays an emerging generation of authors who have acquired a foreign language (in this case German) as a means of their literary expression. Firstly, endeavors of literary scholars to describe the currently booming ‘migration literature’ in its historical development are introduced. I then go on to propose a typology of non-monolingual literary writing based on such authors’ language biographies. By considering the underlying (socio)linguistic contexts, this approach mirrors my personal experience as a Finnish researcher-author writing in an acquired language, German. It draws attention to the role that a language – i.e. the very instrument of authors’ expression – takes in the ongoing process of non-monolingual literary identity formation. By linking the poetological reflections of the long-established, naturally bilingual ‘migration authors’ with my (autobiographical) observations on the gradually emerging discourse of ‘culturally bilingual writers’, the second part of the paper addresses the following issues: the repercussions of normative language learning on the literary writing process; the effects of writing in an acquired language on the literary practice; the impressions of non-belonging and disorientation triggered by the sensation of (socio)linguistic inferiority; the ever-changing construction of meaning in a rhizomatic/hybrid creation process and the emergence of a unique voice out of the multitude of possible combinations; the creative and empowering potential of minority discourses in a world on the move, in which non-monolingual writing is seen as one of the most significant contributions to contemporary literature.","PeriodicalId":42641,"journal":{"name":"Folklore-Electronic Journal of Folklore","volume":"10 1","pages":"91-114"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2020-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79509191","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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