In vino veritas

Rural Amhara drinking is associated with a specialised lexicon related to producing, distributing and ritually consuming drinks in communal settings. Here the drinking register is part of individual agency through which the meaning of specific ritual events is negotiated. Amhara cultural norms of heightened potency and diminished responsibility allow drunken speakers to extend their linguistic repertoires and to challenge established social relations. When drunk, speakers are less constrained in their linguistic choices by considerations of individual linguistic competence and of differential status between speakers and addressees. Drunks exploit the ambiguities in implicit social meanings that normally function to maintain the status quo as they use their extended communicative competence to present alternative views on the nature of social relations. Understanding this provides important insights into the status of local drinks as indigenous commodities and the link between their consumption and socio-political and economic relations. This article examines the language use of Amhara drinking and drunken speakers, the exposure of truth during drunkenness and the social context of drinking and drunkenness in the town of Debre Bïrhan in northeastern Shewa, Ethiopia

Competence (human resources) · Lexicon · Linguistics · Meaning (existential) · Political science · Sociology · Status quo · African history and culture analysis · Law · Multilingual Education and Policy · Psychology · Social Psychology