Reframing concept of place-lore through ecosemiotic theory

Interruptions and communicational errors between nature-culture processes has been seen as basis of environmental problems. Those problems indicate disconnections between our ways of thinking about environment, and the ways environment asserts its own being (Low 2008: 48). Understanding semiotic processes related to environment and narratives, helps us to cope with environmental or cultural conflicts and to provide communication and coherence between different parties of conflicts. The usage of semiotic models to analyze environmental perception and interpretations in vernacular traditions has shown good results for understanding and addressing the environmental issues (e. g. Kohn 2013; Sõukand, Kalle: 2010). The aim of my study is to continue on this path and create an ecosemiotic framework to reframe the concept of place-lore and give some insights into analyzing it. In Estonia, folklore about places and landscape, which has been purposefully collected, published and studied since the 18th century, is one of the core elements of current cultural and national identity discourse. Research of Estonian place-lore might therefore give good model for analyzing place-related traditions or genres in wider sense. In semiotic sense, place-lore is the realization of mutual environmental and narrative relations. Relationship between place-lore narratives and environment that these narratives are describing, could be seen as a modelling relationship – texts are the (incomplete) models of the environment, as stated by Timo Maran about nature-related texts in his research about Estonian nature-writing (2014: 301). I am interested in what type of referential relations can be distinguished, how these modelling relations work and how these relations become visible in narratives and in physical environment. In my presentation I connect ecosemiotics and biosemiotic with folkloristics and add some theories from environmental communicational studies in order to take into account both cultural and social, as well as cognitive and ecological aspects of meaning-making. Researching place-related tradition creates a good basis for improving and widening (eco)semiotics methodology towards being multidimensionally spatial and for it to be used for different vernacular and local expressions analysis. I illustrate my statements with examples from place-lore of Estonian mires. Wetlands are liminal landscapes (Pungas, Võsu 2012), instability and variability of ground and lack of cultural sign systems makes them difficult to pass and move around in, but on the other hand this peculiarity of the landscape has created variety of controversial narratives and meanings. Stories of mires illustrate how distinctive wetlands environment has influenced folklore and how folkloristic interpretations have, in turn, shaped the physical environment. References Kohn, Eduardo 2013. How forests think: toward an anthropology beyond the human. Berkeley: University of California Press. Low, David 2008. Dissent and environmental communication: A semiotic approach. In: Semiotica 172–1/4, 47–64. Maran, Timo 2014. Biosemiotic criticism: modelling the environment in literature. In: Green Letters: Studies in Ecocriticism, 18 (3), 297−311. Pungas, Piret; Võsu, Ester 2012. The Dynamics of Liminality in Estonian Mires. In: H. Andrews & L. Roberts (ed.), Liminal Landscapes, Travel, Experiences and Spaces in- Between. Routledge, 87–102. Sõukand, Renata; Kalle, Raivo 2010. Herbal landscape: the perception of the landscape as a source of medicinal plants. In: Trames: Journal of the Humanities and Social Sciences, 3, 207−226.
Country: 
Estonia
Theme And Axes: 
Semiotics and anthropology
Semiotics of spatiality (geographies, territories, borders)
Institution: 
University of Tartu, Department of Semiotics, PhD student and Estonian Literary Museum, Estonian Folklore Archives, Junior Research Fellow
Mail: 
lona.pall@gmail.com

Estado del abstract

Estado del abstract: 
Accepted
Desarrollado por gcoop.