Late medieval Vlachs in the western Balkans: orality, society and the limits of collective identities

This paper explores the social structures of late medieval Vlachs – particularly the ones inhabiting the Western Balkans (the Dinaric Alps) – in order to determine how collective identities were shaped and reproduced in medieval oral cultures. Southeast European historiographies have often portrayed the Balkan Vlachs as a unitary group and the label „Vlach” as representing a single, homogenous social entity during most of the Middle Ages. Still, social groups cannot exist and function without regular communication – oral or written – between their members. Oral cultures are based on verbal communication and are therefore bound by its specific nature, given that it requires continuous personal contact and oral transfer of information for communication and society to function properly. Literate cultures on the other hand tend to rely on written communication to a considerable extent and given that it allows for information to be conveyed impersonally (by text) its range is (at least in theory) almost limitless – as it is the level of (il)literacy that represents the main communicative and social limit in literate societies. Having in mind the abovementioned communicative and social limits of orality and the fact that it was the predominant if not exclusive form of communication among transhumant pastoralists such as the medieval Balkan Vlachs this paper argues that the range/scope of their group identities and collective identifications was rather limited. Furthermore, this paper discusses the types of collective identities utilized by Vlachs, questioning whether they ever shared a common „Vlach identity” given the fact that the social identity of the medieval people known as „the Vlachs” was primarily shaped and defined from the „outside” and „above” – by state intervention and a legal frame that was forced upon them. The Vlachs in the Medieval Balkans, and particularly in its western part, generally did not possess political authority and power, nor did they have the material resources and literary traditions allowing them to form more complex and enduring communication networks that would in turn have resulted in group identity formation on a larger scale. During the Early Middle Ages the Vlachs were „Vlachs” primarily because they were labelled as such and considered to be a distinct category of population by their Slavic (and later Byzantine) neighbours and overlords, and not necessarily because they originally defined themselves as such. This is not to say that gradually, during the course of the Middle Ages, the bearers of the „Vlach” name could not have started to identify themselves as „Vlachs” by accepting this foreign name (xenonym) as their preferred group name (autonym). Still, when this finally did happen it did not imply a „universal” Vlach identity in the medieval Balkans. Given the communicative limits of oral cultures as well as the Vlachs’ position as legal and political „objects” rather than „subjects” it seems most likely that the medieval Balkans witnessed a simultaneous existence of a multitude of „Vlachnesses” which were usually unrelated and unaware of each other.

German Jurisprudence in the 21st century: law and its media

This review critically assesses the book Legal theory and the media of law, by Thomas Vesting. The author seeks to present a multidisciplinary conception of jurisprudence, analyzing the coevolution between legal phenomena, their self-descriptions and the dissemination media of communication, from oral cultures to computer networks. The paper posits Vesting’s contribution in the modern path of German jurisprudence and philosophy of law.

Spoken word corpus and dictionary definition for an African language

The preservation of languages is critical to maintaining and strengthening the cultures and identities of communities, and this is especially true for under-resourced languages with a predominantly oral culture. Most African languages have a relatively short literary past, and as such the task of dictionary making cannot rely on textual corpora as has been the standard practice in lexicography. This paper emphasizes the significance of the spoken word and the oral tradition as repositories of vocabulary, and argues that spoken word corpora greatly outweigh the value of printed texts for lexicography. We describe a methodology for creating a digital dialectal dictionary for the Igbo language from such a spoken word corpus. We also highlight the language technology tools and resources that have been created to support the transcription of thousands of hours of Igbo speech and the subsequent compilation of these transcriptions into an XML-encoded textual corpus of Igbo dialects. The methodology described in this paper can serve as a blueprint that can be adopted for other under-resourced languages that have predominantly oral cultures.

Didactic Titles in Literature: A Look at Selected Zambian-Language Literary Works

This paper is a descriptive exploration of selected titles of Zambianlanguage literary works that contain in them didactic aspects, that is, forms of general advisory statements and proverbs/sayings as actual titles of the particular books. It demonstrates that the use of proverbial titles makes these works of fiction more concerned with didacticism rather than entertainment. This moralistic disposition which apparently seems to be a trademark of many authors in Zambian languages is a manifestation of the influence of traditional African orature in general and Zambian oral cultures in particular which places emphasis on the teaching of moral values in storytelling. This paper is guided by two literary theoretical approaches namely: the sociological approach which posits that literature should act as a mirror of society as well as to provide solutions for the society; and the ethical approach especially the idea that art should be morally sound.

The Identity of Hispanic Literatures: One Breath, a Million Words

Nothing can stop the tides of innovation in art: it is this idea that a captive, dirty, weak, and hungry Don Quixote embraced to affirm himself as the heroic referent for the emerging Romance literatures. Indeed, this adaptability has been the secret of his longevity in the Western canon. Like Don Quixote, Hispanic literatures cannot build their identity on a pristine, metropolitan, and uniform Spanish language elevated by its exclusivity. If literary Hispanism is to be alive, it needs to evolve into a complex cultural construction that binds together the oral and literat­e languages of America and Spain and takes into account transatlantic flows and contradictions. Breathing, a common feature of both literary patterns and a rhythm of nature, will serve as the much-needed metaphor to bridge Latin American oral cultures, which have found permanence and expression in written texts, with literate cultures, including even the most urban, digital, and technologically advanced from Mexico, Chile or Spain. ­

The Immigrant Experience

The first chapter examines physical and psychic fragmentation in Danticat’s Breath, Eyes, Memory and Krik? Krak! In Danticat’s work, folklore and flight intersect to highlight the relationship between dissociation, flight, and transformation. The works position the navigation of trauma as central to the protagonists’ emotional growth. Danticat’s work illustrates the transformative nature of flight and features Haitian and Haitian American characters who learn how to reconcile the effects of traumatic events. The works showcase women in various states of imprisonment, with flight, whether imagined or literal, serving as the vehicle for escape. Danticat fuses print and oral cultures and positions folklore as a tool for communicating values, solidifying relationships, and navigating trauma.

Popular Culture and the Qur’an

Assessing the multiple ways the temporal and spatial boundaries of the Qur’an have been expanded through the interaction with culture, this chapter sets out to probe the reciprocal but also ambiguous relationship between the Qur’an and popular culture. It attempts to address the central question of how does a bound book in period-specific Arabic become a universal source of mercy in multiple dialects of Arabic but also in multiple non-Arabic languages, as also for oral cultures, semi-literate populations, and non-elite groups, all of whom draw upon and relate to its divine aura? Issues of language access/privilege, literacy in multiple registers, and the post-Enlightenment, colonial triad of reason/belief/magic—all have to be examined with attention to the central role of the Qur’an as both vehicle and transformer of popular culture, for Muslims and non-Muslims, from West Africa to South-East Asia.

Protestant Innovative Evangelizing to Oral Cultures in Guatemala

Protestant missions to Guatemala, in varying degrees, incorporated innovative oral, visual, and audio evangelizing strategies in their proselytizing. The traditional mainline Protestant bias favoring the “triumph of literacy” over oral/audible forms of learning sidetracked those missions engaged in vernacular translations of the Bible away from direct evangelization and toward investment of significant financial and human resources into literacy programs. Pentecostals continued to emphasize the oral/aural dynamic of evangelizing, thereby becoming the quickest-growing and largest segment of Protestantism in Guatemala. Consequently, institution-building requisite for investment in traditional forms of human capital (education and health) has not characterized Protestantism in Guatemala. This argument can be extended to other regions of the world—notably the rest of Latin America, Asia, and Africa—laying the foundation for a broader, global understanding of Pentecostalism and low investment in human capital.