Mapping Participant Frameworks in the Aitys of Birzhan and Sara

Bibliographic Data

ID2286360
AuthorsEva‐marie Dubuisson (0000-0003-3482-7594, Nazarbayev University)
Year2021
Volume31
Issue3
Pages357-381
Publication date2021-12-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Linguistic Anthropology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1055-1360 • E-ISSN: 1548-1395
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/jola.12349
OpenAlexW4200462166
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited58

Here the lens of the "mapping problem" described by Judith Irvine in participant framework studies is used to analyze shifts in the cultural tale "The Aitys of Birzhan and Sara" from its origin as an improvisational verbal duel in the late 19th century, to a Kazakh socialist opera during the Soviet period, to a nationalized historical reference in Kazakhstan. During the multiple recontextualizations of that social text, its discursive pragmatics and characters are preserved within the expanding and shifting participant frameworks enabled by the genre of aitys poetry. Birzhan and Sara are able to "speak"-as poets, characters, and ancestors-to a changing series of audiences, all of whom become involved and implicated in their words and story as a result. They-like all aitys poets and the tradition itself-become a source of cultural authority. Thus the mapping of this social text over time is used as an example, in order to explain why and how an oral tradition is able to overcome or absorb even serious intertextual gaps resulting from shifting historical and political contexts over a long twentieth century

Folklore, Mythology, and Literature Studies · Philippine History and Culture · Rhetoric and Communication Studies

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