The National Anthem in Warao: Semiotic Ground and Performative Affordances of Indigenous Language Texts in Venezuela

Abstract

This paper analyzes how the translated text of the Venezuelan national anthem from Spanish to Warao has been put to new uses in Venezuela. It focuses on publicly available videos and written versions of the lyrics to understand how indigenous leaders and nonindigenous Spanish speakers use the anthem for new purposes. By analyzing the anthem as a text-artifact, I argue that translation produced a change on the semiotic ground of interpretation for the anthem that also resulted in a break between types and tokens of the oral and written versions of the text. This break gave the anthem new performative affordances making possible new and sometimes contradictory ways of using it.

Figure (of Personhood) Drawing: Scaffolding Signing and Signers in Nepal

“…The lyrics of "Sayaun Thunga Phool Ka" (Made of hundreds of flowers) are widely understood to signal a commitment to a form of nationalism that is explicitly multicultural and multiethnic. Similar to Rodriguez's (2016) description of the translation of Venezuela's national anthem into indigenous languages, Nepal's new national anthem can be seen as an attempt to create an indexical icon that can performatively call forth a new political landscape, one characterized by the inclusion that marginalized groups had struggled for in the war.…”

Linguistic Anthropology in 2017: It Could Be Otherwise

“…A significant number of publications this year (e.g., Blum ; Carruthers ; Harkness ; Hoffmann‐Dilloway ; Ingebretson ; Kockelman ; Reyes ; Rodriguez ; Yeh ) draw on the concept of qualia, including articles collected in a special issue of Signs and Society , titled “Qualia and Ontology: Language, Semiotics, and Materiality” (Ball ; Chumley ; Gal ; Harkness ; Reyes ; Roy ). Together, these articles remind us not to take qualia as given but to recognize the situated processes through which they both come to be and come to be perceptible.…”

Topics in National Anthems

“…National anthems have been a topic for sociological and cultural analyses, including interpretations / commentaries on their nationalism, family, sexism, suicide rates and others -with cross-cultural implications in several cases (Abril, 2012;Barnes, Pomerantz, & Yashko, 2016;Boufoy-Bastick, 2012;Gilboa & Bodner, 2009;Guerrini & Kennedy, 2009;Kelen, 2014Kelen, , 2015Kyridis et al, 2009;Lauenstein, Murer, Boos, & Reicher, 2015;Lester & Gunn, 2011;Liao, Zhang, & Zhang, 2012;Oluga, Seng, & Rajoo, 2016;Rodríguez, 2016;Siska, 2016;Sondermann, 2013;Vörös et al, 2016;Winstone & Witherspoon, 2016). Most such studies were, however, focused on a distinct theme and/or on a culturallylimited number of anthems.…”