Beschreibung
This study focuses on various genres of ritual speech among the Mewahang
Rai, all of which make use of a distinct ritual language. The main
objective is to situate the oral ritual texts in their ethnographic
context. Combining a textual with a cultural approach, the author
discusses the indigenous concept of tradition, the rhetorical and poetic
features of ritual speech genres, and the discursive universe constructed
through the texts. On the theoretical level, the book contributes to
recent debates about ritualization and performance, and to discussions in
linguistic anthropology concerning the notions of formality, indexicality,
entextualization and contextualization.
Martin Gaenszle is affiliated with the South Asia Institute, Heidelberg
University, and teaches in the Department of Ethnology.
