Ethnopoetics

Rus.
При анализе словесной изобразительности в категориях возглавляемого В. М. Гацаком направления комплексной текстологии в российской филологической фольклористике используется понятие этнопоэтической константы, относящееся к традиционно устойчивым словосочетаниям протяженностью до группы строк, в которых возможна подвижность очертаний. Сравнения и метафоры, опирающиеся в словесной изобразительности на символику водоплавающих птиц: лебедя, гуся, уток (чернети морской, чирка-свистунка и алейки), представлены кроссжанрово в изустных рунах калевальской метрики от героико-мифологических до свадебной поэзии и необрядовой лирики. Водоплавающие птицы фигурируют в герои-ко-мифологических рунах и балладах как персонажи и объект охоты, т. е. включены в фабулы. В свадебных рунах и необрядовых элегиях водоплавающие птицы выступают в качестве референтов сравнений, метафор, иносказательных перифраз. Опирающиеся на водный пласт орнитологической символики этнопоэтические константы, соотносящиеся с образами лебедя, гуся, чернети-морской, алейки, на-ходят системные параллели в причитаниях. В обрядовых плачах водоплавающие птицы включены в жанрово определяющую систему иносказательных метафорических замен (А. С. Степанова) и фигурируют в качестве желаемых чудесных пре-вращений покойного. Вербализации орнитологической символики в средствах словесной изобразительности присуще варьирование в пределах устойчивости и лексической, и синтаксической. Охарактеризованы модели уподобления: сравнения с союзами и слитные конструкции с падежами существительных и сравни-тельной степенью прилагательных и наречий. В песенной памяти традиции представляется главной устойчивость изобразительного референта.  водоплавающие птицы.

Engl.
NATATORIAL BIRDS IN THE KALEVALA METER RUNES
When analyzing verbal descriptions in terms of complex textual study headed in Russian philological folkloristic by V. M. Gatsak, it is common to use the notion of ethnopoetic constant which relates to established collocations up to a row group in length with possible flexible structure. Similes and metaphors based on symbolism of natatorial birds such as swans, geese and ducks (scaup, common teal, long-tailed duck) appear across the genres of the famous Kalevala meter runes from heroic and mythological poems to wedding poetry and non-ceremonial lyrics. Natatorial birds appear in the plots of heroic and mythological runes and ballads both as characters and as hunting objects. While in the wedding runes and non-ceremonial elegies natatorial birds act as referents of similes , metaphors and allegories. The ethnopoetic constants dealing with aquatic sphere of ornithological symbolism are considered.

Los romances narran historias. Los cuentos populares también lo hacen. ¿Cómo definiríamos la relación entre ambos géneros de tradición oral? Nos proponemos describir sus vínculos y diferencias desde el punto de vista de su recepción y su función antropológica, a partir de un aspecto concreto: el paralelo actancial suegra / madrastra. [Folk ballads tell stories. Folktales do too. How would we define the relationship between both oral genres? We intend to describe their links and differences from the point of view of its reception and its anthropological function, based on a particular aspect: the actancial parallel mother-in-law / stepmother.]

An ethnographic narrative from Israel, with its sacred sites marked by war and destruction, explores the dynamics of absence and presence, of imagination and reality of religious dwelling places. This idea of a chapel of placelessness underlies an ethnographic field diary written in the summer 2015 in Israel. Sacred spaces offer their presence built on absence, on layers of cultural memory. The focal point of my diary is the town and the sacred sites of Nazareth, built on the incarnation of the word, and, more concretely, on Mary’s house. It is an everyday dwelling place in local narratives, and a centre point of worldwide pilgrimage. Yet, at the same time, the House of Mary is itself imagined as a travelling chapel, absent, but ubiquitously present in innumerable Loreto churches.

***

Etnografska pripoved iz Izraela in njegovih svetih krajev, ki sta jih zaznamovali uničenje in vojna, razgrinja dinamiko o odsotnosti in navzočnosti, o imaginaciji in resničnosti svetih bivanjskih krajev. Zamisli o kapeli brez kraja je podlaga etnografski terenski dnevnik, pisan poleti 2015 v Izraelu. Sveti kraji so ponavzočeni z odsotnostjo, na plasteh kulturnega spomina. Žarišče dnevnika je sveti kraj Nazaret, zgrajen na utelešenju sveta ali, določneje, na Marijini hiši. V lokalnih pripovedih je to vsakdanje bivališče in središčni kraj svetovnega romanja, vendar je Marijina hišica hkrati zamišljena kot potujoča kapela, odsotna, vendar vsepovsodno navzoča v brezštevilnih loretskih cerkvah.

World-Making Stories is a collection of Maidu creation stories that will help readers
appreciate California’s rich cultural tapestry. At the beginning of the twentieth century,
renowned storyteller Hanc’ibyjim (Tom Young) performed Maidu and Atsugewi
stories for anthropologist Ronald B. Dixon, who published these stories in 1912. The
resulting Maidu Texts presented the stories in numbered block texts that, while
serving as a source of linguistic decoding, also reflect the state of anthropological
linguistics of the era by not conveying a sense of rhetorical or poetic composition.
Sixty years later, noted linguist William Shipley engaged the texts as oral literature
and composed a free verse literary translation, which he paired with the artwork
of Daniel Stolpe and published in a limited-edition four-volume set that circulated
primarily to libraries and private collectors.
Here M. Eleanor Nevins and the Weje-ebis Majdy (Keep Speaking Maidu)
Language Revitalization Project Team illuminate these important tales in a new
way by restoring Maidu elements omitted by William Shipley and by bending the
translation to more closely correspond in poetic form to the Maidu original. The
beautifully told stories by Hanc’ibyjim are accompanied by Dan Stolpe’s intricate
illustrations and by personal and pedagogical essays from scholars and Maidu
leaders working to revitalize the language. The resulting World-Making Stories is a
necessity for language revitalization programs and an excellent model of indigenous
community-university collaboration.

Dedicamos el volumen 5 de Mundo amazónico a la memoria de Anastasia Candre Yamacuri —una mujer que siembra, cose, pinta, canta, danza, escribe, investiga— fallecida en mayo de 2014, cuando estaba llegando a su madurez creativa. En su memoria queremos destacar y mostrar el trabajo de otros creadores e investigadores indígenas y bosquesinos1. Las obras y resultados de investigación que aquí mostramos están todos enraizados en las lenguas y culturas de diversas regiones del continente, no sólo amazónicas, y al mismo tiempo son profundamente originales y personales, como lo es el trabajo de Anastasia.

This paper deals with the poetical practices of American antropologists, which both reveal important institutional issues and the intensity of relationships which this caused. It illustrates three consecutive periods during the history of American anthropology when researchers have shown a heightened interest for poetry, either because they themselves wrote some or because they where particularly interested in studying it. The first period corresponds to the foundational period of the discipline (192061930). For this the work of Edward Sapir and Ruth Fulton Benedict is examined. More particularly, the paper focuses on the hesitation of these two représentatives anthropologists of the "culture and personality" school between a career in anthropology or poetry. The second period shows the link between the poets of the Beat Generation and the ethno-poets who founded the journal Alcheringa Ethnopoetics (1960-1970). The last period studied concerns the "poetic turn" and post-modernism (from 1980) which coincide with individual and collective publications of "field poetry" (anthropological poetry). This period corresponds to the setting up of institutions such as compétitions and prizes for anthropological poetry.
Thème : Poésie et anthropologie
Mots clés : poésie ; histoire de l’anthropologie ; culture et personnalité ; ethno-poétique ; post-modernisme ; poésie anthropologique.
Key words : poetry ; history of anthropology ; culture and personality ; ethnopoetics ; post-modernism ; field poetry.

Cette thèse compare les poétiques à l’œuvre dans deux chansons urbaines, le tango chanté de Buenos Aires et le fado de Lisbonne, au moment de leur émergence sociale dans la seconde moitié du 19e siècle. La thèse interroge la représentation usuelle commune à ces deux traditions chantées et plus généralement aux chansons urbaines nées dans les sociétés industrielles de la seconde moitié du 19e siècle, selon laquelle il s’agirait d’expressions des bas-fonds urbains et des marges sociales, origines qui se traduiraient dans les paroles des premières chansons. Ces dernières sont de ce fait traditionnellement abordées par la critique comme des témoins sociaux, corpus poétique qui reflèterait l’expérience urbaine fin-de-siècle propre aux déclassés, en étant la trace de leur « voix » singulière et transgressive. Nous montrons que cette vulgate historiographique, dont le scénario mène systématiquement des marges au patrimoine national et/ou mondial, et que nous proposons de considérer comme un "grand récit" des origines, est partagée par la critique universitaire contemporaine, les promoteurs du Patrimoine Culturel Immatériel et les acteurs des deux traditions eux-mêmes, et qu'elle est matérialisée dans les paroles de chansons, les récits "ordinaires" et les performances. Nous la confrontons ensuite aux archives du tango et du fado, pour montrer qu’il s’agit d’une construction rétrospective émanant principalement de la littérature et de la presse fin-de-siècle. En contrepoint, nous démontrons à l’aide de sources variées que ces chansons sont des pratiques socialement transversales, apparues dans des contextes diversifiés. Nous replaçons ensuite les sources littéraires et les enquêtes sociales à partir desquelles a été élaborée cette fiction des origines dans le contexte particulier d’émergence d’un "imaginaire des bas-fonds" au milieu du 19e siècle, et d’une "poétique canaille", partagée par la littérature et la chanson, redéfinissant les frontières entre le savant et le populaire. Enfin, à travers une approche ethnopoétique des premiers corpus de chansons tango et fado, nous explorons cette "poétique canaille", en analysant notamment les opérations de montage, les médiatisations et les configurations textuelles qui permettent d’élucider, concrètement, la fabrique de ces deux traditions chantées. ************************** 

This doctoral thesis examines the poetics of two urban songs, Buenos Aires tango and Lisbon fado, as they socially emerged in the second half of the nineteenth century. It interrogates the prevailing representation, common to these two sung traditions and to several modern urban songs, according to which they originated in the underworld and outer fringes, and their lyrics bear witness to the urban experience of social outcasts. This historiographic vulgate, a script that leads systematically from the margins to national and/or global heritage, is reconsidered here as a "grand narrative" of origins, embodied in ordinary, scholarly and institutional tales and in fado and tango performances. The substantial lack of traces of these "marginal" practices in the Portuguese and Argentinian archives of the period is observed. It is then examined that these songs actually belong to socially transversal practices which appeared in various contexts in both cities. The "origin narrative" was configured retrospectively, based on fin-de-siecle social and criminal inquiries, literature and press, and should be linked to the "underworld imagination" developing on a world-scale at that time, and to the "rabble poetics" that spread at the same period in popular poetry, literature and song, redefining the frontiers between 'high' and 'low' culture. Finally, through an ethnopoetic approach of the first tango and fado repertoires, these "rabble poetics" are explored, analyzing processes of 'montage', mediatisations and textual configurations underlying, on a concrete level, the fabrication of these two song traditions.

From a corpus of 37 caves in the province of Castellón (Spain), we establish a classification in 17 themed typologies of legends (and other narrative texts of oral transmission), from which the presence and possibilities are studied of popular culture in education. field, linked to the knowledge of the territory.
We present three basic ways of accessing these natural and legendary spaces: the visit to the caves in search of the oral story, the preparation of interdisciplinary school projects that use the background of these caves and the use of children's literature set in these natural spaces.
It is concluded by highlighting the effectiveness of project-based work on elements of the oral transmission literature, on-the-road tours and literary routes through the natural landscape of the caves with legendary references.

Монография представляет собой первую серьезную попытку  анализа и обобщения прозвищного фольклора Русского Севера и Северо-Западного региона России. До сих пор данный фрагмент культуры рассматривался в аспекте микроэтномики. Автору удалось ввести проблему локально-групповых прозвищ и характеристик местных сообществ в контекст обряда, где слово и фразеологизм обретает многоуровневые интертекстуальные связи, создавая при этом возможности для появления отдельных жанров - нарративов и песен. Прозвищный фольклор предстает как целостный феномен традиционной культуры.
Издание адресовано ученым, аспирантам, студентам, всем, кто занимается проблемами фольклористики, этнологии и лингвистики.

The Monograph presents the first serious scientific attempt of generalization and analysis the nickname folklore materials of the North-West Russia region. Up to now the nickname folklore facts in linguistics were considered as microethnonymy aspects formed the independent section in onomastics researches. The author managed to enter the problem of the nickname folklore research into the ritual context, where the word or phrase finds layered intertextual connections, forming new possibilities to the appearance of independent genres with “nickname orientation” – narratives and songs.
Recommended to students, graduate students, teachers, scientists interested in folkloristics, ethnology and linguistics.

BLURB: Javanese shadow puppetry is a sophisticated dramatic form, often felt to be at the heart of Javanese culture, drawing on classic texts but with important contemporary resonance in fields like religion and politics. How to make sense of the shadow-play as a form of world-making? In Tall Tree, Nest of the Wind, Bernard Arps explores this question by considering an all-night performance of Dewa Ruci, a key play in the repertoire. Thrilling and profound, Dewa Ruci describes the mighty Bratasena’s quest for the ultimate mystical insight.
    The book presents  Dewa Ruci as rendered by the distinguished master puppeteer Ki Anom Soeroto in Amsterdam in 1987. The book’s unusual design presents the performance texts together with descriptions of the sounds and images that would remain obscure in conventional formats of presentation. Copious annotations probe beneath the surface and provide an understanding of the performance's cultural complexity. These annotations explain the meanings of puppet action, music, and shifts in language; how the puppeteer wove together into the drama the circumstances of the performance in Amsterdam, Islamic and other religious ideas, and references to contemporary Indonesian political ideology. Also revealed is the performance’s historical multilayering and the picture it paints of the Javanese past.
    Tall Tree, Nest of the Wind not only presents an unrivalled insight into the artistic depth of wayang kulit, it exemplifies a new field of study, the philology of performance.

Although current discussions of linguistic relativity tend to concen- trate on obligatory grammatical categories, the original architects of this school of thought, including Boas, Sapir, and Whorf, all argued strongly for the role of vocabulary in guiding human perception, especially in the culturally charged situations of everyday life. Taking the Hupa, Yurok, and Karuk languages of northwestern California as a case study, this article demonstrates the im- portance of vocabulary in conveying pervasive cultural ideologies, such as those associated with mythology, religion, folklore, or geographical systems of spatial orientation.Although current discussions of linguistic relativity tend to concen- trate on obligatory grammatical categories, the original architects of this school of thought, including Boas, Sapir, and Whorf, all argued strongly for the role of vocabulary in guiding human perception, especially in the culturally charged situations of everyday life. Taking the Hupa, Yurok, and Karuk languages of northwestern California as a case study, this article demonstrates the im- portance of vocabulary in conveying pervasive cultural ideologies, such as those associated with mythology, religion, folklore, or geographical systems of spatial orientation.

This chapter examines the rhetoric of Máirtín Ó Cadhain (1906–70), an Irish-language writer and activist. Ó Cadhain developed a few key tropes in Irish-language expression—‘dead’, ‘live’ and ‘clay’—to reveal a series of analogies which he used to interrogate the views and policies of the Irish state and its cultural, intellectual, and political representatives. His writing and oratory drew its power from its use of these key figures to effect a reversal of perspective in terms of what we see as “living” and “dead” in Irish social, cultural, and political life. Cré (‘clay’) functioned as a key trope for Ó Cadhain, standing for sociality itself—the language and social life of people, especially the Western, Irish-speaking lower classes. “Clay” was also the soil they are formed by, soil which is largely man-made in many communities where Irish is spoken.
I suggest that, like our bodies and the clay they return to, tropes are alive because they are made of the same stuff as ourselves. Ó Cadhain’s poetics point to a radical immanence within human sociality, and I argue that this is the stance from which his interventions gain their power.

Why do some Navajo poets write poetry that describes “ugliness” on the Navajo Nation and what do they believe they are doing by writing that poetry? I examine those questions by focusing on Blackhorse Mitchell's poem “Beauty of Navajoland.” I first discuss a performance of this poem to a Navajo and non-Navajo audience at Swarthmore College. I turn to discussions I had with Mitchell about his poetry and this poem. Contrary to an injunction on the Navajo Nation to dooajinída “don't talk about it,” Mitchell and other Navajo poets argue that it is only by talking about it that the “ugliness” can be restored to “beauty.” We need to understand these terms as bivalent terms — the iconicity of linguistic forms across languages — that reside in two linguistic systems.

Le pékâne est un genre poétique oral chanté a capella en peul par les pêcheurs de la vallée du fleuve Sénégal. À partir d'une comparaison entre les performances de Guélâye Âli Fall, célèbre chanteur du genre, décédé au début des années 1970 et les performances de deux chanteurs contemporains, cet article interrogera les évolutions canoniques récentes de ce genre. Il s'agira d'abord de comprendre pourquoi l'oeuvre de Guélâye s'est imposée comme la figure tutélaire reconnue aussi bien par les poètes que par les auditeurs comme un modèle idéal d'exécution du pékâne. Dans un deuxième temps, nous chercherons à mettre en lumière le recentrement sur la description du paysage opéré par les poètes contemporains. Ce réagencement sera analysé comme une reconfiguration canonique du pékâne en testant l'hypothèse d'une adaptation des performances à un contexte de production renouvelé où la poésie est reçue à l'aune de préoccupations plus environnementales. Abstract Pékâne is a fulani oral poetry sung a capella by fishermen of the River Senegal. From a comparison of Guélâye Âli Fall's performances, who was a famous pékâne singer and contemporaries singers's performances, this paper will question recent canonical developpment of this genre. First we will try to understand why Guélâye Fall became the main titulary figure recognised by both poets and auditeurs as ideal model of pekane execution. Secondly, we will highlight the focalisation on landscape made by contemporaries poets. This rearrangement will be analysed as a canonical reconfiguration of pékâne. Our hypothesis is that actual performances are adapting to a new production context where poetry is listened now with environnmental preoccupations in background.

This dissertation explores the nature, purpose, function and role of language documentation in order to further our understanding of mechanisms of language transmission and maintenance in the face of language endangerment and the repression of indigenous identity. Beyond its traditional use for generating linguistic data, I argue that the act and the process of language documentation can be understood as a comprehensive means to evaluate the interactions between speakers and researchers and as the stage where various beliefs and emotions are displayed. Extending the notion of “sites” developed by Silverstein (1998) and Kroskrity (2009), I argue that the act of language documentation can create “sites” of linguistic transaction, of self recognition, and of ideological and emotional stance shift.

      To attain this goal, this project linguistically and ethnographically documents and describes Belizean Mopan, an endangered Mayan language spoken in the southern Petén region of Guatemala and in the Maya Mountain region (Toledo District) of Southern Belize as a case study. Ethnographic and linguistic observation suggest that characteristics of Belizean Mopan do not simply stem from its linguistic features but rather are derived from ethnic complexity, language ideologies, identity politics, the history of Belize and speakers’ awareness of the self. Linguistic biographies, interviews, participant observation, and ethnographic accounts indicate that the individual’s emotional attachments to the language and the sense of belonging to one’s linguistic community are crucial keys for effective language documentation and revitalization. Discourse and grammatical analysis of sound symbolic words in narratives suggest that speakers’ linguistic affects can be evoked through sound itself. The devices used during language documentation, such as voice and video recorders can be understood as “signifying instruments” (J. D. Hill 2014), which amplify or evoke speakers’ and researchers’ linguistic ideologies and/or affects.

    Tzik ‘respect’ plays a pivotal role in distinguishing Mopans from other Maya groups and many stories and personal narratives either explicitly or subtly demonstrate the concept and importance of tzik for regulating and maintaining the traditional community and for having a successful life, which resembles the secretos ‘secrets’ described in Hofling’s (1996: 109) account of Itzaj Maya lives. Focusing on tzik gained through being a ch’ija’an kristiyanojo ‘the grown-up people’, I argue that storytelling is a primary device to transmit and circulate traditional knowledge, worldview, ideologies and memories of Maya people from the present, the immediate past, and the mythological past and that in a sense, the role and meaning of dream divinations and my language consultant, Orlando Sho’s musical performances can be equated with the practice of storytelling. The act of language documentation is a portal to the site of linguistic and cultural transaction and of world learning, in which I see a key to successful language renewal and revitalization.

Mantra Kidung Jawa dalam buku ini menjadi bahasan utama ditelisik dari pendekatan etnopuitika. Pada bab I dibahas penelitian-penelitian terdahulu tentang mantra Jawa, celah yang belum digarap, dan “pisau bedah” yang dipakai dalam buku ini. Kemudian, dalam bab II diuraikan keberadaan mantra, kitab primbon dalam masyarakat Jawa. Hal tersebut digunakan untuk memberi gambaran secara saksama mantra dalam lanskap kebudayaan Jawa. Pemaparan ini disusul dengan bagaimana mantra dalam Kitab Primbon Atashadur Adammakna digali, disajikan, dan diterjemahkan (bab III). Secara khusus anasir-anasir kebahasaan yang membangun dibahas secara mendalam dalam Bab IV.Bahasan selanjutnya membuhul-simpulkan aspek lingual dengan aspek transendental, yakni bahasan keselamatan, kesaktian, dan  keyakinan, yang mengalasi motif pembacaan mantra. Selain itu, linguistik sinkretik menjadi temuan yang penting dalam buku ini. Ia menjadi bukti lingual untuk kajian lebih luas dalam bidang antropologi, kajian agama dan tradisi, dan kajian sastra pertunjukkan. Dalam bab akhir disajikan sejumlah perenungan atas tersungkur dan tersingkirnya tradisi pembacaan mantra saat ini dan sejumlah kontribusi teoretik dalam kajian linguistik.

Employing a methodology which gathers the traditional Arabic rhetoric-grounded tools of analysis, cross-temporal sources on ethnopoetics, and Arabic folk literature, this paper focuses on mawwāl’s revival (Egyptian traditional folksong) within Najīb Surūr’s (1932-1978 ) experimental dramaturgical production. In particular, providing a brief philological overview of mawwāl’s challenging origin and evolution, this study argues how an Arabic linguistically/rhetorically grounded approach to the little-explored mawwāl’s structure and subjects, not only enhances how it is clearly based on rhetorical patterns. It also enable us to reconstruct a more organic criticism on Surūr’s conscious attempt at broadcasting an innovative form of playwriting within the framework of innovations provided by the Sixties and Seventies’ generation of Egyptian authors.

Is there such a thing as "oral textual scholarship"? And if so, of what does it consist? The present chapter addresses these questions through attention to the complex processes through which "oral texts" are made. A basic starting point is the observation that variation is the soul of oral tradition. Another fundamental principle is that it is impossible to capture the full nature of the voice through the media of script and print, though a trace of the voice can be captured. A third point to keep in mind is that the process of collecting and editing an "oral text" necessarily transforms the spoken or sung word into a hybrid entity, part oral and part literary.

Examples of oral text-making that are discussed here include a traditional British-American ballad text recovered from the Southern Appalachians; an Anglo-Saxon charm recorded in the collection known as 'Lacnunga'; the Old French 'Chanson de Roland' as edited in its variant versions in a recent multi-volume critical edition; and a well known Native American oral autobiography, 'Black Elk Speaks'. In passing, ethnopoetic approaches to the transcription of the spoken or sung word are evaluated and critiqued.

On the basis of the available 19th and 20th century ethnographic, oral literary, lexical and phraseological data, this article proposes an ethnolinguistic and poetic-performative reading of the motivations and strategies of cattle and wolf metaphors in traditional wedding customs of the Dinaric area. As the author shows, a comprehensive analysis of wolf symbolism in the given context must necessarily depart from those aspects of expressive culture that are inextricably bound up with cattle breeding and 'cattle idiom' in the area in question. Wolf metaphors, then, are linked mainly with 'bride-takers' and with consummation. The metaphoric predication of bride-taker : bride ; wolf : cattle in its different aspects is actualised most pervasively in the Dinaric wedding ritual of vukovi 'wolves', the semantics and pragmatics of which correspondingly form the focus of the investigation.

This is a draft entry on Dell Hymes, for the Sage Encyclopedia of Methods in the Social Sciences. It is written to the specifications of their "change-maker" format. I welcome all comments--especially concerned about accuracy in narrating Dell's role in disciplinary history but also readability questions, given that this entry is aimed at a cross-disciplinary (including entry-level) social science audience.

This article takes seriously Edward Sapir’s observation about poetry as an example of linguistic relativity. Taking my cue from Dwight Bolinger’s “word affinities,” this article reports on the ways sounds of poetry evoke and convoke imaginative possibilities through phonological iconicity. In working with Navajos in translating poetry, I have come to appreciate the sound suggestiveness of that poetry and the imaginative possibilities that are bound up in the sounds of Navajo. It seems that just such sound suggestiveness via phonological iconicity and the ways they orient our imaginations are a crucial locus for thinking through linguistic relativities.

Cet article porte sur la somatisation du processus créateur en partant du cas des poètes touaregs. En analysant deux corpora, les textes où les poètes se décrivent en proie à l’inspiration et les récits que les poètes « en chair et en os » font de ce moment lors de conversations informelles et durant l’acte créateur observé par l’ethnologue, deux différences sont ainsi notées. L’une concerne le corps et les parties du corps impliquées dans le processus créateur. Dans les premiers textes, il est question de « corps en morceaux, en ébullition, en explosion » et des troubles émotionnels qui affectent les organes internes tels que foie, cœur, rate et entrailles. Mais, pour les poètes « en chair et en os », la création se traduit essentiellement par des effets sur la peau (chair de poule par exemple) et les « petits poils et duvets » (hérissement), sur des organes externes donc. L’autre différence concerne la description de l’acte créateur. Si les textes poétiques fixent leur attention sur le moment qui précède la création et font silence sur l’aprèscréation, les récits agissent de façon symétrique et inversée : silence sur l’inspiration et discours sur l’après création, sur le « processus d’autoguérison » apporté par le processus créateur. Pour expliquer ces différences, l’hypothèse suivante est posée : se décrire en état de possession, comme le fait le poète dans cette tradition orale, présente un double avantage, celui de l’inscrire dans une tradition ancienne et celui de mettre en scène un état familier pour ses auditeurs, plus familier du moins que l’inspiration.

This article focuses on the somatization of the creative process through the exploration of the ethnographic case of Tuareg poets. By analysing two corpora- the texts in which the poets describe themselves as “inspired” and as “prey to inspiration” and the informal descriptions given by “flesh and blood” poets of the creative process in moments of informal conversation and during my observation of the creative act. I was able to identify two distinguishing features. One concerns the body and the parts of the body involved in the creative process. As regards the former there is talk of “bodies in pieces, boiling, explosion” and emotional disorders that affect the internal organs such as the liver, heart, spleen and bowels. Moreover for “flesh-and-blood” poets, creation is essentially reflected in effects on the skin (e.g. goose bumps) and “small hairs and downs” (bristling), on external organs. The second feature concerns the description of the creative act. While poetic texts focus on the moment before creation and are silent about postcreation, the informal descriptions operate in a symmetrical and inverted way, offering silence on inspiration and discourse on the post-creation, on the “process of creation self-healing” brought by the creative process. To explain these differences, the following hypothesis is posited: to describe oneself in a state of possession, as does the poet in this oral tradition, has a double advantage, that of putting himself in an old tradition and that of staging a familiar state for his listeners, more familiar at least than inspiration.

It has been observed that in fauna terminology there exists an inverse relationship between the size of an animal and the length of its name. This phenomenon seems to hold in the Tibeto-Burman language Sida, spoken in Laos and Vietnam. Examination of word-formation processes operating in the Sida fauna lexicon shows that there are both descriptive and depictive modes, which reflect a deeper system of cultural intimacy related to perceived 'closeness' to human life. Analysis of the polysyllabic, less transparent names within the Sida system of fauna nomenclature, uncovers an aesthetic that values parallelism, euphony and semantic play. This ethnopoetic approach to fauna nomenclature provides insights into the rich detail of the lexicon, enabling an interpretation of Sida worldviews based on the interface of sound, structure and meaning.