Oral Traditions and the Verbal Arts

A Guide to Research Practices

Ruth Finnegan

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2003
• ISBN:
  9781134945382
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Sozialwissenschaften
• Subtopic: Anthropologie

The study of oral traditions and verbal arts leads into an area of human culture to which anthropologists are increasingly turning their attention. Oral Traditions and the Verbal Arts provides up-to-date guidance on how to approach the study of oral form and their performances, treating both the practicalities of fieldwork and the methods by which oral texts and performances can be observed, collected or analysed. It also relates to those current controversies about the nature of performance and of 'text'.
Designed as a practical and systematic introduction to the processes and problems of researching in this area, this is an invaluable guide for students, and lecturers of anthropology and cultural studies and also for general readers who are interested in enjoying oral literature for its own sake.

1
Introduction: scope and terminology

1.1
PREVIEW

The study of verbal arts and oral traditions has long seemed a Cinderella subject within British social anthropology, in the past often treated as more a matter for folklorists, oral historians or linguists rather than mainstream anthropology. But this position is changing. This book reflects both these developing interests within anthropology and their links with concurrent intellectual trends in related disciplines.

Anthropologists have in fact always taken some interest in patterned communication and tradition, in myth, and in ritual—even if British anthropologists have in the past focused less than their American or European counterparts on the artistic or performance elements of these processes. The anthropological tradition of combining in-depth fieldwork with a comparative perspective has also influenced work in this area. This has become increasingly important as older divides between anthropology and such other disciplines as oral history, literary study and, in particular, folklore are now narrowing.

More specifically, recent moves in anthropology have led to more interest in the kinds of topics covered in this volume. Besides the longer-term and often-cited shift ‘from function to meaning’, which has helped to heighten the visibility of verbal formulations and artistry, there is also now keen anthropological discussion of theoretical ideas relating to performance and to the ethnography of speaking. Older emphases on the primarily cognitive aspects of the ‘rationality debate’ or on the proclivities of the human mind—themselves not unrelated to the topics covered here—have been broadening to include analysis of artistry and emotion, and their manifestation in words and in action. Perhaps the most influential development has been the increasing attention to personal creativity and experience, part of what Peter Rivière sums up as ‘the reinstatement of the individual as a thinking and feeling subject who is the creator of his society and culture’ (1989:22). The social—and often political—construction of such processes as memory, speech, literacy, myth, or the control of knowledge is also increasingly appreciated, issues now moving to the centre stage in modern anthropological thinking.

Not that the subjects discussed here are easy to define or delimit. Indeed it has to be faced that any description of the scope and limits of this book—the obvious topic for this introductory section—immediately runs into complications. For not only is the ‘subject’ itself elusive, but the questions to be discussed are embattled between partly contrasting partly overlapping disciplines. Neither the central concepts nor what these fundamentally refer to are agreed.

This first chapter must therefore open with some consideration of these issues, including the problems in what at first sight seem innocent matters of terminology. This is followed, first, by a survey of some influential theoretical perspectives (chapter 2), then more detailed discussions of the once-typical stages of: preparing for the field (chapter 3), collecting and observing while there (4 and 5), useful questions and classifications (6 and 7), analysing and processing the data (8 and 9) and, finally, the ethical issues that social researchers—and particularly those involved in fieldwork—need to bear in mind (10). Not all research on oral traditions and verbal arts follows this traditional order, of course. Fieldwork may be neither fulltime nor in another culture; analysis may be of texts recorded by others; and collecting, observing and processing may be continuous rather than separated stages. But since any texts or reports relating to oral tradition or the verbal arts are shaped through some such processes as those discussed in chapters 3–9 (and affected by ethically-contentious decisions too) understanding these phases is as relevant for those dealing with collections made by others as for those engaged in firsthand recording or observing.

Both this opening chapter and the later presentation are influenced by a view of oral traditions and verbal arts not as neutral textual data—in the past often the dominant model—but as ultimately based in, perhaps constituted by, social processes. The procedures of recording, presenting or analysing them are, similarly, human and interactive processes which in turn play a part in structuring the objects of study. These themes will be familiar ones for anthropologists. They are consonant both with the continuing anthropological tradition of studying the conventions of human culture in their own meaningful context and with recent sensitivities to the processes, ambiguities and reflexivities of human action.

1.2
‘LANGUAGE’, ‘SPEECH’ AND ‘TEXT’: SOME INITIAL QUESTIONS

Obviously it is impossible for either this volume or the keenest researcher to follow up everything on language or on ‘tradition’, and the focus here is on the kinds of issues which concern anthropologists. These could be summed up provisionally as the more formalised and recurrent conventions relating to verbal expression, considered in their cultural context. However, to say that is immediately to come face to face with the problems. For there is nothing automatic about just how and what someone interested in the cultural aspects of formalised verbal expression (or similar phrases) should be studying, nor does the ‘object of study’ present itself as already defined and separated for the observer. Given the seamless texture of speech, ideas, action, performance that make up human living—or is it seamless?—the processes of isolating its elements for abstraction and analysis are themselves problematic. For example:

How far do human beings in particular situations express and clothe their ideas, emotions or actions in recurrent verbal forms and in what ways are these traditional?

In what sense are certain forms of verbal expression more ‘formalised’ or ‘heightened’, and what—if anything—is excluded?

How far is theorising or interpretation imposed by researchers, how far already there, and formulated in verbal expression?

Can we separate the ‘verbal’ from other aspects of communication and action?

Can oral texts be divorced from those in writing?

How can researchers go about settling such questions, developing a vocabulary, and carving out suitable phenomena for investigation?

These questions are not susceptible to once-and-for-all answers. Indeed researchers often bypass them and merely delimit their material in the light of their own interests and practicalities. Nevertheless, however the essential matter for investigation is selected, some decisions have been made, if often unconsciously, in response to such issues.

These decisions have both a theoretical and an empirical side (insofar as these aspects are distinguishable). So another theme throughout this book is the importance of being aware not just of comparative theory, but also of ethnographic specificities. Anthropologists sometimes forget that cultural relativity applies to verbal expression as much as to other cultural conventions, for here too categories we take as self-evident (even that basic western concept of ‘text’) may not be universally applicable. So responses to the questions above may also need to take account of culturally specifie values and practices. In a given cultural context how far are different verbal genres recognised, and by whom and how and by what criteria? Apparent parallels from our own cultural experience, or even apparently unambiguous statements by (some) participants themselves, may need critical analysis. Is ‘oral tradition’ transmitted in crystallised narratives—controlled perhaps by a particular category of people—or is it undifferentiated ‘common knowledge’, elicited and formulated by the researcher? Do ‘oral’ and ‘written’ traditions operate in separate spheres or is there overlap or interaction between them—and does this vary at different periods and places? How far is there a concept of verbal ‘text’ divorced from, say, music or performance? Exploring these questions often needs to go beyond both prior generalisation and theoretical self-contemplation to detailed ethnographic investigation.

The issues examined in this volume do not add up to one clearly delimited subject. This is both because disciplinary coverage and key terms are not agreed, and also—more interestingly—because abstracting the elements for study is itself a controversial process. It needs to be constantly remembered that the units chosen for classification and analysis—whether genres of ‘oral literature’, texts of ‘myths’, syntheses of ‘oral tradition’, modes of verbal performance, or whatever—are seldom as self-evident as they seem in the published accounts. They have been partly formulated by particular groups of performers and adherents, partly constructed by researchers, in both cases in some sense abstracted from the flow of human action. Comparative terms can never be presumed in advance to fit exactly the ideas and practices they purport to describe, far less provide a definitive and unchallengeable account.

1.3
SOME CENTRAL TERMS—ACCEPTED AND DISPUTED

Dissecting key concepts will be nothing new to anthropologists, with their sensitivity to the danger of squeezing the rich variety of cultures into categories set by our own cultural assumptions. But the terms used in the study of oral arts and traditions seem to be particularly prone to such dangers. Certain technical-sounding terms may give the appearance of being established and universally accepted: unambiguously ‘there’ in the world. But most are at best elusive, either in principle or in their application to particular contexts, and often intensely disputed or value-laden—even, in some circumstances, offensive. As will quickly emerge too, the terms used in the title of this book are themselves contentious and ambiguous, not least that emotive word ‘tradition’.

Some terms have to be used to start from, of course. As always, though, terminology can only be illuminating when used critically. Furthermore, it may affect not only how you construct your subject of study, but how those cooperating with you envisage it. Some consideration of the most commonly used terms and their implications is therefore needed at the outset.

1.3.1
Oral and orality

The much-used adjective ‘oral’ is often used as a prime criterion for marking out particular disciplines or research interests. Thus ‘folklore’ is commonly defined in terms of orally transmitted material, the term is basic to ‘oral-formulaic’ and ‘oral literature’ studies, and it also of course appears in the title of this book. It is also the subject of much current debate.

The dictionary definition gives a start: ‘uttered in spoken words; transacted by word of mouth; spoken, verbal’ (OED). This is frequently the primary meaning in much apparently technical terminology: ‘oral tradition’, ‘oral literature’, ‘oral narrative’, ‘oral testimony’ and so on. ‘Oral’ is often contrasted with ‘written’ (an apparently obvious but in practice somewhat slippery distinction), as in ‘oral literature’ opposed to —or a parallel of—written literature, or ‘oral history’ as a pointer to non-documentary sources. ‘Oral’ also qualifies general terms like ‘texts’, ‘poetry’ or ‘narrative’, either emphasising distinctions between written and oral forms or drawing them within the same comparative perspective.

‘Oral’ also contrasts with what is not verbal or not based on words— thus the second dictionary meaning of ‘using speech only’, as opposed, say, to sign language. Hence ‘oral folklore’ like stories, songs or proverbs is distinguished from material culture. Such contrasts need care for they sometimes reflect less local distinctions than unthinking western models of verbal ‘text’ as self-evidently differentiated from visual, auditory or bodily signs. One of the themes in recent studies of orally-delivered art forms is that, though in one sense they centre on words, in another they involve more than words (see chapter 5 and 1.4 below).

Because ‘oral’ is thus opposed—sometimes contentiously opposed— both to ‘written/literate’ and to ‘non-verbal’, its meaning is correspondingly ambiguous. ‘Oral tradition’ sometimes means any kind of unwritten tradition (including physical monuments, religious statues or church frescoes), sometimes only tradition(s) enunciated or transmitted through words (thus excluding and contrasting with the previous examples).

The more generalised term ‘orality’ has been increasingly in vogue in recent years. This usually implies a general contrast with ‘literacy’, sometimes associated with assumptions about the social and cognitive characteristics of oral communication or the significance of oral culture within broad stages of historical development. These questions are currently the subject of controversy. Some scholars are interested in establishing general features of ‘orality’ as opposed to literacy, as in Ong’s Orality and Literacy (1982), partly inspired by the work of Parry and Lord (see 2.4.9) or by the more anthropologically-focused studies of Jack Goody (1968, 1977, also his more qualified analyses 1986, 1987). Others criticise this as technological determinism or as based on west-centred views of history; or even, in some cases, as evoking out-dated concepts of ‘primitive mentality’. Such scholars would instead stress socially conditioned arrangements and usages (Street 1984, Scribner and Cole 1981, Finnegan 1988, 1989b, Goody et al. 1988, Schousboe and Larsen 1989; for further discussion or examples see also Stock 1983, Tannen 1982, Chafe and Tannen 1987, DeMaria and Kitzinger 1989, R.Thomas 1989; on the term ‘oral’ more generally see Henige 1988, Finnegan 1990, also Foley 1990a: chap. 1).

Ambiguities or controversy are not necessarily reasons for avoiding a term and ‘oral’ remains popular. But it is worth examining one’s own and others’ work for possible misreadings of whichever sense was meant or for overtones not intended.

1.3.2
Tradition(s)

Tradition’ is both common in everyday speech and a term much used by anthropologists, folklorists and oral historians, indeed sometimes regarded as at the heart of these disciplines (particularly folklore, see Bauman 1989c, Honko and Laaksonen 1983, Honko 1988:9–10). It has many different meanings however. It is used, variously, of: ‘culture’ as a whole; any established way of doing things whether or not of any antiquity; the process of handing down practices, ideas or values; the products so handed down, sometimes with the connotation of being ‘old’ or having arisen in some ‘natural’ and non-polemical way. It has other overtones too. Something called a ‘tradition’ is often taken to somehow belong to the whole of the ‘community’ rather than to specifie individuals or interest groups; to be unwritten; to be valuable or (less often) out-dated; or to mark out a group’s identity. Recently there has been emerging interest in the processes through which ‘traditions’ are created or maintained in specific historical conditions to fit particular interests or values (as in Hobsbawm and Ranger’s concept of ‘the invention of tradition’ (1983), and similar treatments in Cohen 1989, Finnegan 1988: e...

Table of contents

• COVER PAGE
• TITLE PAGE
• COPYRIGHT PAGE
• FIGURES
• SERIES EDITOR’S FOREWORD
• PREFACE
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• 1. INTRODUCTION: SCOPE AND TERMINOLOGY
• 2. THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES
• 3. SOME PRIOR ISSUES AND PRACTICALITIES
• 4. COLLECTING, RECORDING AND CREATING TEXTS: PRELIMINARIES AND MECHANICS
• 5. OBSERVING AND ANALYSING PERFORMANCE
• 6. PRODUCTION, FUNCTIONS AND IDEAS
• 7. GENRES AND BOUNDARIES
• 8. ANALYSING AND COMPARING TEXTS: STYLE, STRUCTURE AND CONTENT
• 9. TEXTS IN PROCESS: TRANSLATION, TRANSCRIPTION AND PRESENTATION
• 10. ETHICS
• REFERENCES