Ritual Communication
Gunter Senft, Ellen B. Basso
Ritual Communication examines how people create and express meaning through verbal and non-verbal ritual. Ritual communication extends beyond collective religious expression. It is an intrinsic part of everyday interactions, ceremonies, theatrical performances, shamanic chants, political demonstrations and rites of passage.
Despite being largely formulaic and repetitive, ritual communication is a highly participative and self-oriented process. The ritual is shaped by time, space and the individual body as well as by language ideologies, local aesthetics, contexts of use, and relations among participants.
Ritual Communication draws on a wide range of contemporary cultures - from Africa, America, Asia, and the Pacific - to present a rich and diverse study for students and scholars of anthropology, sociology and sociolinguistics.
Ellen B. Basso is Professor Emerita of Anthropology, University of Arizona. Gunter Senft is senior research fellow at the Max-Planck-Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen and extraordinary Professor of General Linguistics at the University of Cologne
Introduction: Ritual Communication
Ellen B. Basso and Gunter Senft
1 Little Rituals
John B. Haviland
2 Everyday Ritual in the Residential World
N. J. Enfield
3 Trobriand Islanders' Forms of Ritual Communication
Gunter Senft
4 "Like a Crab Teaching its Young to Walk Straight": Proverbiality, semantics and
indexicality in English and Malay
Cliff Goddard
5 Access Rituals in West African Communities: an Ethnopragmatic
Perspective
Felix K. Ameka
6 Ritual and the Circulation of Experience
Suzanne Oakdale
7 Communicative Resonance across Settings: Marriage Arrangement,
Initiation and Political Meetings in Kenya
Corinne A. Kratz
8 Ritualised Performances as Total Social Facts: the House of
Multiple Spirits
Ingjerd Hoëm
9 "Pengunjuk Rasa" (expression of feelings) in Sumba: "Bloody
Thursday" in its Cultural and Historical Context
Joel C. Kuipers
10 Civility and Deception in two Kalapalo Ritual Forms
Ellen B. Basso
11 Private Ritual Encounters, Public Ritual Indexes
Michael Silverstein
12 "Kantámpranku awiúnkanam enkémturnai…" "While I sing I am Sitting
in a Real Air-Plane…" Innovative Contents in Shuar and Achuar Ritual
Communication.
Maurizio Gnerre
13 Interior Dialogues: The Co-Voicing of Ritual in Solitude
John W. Du Bois
Index
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Paperback
Series:
Wenner-Gren International Symposium Series
Nov 2009
400pp, 31 b&w illustrations
9781847882950
 | This volume will stand as a benchmark work in the exploration of ritual communication, a notoriously expansive notion that can include the stereotypy of animal behavior, the routinization of social interaction and the symbolic density of religious enactment. The richness of the essays makes the volume a true delight to read, and the analytical rigor that the authors bring to bear in their case studies sheds clear light on the complex relations between discursive form, social function, cultural meaning, and personal experience in ritual semiosis.
Professor Richard Bauman, Indiana University |  |
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