The Register of Karelian Lamenters

Stepanova, Eila

doi:10.2307/j.ctvggx2qk.18

Cited by 3 publications

(5 citation statements)

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“…Musical and vocal features are distinctive, and the emotionality of the performance is understood to be important for a proper, ritually effective lament. Lamenting is considered different from other kinds of crying, music and songs (Stepanova 2014(Stepanova , 2015Silvonen and Stepanova 2020;Silvonen 2022b; see also Tolbert 1988).…”

Section: From Karelian Ritual Laments To Diverse Contemporary Lament ...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Tradition and ownership

Silvonen,

Kallio

2023

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A new dispute about the ownership of Karelian laments emerged in Finland in 2021. The severely endangered Karelian language is the closest relative of Finnish. Karelian laments were brought into new Finnish contexts during the late twentieth century by Finnish individuals with Karelian roots, with an aim of making the Karelian lament tradition usable also for people not of Karelian descent. Recently, Karelian activists in Finland have strongly criticized the Finnish uses of laments. This relates to wider discussions about minority rights and the status of the Karelian language in Finland. Using social and traditional media material, panel discussions and interviews, we analyse this dispute and contextualize it in relation to the historical folk culture, the Karelian minority and uses of laments in contemporary Finland. The setting is complicated by the assimilation of Karelian speakers, the diversity and the closeness of Karelian and Finnish identities, and the complex intersections of national, ethnic, cultural, religious and linguistic factors. Our approach is informed by the recent scholarly discussions about the ownership and appropriation of intangible culture. At the heart of the dispute, we see varying interpretations of what the laments actually are, and how they relate to languages, ethnic identities, communities, modernization and religion.

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Section: From Karelian Ritual Laments To Diverse Contemporary Lament ...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Tradition and ownership

Silvonen,

Kallio

2023

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“…The Karelian lament register was conceived as the only language that the dead could understand (Stepanova 2014;. This conception can be viewed in terms of an ideology of the register, which might be considered in relation to the social authority and identity of lamenters (Stepanova 2015) as well as in its social function as the primary medium for interaction with kin in the cemetery, conceived as a neighbouring village (Stepanova & Frog 2015; see also Tarkka 2013: ch. 31; Frog 2019a: §5.4).…”

Section: Register and Genre Ideologiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Approaching Ideologies of Things Made of Language: A Case Study of a Finno-Karelian Incantation Technology

Frog

2019

Фолклористика

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This article introduces an approach to ideologies of texts and of categories of text type for approaching the emic conceptions of things made of language or other kinds of signs. Finno-Karelian incantations of the ritual specialist known as a tietäjä provide a case study, considered in the broader context of cultures in the Circum-Baltic region. Text ideology is salient in this tradition owing to a conception that a performer will lose an incantation's power when it is communicated as a whole to someone else, but not if verses are omitted. Discussion is organized in four parts, providing different types of contextualization before discussing emic conceptions of incantations proper. It begins with a theoretical introduction to text ideologies and genre ideologies in relation to language ideologies. This section includes positioning the approach from the perspective of (Finnish) folklore studies for better multidisciplinary accessibility. The second section contextualizes the tietäjä as a social institution, the corpora and approach. The third section introduces the ritual technology of the tietäjä, the physics of the world in which these operate and what these are conceived as 'doing' in ritual performance. The fourth section turns to the understanding of incantations as a type of text object in relation to the technology and their variation in practice.

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“…• An extensive avoidance vocabulary accompanied by an abundant use of diminutive and plural forms (see Stepanova E. 2015) • A variety of types of parallelism ranging from the phonic parallelism of alliteration or melodic units to semantic parallelism between long verbal sequences or between verbal sequences and performed actions, that will be discussed in this essay…”

Section: Karelian Lament Poetrymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, all lamenters improvise within the conventions of traditional register. Thus each lament exhibits features that index its membership in a common tradition, and is also unique within the tradition (see Stepanova E. 2015).…”

Section: Karelian Lament Poetrymentioning

confidence: 99%