The meeting of the Academic Folklore Society will take place on Thursday, November 20, 2014 at 16.15 in the Estonian Literary Museum (Vanemuise 42). Laura Siragusa (University of Tartu, Estonia; University of Aberdeen, U.K.) will give a talk titled "Language sustainability and healing oral practices: Vepsian puhegid."
The presentation will be in English.
Everybody is welcome!
Board of the Academic Folklore Society
Information: Pihla Maria Siim 737 6256
Outline of the talk:
This paper introduces Veps and their heritage language, Vepsian, in order to unwrap some issues related to the question, 'can a language be sustainable.' I argue that this question is debatable in itself, given that languages are neither abstract nor detached entities which need to be sustained in order not to vanish. Yet, there are specific social (or more broadly, ecological) factors that hinder people from speaking them. Maintaining a focus on ways of speaking, I claim that people manifest (or not) languages depending on the ecology in which they find themselves. Language ecology comprises not only language ideologies and communicative practices but also convoluted relations with anything (human and non-human) existing in the world. Therefore, the concept of sustainability needs to be re-directed towards the ecology where people manifest language more than towards language as a system of rules. By reframing the concept of sustainability I here present language as an indicator of relations with the environment, human and non-human beings as well as the relation itself. And I demonstrate that it is specifically in these relations that people can sustain their ways of speaking and vice versa. That is, by speaking and employing specific oral genres Veps have demonstrated to protect (and sustain) themselves, animals, and the environment where they live from undesirable misfortunes.
Key words: agency, healing, enchantments (puhegid in Vepsian), sustainability, relationality, Vepsian heritage language
Dr. Laura Siragusa
Post-Doc in Anthropology at the University of Tartu, Estonia; and Associated Researcher at the University of Aberdeen, U.K.
