The Power of Discourse in Ritual Performance - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook The Power of Discourse in Ritual Performance write by Ulrich Demmer. This book was released on 2007. The Power of Discourse in Ritual Performance available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. This volume focuses on the ways discourse is used in ritual performances as an important medium of power, enabling speakers/actors to construct, redefine and transform interpersonal relationships, cultural concepts and worldviews. The various case studies gathered here, from South Asia, South East Asia, Africa and South America, show that recent developments in linguistic anthropology, ritual theory and performance studies provide new conceptual tools to take a fresh look at these issues. Foregrounding pragmatic approaches to language and discourse, they explore the social dynamics of rhetorical discourse, text and context, normativity and creativity, the poetics of dialogue and speech, as well as the manifold interactions of speakers, addressees and audience. The volume thus embraces both the micro-level of speech activities as well as the macro-level of social and political relationships and brings out the subtle workings of control, authority, and power in situations marked as ritual. The contributions, all based on extensive fieldwork, include many concrete samples of speech and discourse which give an authentic impression of the different voices and make for vivid reading.
Ritual Textuality
Ritual Textuality - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Ritual Textuality write by Matt Tomlinson. This book was released on 2014-02-14. Ritual Textuality available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. A classic question in studies of ritual is how ritual performances achieve-or fail to achieve-their effects. In this pathbreaking book, Matt Tomlinson argues that participants condition their own expectations of ritual success by interactively creating distinct textual patterns of sequence, conjunction, contrast, and substitution. Drawing on long-term research in Fiji, Ritual Textuality presents in-depth studies of each of these patterns, taken from a wide range of settings: a fiery, soul-saving Pentecostal crusade; relaxed gatherings at which people drink the narcotic beverage kava; deathbeds at which missionaries eagerly await the signs of good Christians' "happy deaths"; and the monologic pronouncements of a military-led government determined to make the nation speak in a single voice. In each of these cases, Tomlinson also examines the broad ideologies of motion which frame participants' ritual actions, such as Pentecostals' beliefs that effective worship requires ecstatic movement like jumping, dancing, and clapping, and nineteenth-century missionaries' insistence that the journeys of the soul in the afterlife should follow a new path. By approaching ritual as an act of "entextualization"-in which the flow of discourse is turned into object-like texts-while analyzing the ways people expect words, things, and selves to move in performance, this book presents a new and compelling way to understand the efficacy of ritual action.
Circus as Multimodal Discourse
Circus as Multimodal Discourse - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Circus as Multimodal Discourse write by Paul Bouissac. This book was released on 2012-10-11. Circus as Multimodal Discourse available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Now available in paperback, this volume presents a theory of the circus as a secular ritual and introduces a method to analyze its performances as multimodal discourse. The book's fifteen chapters cover the range of circus specialties (magic, domestic and wild animal training, acrobatics, and clowning) and provide examples to show how cultural meaning is produced, extended and amplified by circus performances. Bouissac is one of the world's leading authorities on circus ethnography and semiotics and this work is grounded on research conducted over a 50 year span in Europe, Asia, Australia and the Americas. It concludes with a reflection on the potentially subversive power of this discourse and its contemporary use by activists. Throughout, it endeavours to develop an analytical approach that is mindful of the epistemological traps of both positivism and postmodernist license. It brings semiotics and ethnography to bear on the realm of the circus.
Discourse in Ritual Studies
Discourse in Ritual Studies - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Discourse in Ritual Studies write by Hans Schilderman. This book was released on 2007. Discourse in Ritual Studies available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. "Discourse in Ritual Studies" offers an introduction into the study of public worship from the perspective of ritual studies.The contributing authors confront an action-oriented and empirical approach of ritual studies with perennial and normative questions that characterize the study of liturgy.
Ritual: A Very Short Introduction
Ritual: A Very Short Introduction - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Ritual: A Very Short Introduction write by Barry Stephenson. This book was released on 2015-01-28. Ritual: A Very Short Introduction available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Ritual is part of what it means to be human. Like sports, music, and drama, ritual defines and enriches culture, putting those who practice it in touch with sources of value and meaning larger than themselves. Ritual is unavoidable, yet it holds a place in modern life that is decidedly ambiguous. What is ritual? What does it do? Is it useful? What are the various kinds of ritual? Is ritual tradition bound and conservative or innovative and transformational? Alongside description of a number of specific rites, this Very Short Introduction explores ritual from both theoretical and historical perspectives. Barry Stephenson focuses on the places where ritual touches everyday life: in politics and power; moments of transformation in the life cycle; as performance and embodiment. He also discusses the boundaries of ritual, and how and why certain behaviors have been studied as ritual while others have not. Stephenson shows how ritual is an important vehicle for group and identity formation; how it generates and transmits beliefs and values; how it can be used to exploit and oppress; and how it has served as a touchstone for thinking about cultural origins and historical change. Encompassing the breadth and depth of modern ritual studies, Barry Stephenson's Very Short Introduction also develops a narrative of ritual's place in social and cultural life. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.
