text: Aesthetic Dimensions of Georgian Grief Rituals: On the Artful Display of Emotions in Lamentation1 2003 in Hubert Knoblauch&Helga Kotthoff (eds.): Verbal Art across Cultures. Tübingen, Narr, 167-195. Helga Kotthoff 1. Introduction The topic of this article is the communication of grief in Georgia, which in this Caucasian country is aestheticized in a variety of ways. Lamentation (xmit naRirlebi) is the verbal core activity of Georgian grief communication. Everywhere in the world people feel a sense of loss, depression and helplessness when a close person dies. Grief finds expression, e.g., in a hunched posture, crying and sobbing and is displayed externally in this way. People not only mourn in isolation, but rather express their grief in their behavior to other people. Particularly grief for the deceased thereby becomes a 'total social phenomenon'2 suffered in community and performed for the community. Most societies have ritualized grief, i.e., predictable complexes of activities with predictable sequences of actions have developed in which the affected persons participate obligatorily and yet voluntarily and competently. In rituals, not only the feeling of grief is staged, but also relationships with the deceased person and the other mourners. Various ritual theorists3 have emphasized that rituals are non-instrumental to the extent that they are not useful for specifically technical purposes. They fulfill social functions instead such as binding the group together, inspiring action and producing consensus. By using expressive means they also alter the state of the world by metaphysical means instead of by physical means4. In most societies religion comes into play when someone dies, and in its framework conceptions of the hereafter and images of transition are fictionalized. In this article I point out that these conceptions of the hereafter exist not only in people's minds but are also actively practiced, for example, in addressing the deceased which can often be found in Georgian lamentations.5 In rituals symbolic condensation takes place, which is not confined to the verbal level. Sapir6 characterized the latter by multiple referents, richness of meaning, "a highly condensed form of substitute behavior for direct expression, allowing for the 1 This study of Georgian mourning rituals is carried out in connection with the special research area 511 "Literature and Anthropology," financed by the German National Endowment for the Sciences (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft), at the University of Konstanz. We have already taped 50 hours of lamentations in various Georgian regions. I am grateful to Elza Gabedava and James Brice for help with the Georgian and the English. 2 Marcel Mauss, (1978): Soziologie und Anthropologie. Band 1 und 2. München 178 3 Jack Goody, Religion and ritual: The definitional problem. British Journal of Sociology 12 (1961), 142-164. Marcel Gluckman, Les rites de passage. In: M. Gluckman (ed.): Essays on the ritual of social relations, Manchester 1962, 1-52. 4 Edward R.Leach, Culture and communication, Cambridge 1976. 5 See for an overview of research on ritual. Iwar Werlen, Ritual und Sprache. Zum Verhältnis von Sprechen und Handeln in Ritualen. Tübingen 1984. 6 Edward Sapir, "Speech as a Personality Trait", American Journal of Sociology 32 (1927), 892-905. ready release of emotional tension" (p. 565), with "deeper roots in the unconscious and diffusing its emotional quality to types of behavior or situations apparently far removed from the original meaning of the symbol" (p. 566). I agree with Sapir's claim, that in ritual the entire scenaric arrangement is symbolically loaded and becomes the object of aesthetization. But I disagree with the idea of "release of emotional tension" and would rather show that in the aesthetization of expressions of grief not only the feelings of lamenters, but also those of the onlookers are worked out. I regard aesthetization as closely connected with affect management. This article thus deals with the forms and functions of aesthetization of grief in Georgia. Ethologists and psychologists regard grief as one of the "basic emotions"7, which are observable in all human beings and higher animals. But this does not mean that this emotion is self-evident. It is subject to a complex cultural performance process, which within a culture is comprehensible in all its shades. Feelings do not simply emanate from people, rather they are processed and transmitted by means of conventionalized procedures. But culture-transcending commonalities are also apparent. Crying and a sunken body position are as icons and indices universally integrated into the expression of grief. A few authors8 point out that while the vocal and verbal styles of ritual keening and lamenting are interculturally different, they display common semiotic features and share in common certain resemblances with what we call "wailing" and "crying," and there are many icons and indices associated with bowing and being lowered into the ground: "As a semiotic device, wailing is linked to affect, just as at the core one assumes 'crying' as a formal device is linked to 'sadness' "9 As well in Georgia, cries of grief and appeals to the deceased occur. They are spoken or sung in lines (pulse units), using crying sounds, voice changes, drawn-out sighs, slowly falling intonation contours with integrated peaks, bowed bodily postures and an expressive lexicon. Furthermore, situational standards of appropriateness develop in cultures. For example, the death of a person is everywhere an experience which evokes strong feelings. But historically and interculturally these feelings and their expressions are not the same10. Thus for example, mourning in Georgia is richer in forms, is practiced for a longer period of time and is more expressively communicated than in Germany or England. Lamentations are performed, a genre, that does not exist in most West European countries. We manipulate our inner feelings in accord with cultural expectations - and we then in fact have them, as Hochschild11 has shown. In contemporary cultural anthropology feelings are no longer regarded as something innate and inward, but rather as a culturally interwoven and shaped mode of experience.12 Also the external, conventionalized display of emotions is different. How things are said and done is as important in communicating emotions as what is said and done. Particularly in rituals the manner of performance is more important than the content, which is detached from an instrumental means-end-relation. Many rituals are 7 Paul Ekman, An Argument for Basic Emotions. Cognition and Emotion 6 (1990), 169-200. 8 Steven Feld, Sound and Sentiment: Birds, Weeping, Poetics, and Song in Kaluli Expression. Philadelphia 1982. Greg Urban, Ritual Wailing in Amerindian Brazil. American Anthropologist 90 (1988), 385-400. 9 Greg Urban, 386. See footnote 8. 10 Hannes Stubbe, Formen der Trauer. Eine kulturanthropologische Untersuchung, Berlin 1985. Peter Metcalf, Richard Huntington, Celebrations of Death. The Anthropology of Mortuary Ritual. Cambridge 1979/1991. 11 Arlie Hochschild, The Managed Heart: Commerzialization of Human Feeling. Berkeley 1983. 12 Catherine Lutz, Emotion, Thought, and Estrangement: Emotion as a Cultural Category. Cultural Anthropology 1, 3 (1986), 287-309. 2 characterized by a great redundancy of symbols, stylistic elaborations, and an emphasis on aesthetic criteria. Even when it is emphasized that as well instrumental activities can be the object of stylization and artistry, rituals cannot be understood without attention to style, symbol, and aesthetics – they are essential to them. In this article I would like to show that the aesthetization of grief simultaneously presupposes and affects feeling work. In addition, lamentations should be seen as situated religious practice. Artistry also contributes to creating an extra-ordinary space, in which the living can experience contact with the dead. In aesthetization, the emotions of grief are worked out and quasi-therapeutically kept in shape; but this aesthetics is not an end-in-itself here: it is deeply connected to religion. The special language which is used and the ways of speaking contextualize a religious space. Emotionality, art, morality and religiosity are performatively linked. 2. Grieving in Georgia Georgia is a small country which belonged to the former Soviet Union up until its disssolution. It was Christianized as early as the Fourth Century AD. Today the Orthodox Church plays a major role in public life. Due to the strong influence of Iran and Turkey, the Muslim faith also predominates in some regions. Institutionalized religious practice was discouraged during the Soviet period. In the case of Georgia, however, this did not mean that people abandoned all religious activities. If, following Luckmann,13 we regard communal concern with the great transcendencies, such as this world and the hereafter, as religious, then Georgian everyday life has many more religious moments than for example, the live of most people in Germany. Georgian grief rituals can be regarded as a staging of religion. In Georgia the lament is assigned the official function of softening the ground for the deceased to make her/his way into the hereafter. People think of it as a form of honoring her/him and the family. In folk religious belief, the choreography of the overall activity complex is related to the life which the departed person can expect in the next world. A dignified parting promises an honorable reception in the afterlife. When someone dies, people in Georgia still perform joint mourning for many days, including day- long lamentations by women and ritual night wakes held around the coffin by men; neighbors ritually prepare meals for all those sharing in the grief, and there are various large meals held in connection with the funeral and special memorial days later in the year, at which masters of ceremony (called tamada) follow a toast order canonized specially for "sad meals" (Airis supra). The various actions and forms of expression are regarded as related to people's emotional needs, but they always also have religious and moral dimensions14, which sometimes are made explicit within the ritual of shared grieving. The dominant form of ritual wailing is called "xmit naRirlebi." "Xmit naRirlebi" means "crying loudly with one's voice." Also called "motkmiti tirili" (spoken weeping or wailing with the voice), 13 Thoomas Luckmann, (1991): Unsichtbare Religion. Frankfurt 1991. 14 Morals are viewed here in the sense of Durkheim as community-oriented action and thinking, Emile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of Rligious Life. New York 1915/1965. On the linkage of feeling and morals see also Geoffrey White, Moral Discourse and the Rhetoric of Emotions. In: Lutz, Catherine/Abu-Lughod, Lila (eds.): Language and the Politics of Emotion. Cambridge 1990, 46-69. 3 this genre performs an "aesthetics of pain", as Caraveli15 put it for Greek ritual wailing. Lamenting is always a polylogue with much turn-taking. Sometimes, a woman laments and others hum the melody with weeping sounds, a stylized background wailing called "zari." The lament performer (moRirali) orients herself mostly to the dead person, to various addressees or sometimes to the audience in general. Similar to Africa, Brazil, Russia, Papua New Guinea, the Trobriand Islands, Greece and wherever lamentation is still practiced,16 in Georgia it consists of improvised, partly sung, partly spoken collaborative polylogues, praising and addressing the deceased person, other deceased and those present, voicing personal memories, thereby situating immediate emotions; the dirges are usually presented in line form, often with a repetitive melody and sobbing sounds at the line's end. Women are the chief wailers in West Georgia; in East Georgia only women lament. This emotional division of labor between the sexes is found in many cultures; there is always an ideology which declares it as "natural": Women supposedly cry better and as givers of life are said to have better access to its end. Crying or sobbing sounds and appeals to the deceased are mostly arranged in the lines often in a similar position at the line's beginning or end; by having conventionized positions they are included into the procedure of aesthetisation. Certain formulae of taking over others' pain to oneself17 are frequently used. Formulae and stable motifs (such as poetic rhetorical questions to the deceased as to why he had to leave) are combined in the xmit naRirlebi with improvisation as it is typical for oral art.18 Each lament is partly individually tailored for the deceased person, since it contains biographical dimensions which the lamenter can choose and stylize. Although there are generic standards of lament performance, the lamenter is free in topic choice and development, in imagery, in commenting upon or echoing previous texts. It is also up to her whether she sings or speaks her lines. There are no standards for turn length. Some turns may just consist of a formula, some may contain just some meaningless vowels. Over and over the moRiralebi (wailers) tell stories about shared experiences. The close female relatives and acquaintances sit around the coffin. Frequently someone stands up, leans over the open coffin and tells the deceased something, often she makes those who enter the room the subject of her address to the deceased person (e.g., "Look, even Nina from Ikoti came. She comes in honor of you, although she has five children. What a good woman Nina is"). Addressing the deceased is situated religious practice. When I entered the room the moRirali often told the deceased that people even came from Germany in honor of her. I was always given a role in the ritual process as was 15 Anna Caraveli, (1986): The bitter wounding: The lament as social protest. In: Jill Dubisch (ed.): Gender and Power in Rural Greece. Princeton, N.J. 1986, 189-194. 16 William L. Burke, Notes on a Rhetoric of Lamentation. Central States Speech Journal 29 (1979) 109-121. Anna Caraveli, (1986), see footnote 15. Anna Caraveli-Chaves, (1980): Bridge between worlds. The greek women's lament as communicative event. Journal of American Folklore (1980), 129-157. Giorgi CocaniOe, Giorgobidan giorgobamde. Tbilisi 1993. Loring M.Danforth, Alexander Tsiaras, The Death Rituals of Rural Greece. Princeton 1982. Steven Feld, Wept Thoughts: The Voicing of Kaluli Memories. Oral Tradition 5/2-3 (1990), 241-266. Ruth Finnegan, (1970): Oral Literature in Africa. Nairobi 1070. Ketevan NakaUiOe, Gruzinskie PlaIi. Working Paper of the SavaxiUvili Institute, Tbilisi 1993. Gunter Senft, Trauer auf Trobriand. Anthropos 80 (1985),471-492. Nadia C., Seremetakis, The Last Word. Women, Death, and Divination in Inner Mani. Chicago 1991. Yuri Sokolov, Russian Folklore. New York 1950. K. M. Tiwary, Tuneful Weeping: A Mode of Communication. Working Papers in Sociolinguistics. No. 27. Austin, TX 1975. Greg Urban, Ritual Wailing in Amerindian Brazil. American Anthropologist 90 (1988), 385-400. 17 Winfried Boeder, "Über einige Anredeformen im Kaukasus", Georgica. Zeitschrift für Kultur, Sprache und Geschichte Georgiens und Kaukasiens 11 (1988), 11-20. 18 Walter Ong, Orality and Literacy. The Technologizing of the World. London/New York 1982. Viv Edwards, and Thomas J. Sienkewicz, Oral Cultures Past and Present, London 1990. 4 everybody else. We can speak of a "split audience" here.19 The deceased person is often told something very positive about those present, who naturally also hear this. The deceased is again and again embraced and kissed. If someone new enters the room, the lamentation continues reinforced. Women arriving from distant villages climb out of the bus and immediately begin lamenting. This indicates how great the ritual space is. It is most definitely not confined to the deceased person's house. They approach the deceased loudly shouting something like : "Elisa, how could you leave us so soon? Do you want to meet your husband? Oh, Otar, now you have her back.", not greeting anyone. No one smiles.20 Not to smile is an important part of ritual body politics. Men stroll past everyone and say: "viziareb tkvens mcuxarebas" (I share your grief). Then they sit down on benches in front of the keening room (often for hours or even days). They chat about everything imaginable there, but always softly and without laughter. In West Georgia mourners unbind their hair and tear at it constantly. They also scratch their faces – forms of self-injury which are observed as an expression of grief in many cultures.21 This is regarded in West Georgia as a strong expression of pain - in East Georgia it is regarded as completely inappropriate exaggeration. Every region sees its own lamentation style as the most appropriate and also natural.22 In the sociology of emotions it has been assumed since Durkheim that emotions can combine with other feelings and moods; these can become "meta-affects" (as Urban 1988 put it in a study on wailing in Amerindian Brazil). Thus even mourning itself becomes "correct mourning" - with cultural standards of appropriateness for the expressive repertoire. Grief can, e.g., be quickly linked with the wish for support by the group, with the wish to fictionalize the world of the deceased and with the need to master the situation, to let it not overwhelm the mourners. Not only the days-long dialogical lamentations, but also elaborated drinking toasts during mourning meals are still very popular in Georgia today. Only in the capital of Tbilisi lamentation is no longer practiced among the Tbilissians. In the villages anyone who can lament beautifully or formulate beautiful drinking toasts also shapes the feelings of other persons present. She who laments well is regarded as a good woman and knows what she owes the deceased in the other world and her people in this world. She thereby also manages the linkage of this world and the hereafter in theatrical, art- oriented communication. On the verbal level of lamentation poetic forms are conspicuous. With Jakobson23 we assume that poetic forms are by no means limited to canonized art. The poetic function is present when the principle of equivalence is projected from the axis of selection to the axis of combination; equivalence is raised to a constitutive procedure of sequencing. This will later be shown on the basis 19 See Bauman's article in this book for analytical differentiations of the roles of speaker and hearer. The traditional model of the speaker-hearer dyad is too simple to capture most communicatice processes. Very often we have, for example, a hierchy of addressed persons. In Georgian lamentations we alwaysd have a "split audience" in the sense Erving Goffman, introduced the term in "Forms of Talk," Philadelphia 1981. Some are official targets of the message and others the inofficial. 20 Not to smile requires a control of the body which Georgians manage better at than I. The mourning natives recognized me as foreign by my smiling. I was not even aware that I had smiled slightly. This shows again how 21 much mourning is body politics and how much this must be embodied in order to behave correctly. Hannes Stubbe, Formen der Trauer. Eine kulturanthropologische Untersuchung, Berlin 1985. 22 Helga Kotthoff, Affekt-Darbietung in interkulturellen Lamentationen in Georgien. In: Stefan Rieger et al. (eds.): Interkulturalität. Zwischen Inszenierung und Archiv. Tübingen 1999b, 231-251. 23 Roman Jakobson, Concluding statement: Linguistics and poetics. In: Thomas Sebeok (ed.): Style in Language. Cambridge, MA. 1960 5 of a lamentation text. Lamentations are always "staged discourse" in the sense of Iser.24 Staging or performance relates to aestheticized communication in a narrow sense. Georgian dirges demand a theatrical performance to a public employing engagement of the body, gestures, mimicry, the para- verbal and the verbal level. With the concept of performance we attempt to capture the semiotic multi-levelling of staged communication. Procedures necessary for every form of social activity we capture with Goffman´s concept of "framing" instead, as is outlined in the preface to this book. Poetic and emotive functions are always closely linked;25 likewise here. Additionally, the lament provides a service to the deceased, the linkage of this world with the other and the linkage of various "provinces of meaning" in the sense of Schütz.26 I postulate that the stylized practice of ritual grieving creates a non-ordinary experiental and imaginative involvement and a space where the living are seemingly in contact with the dead,27 a magic space. One cannot, however, limit the analysis of grief communication in Georgia to the verbal domain. The experience of death is immediately ritually staged, and this staging makes use of several expressive modalities. Thus the wailing dialogues are always embedded in the context of the whole event. Text and context mutually form each other into a kind of "total artwork". This total artwork makes possible non- ordinary experiences. 3. R U Aesthetics in the lamentation for DimiRri GabrielaUvili Again and again - from Radcliffe-Brown28 and van Gennep29 to Ariès30 and Meuli31 - the literature on transitional rites states that shared grieving creates a community, or at least recreates communities after a loss. Through performance analyses we can show in detail how the social communalization of grief is communicatively acted out. Aesthetic strategies play a role in communalizating the living and also the living and the dead. I would like to point to five strategies which in my view carry relevant aesthetic dimensions in Georgian lamentation. With Tannen we call the first dimension a "sound strategy" (the vocal, musical and poetical delivery) and the other four "sense strategies" (constructed dialogue, sudden address shift, formulaic self-sacrifice, imagery and detailing). Together they play a major role in creating an extra-ordinary realm of scenaric experience. Mutual participation in scenes that are put on stage is invited. For Georgian grief rituals I underline Tannen's idea that music and evoked scenes trigger emotions and "that scenes are crucial in both thinking and feeling because they are composed of people in relation to each other, doing things that are culturally and personally recognizable and meaningful."32 24 Wolfgang Iser, Das Fiktive und das Imaginäre. Perspektiven literarischer Anthropologie. Frankfurt 1993. 25 Jakobson 1960: 92. See footnote 24. 26 See on the discussion of Schütz's theory of provinces of meaning and their significance for a pragmatic aesthetics Hubert Knoblauch, Anthropologie der symbolischen Kommunikation. Die Phänomenologie des Alltags und die Fragestellungen der Anthropologie der Literatur. Arbeitspapier Nr. 10 des Sonderforschungsbereichs 511 an der Universität Konstanz 1996. 27 See for similar functions of the language of magics Tanya M. Luhrmann, (1989): Persuasions of the Witch´s Craft. London 1989. 28 Alfred R. Radcliffe-Brown, The Andaman Islanders. New York 1964. 29 Arnold van Gennep, Les rites de passage. Paris 1909. 30 Phillipe Ariès, Geschichte des Todes. München 1981. 31 Karl Meuli, Gesammelte Schriften. Bd. 1 und Bd. 2. Basel 1975. 32 Deborah Tannen, Talking voices: Repetition, dialogue, and imagery in conversational discourse. Cambridge 1989. 6 Of course, part of the scenaric arrangement is the structure within the room where the coffin stands. Usually the grievers stand or sit beside the coffin. The foto in this book shows, that the wailer stages herself in a dialogue with the deceased as is typically done. I will first deal with verbal staging; then at the end of the article some other (including non-verbal) elements from the ritual domain will also be dealt with. The sound strategy basically consists of speaking (or singing) in lines and of many forms of parallelisms. Speaking in line form is a sign of poeticity.33 With all wailers lines are fairly easily recognizable through breathing. Often a line begins with sobbing inhalation. The lines are of different lengths. Crying sounds often mark a line's end. There is melodic delivery throughout. The melody is repeated line by line with some variation. The first syllables of a line are presented in a higher tone register, at the end the tone falls. This intonation pattern basically prevails, but there is always slight variation. Additionally, we find many epiphora, anaphora, alliterations and anadiplosis which are all based on sound repetition. Poetry scholars have regarded such recurrent patterns of sound as basic to verbal art. Finnegan34 writes that the most marked feature of poetry is surely repetition. I will point to some examples from the first turn. Epiphora: In the neighbor's turn we find various epiphora: the first two lines end on "a", the next five on "o"; four of them on "tko", also line 12. Lines 10, 11, 16, 18, 20 and 21 end on "genacvale." Anaphora: As well anaphora are variously used: Lines 5, 6, 8, 10, 12, and 21 start with "Uen(i)" and thereby contribute to the parallelization of sound; 2 and 4 begin with "utxari", 13 and 14 with "da", 16 and 20 with "aba", 32, 34 and 37 with "vaime." Anadiplosis connects two lines in starting the second line with the finishing formulation of the first, for example 13 and 14, 27 and 28. Alliterations often organize identical sounds within a line, thus in 13, e.g., "g" dominates, in 14 "d". Sometimes we find lexical repetition within a line, for example, in 3, 4, 15, 23, 25, sometimes in the course of several lines. Together with the sound strategies sense, strategies heighten involvement, coherence and the emotional experience of connectedness. They send metamessages of rapport between the communicators. Thus all these strategies of aesthetization create and symbolize community. One important sense strategy is "constructed dialogue." With Tannen35 we see what is called "reported speech," "direct speech," "direct discourse," or "direct quotation" (normally this involves a speaker framing an account of another's words as dialogue - here framing her own words in a dialogue with a nonpresent dead person) should be understood not as report, but as constructed dialogue. Claims to authenticity in reporting messages vary, sometimes not made at all. Especially in the lamentations the singer often calls to a person who has already been dead for a long time. The person in the coffin is asked to deliver her words to the other deceased whom he will soon meet; thereby he can be made the immediate addressee and mediator of the words for another in the hereafter who is the ultimate target of the lamenter's message. By constructing her message directly, the wailer opens a window to a dialogue that is fictionalized to happen in the afterworld. 33 Dell Hymes, "In vain I tried to tell you". Essays in Native American Ethnopoetics, Philadelphia 1981. 34 Ruth Finnegan, Oral poetry: Its nature, significance, and context. Cambridge 1977. 35 See footnote 32 7 A related strategy is multiple address and sudden address shifts: In lamentation there are complex participant roles.36 We often find the phenomenon that the dead person becomes the addressee of some message (often a kind of praise) about a present person who belongs to the audience, but is in a sense a target. Urban writes that many messages uttered in dirges are "intended not to be heard, in the ordinary linguistic sense, but rather to be overheard. Ritual wailing purports overtly not to engage an addressee, but to allow anyone within earshot access to something that would otherwise be private."37 We also agree with Feld38 who comments on Urban's statement and writes about the Kaluli instance that the otherwise privacy of the message is not the issue in ritual wailing: "wailers are speaking out to the deceasesd, other wailers, and the present collectivity. Their mode of expression places them forcefully in the social domain as performers. Their words are in some sense very much meant to be heard rather than overheard in that they function as an invitation to others to collaboratively enunciate felt thoughts about the death at hand and the social position of the deceased." A third strategy is expressed by formulaic self-sacrifice. Formulae which communicate the wish to take over another person's burden or even death play a major role in Georgian everyday life, especially in dirges. These formulae presuppose a possibility of transcendence which departs from the realm of realism, imagining supernatural and magic powers. For example, "genacvale" is one of the special sympathy formulae which describe a strong religious wish for self-sacrifice. Detailing and imagery make a fourth important strategy. A major form of achieving mutual participation in sensemaking is creating images: both by the speaker who suggests an image with her words, and the hearer who creates an image based on that suggestion.39 Lamenters try to evoke scenes with the deceased. Details invite listeners to construct a scene. We will discuss four successive turns from the lamentation for DimiRri (MiRa) GabrielaUvili in this article. In this sequence a neighbor and three nieces lament. Niece 3 sings. Singing is not obligatory, but in Georgian lamenting it is always possible. The sequence occurred in 1996 on the day before the burial, called panaUvidi in Muxrani (East Georgia).40 The research reported here arises from long and intensive research visits continuing through many years of friendship and contact, especially with people from Muxrani. David PapuQaUvili, who taped this lament for us, specialized in staging the musical background for laments. He possesses a collection of mourning music (Western classical and Georgian folkloristic) and a cassette recorder. He is called to many mournings and acts there as a sort of disk jockey. Such mourning disk jockeys are found in many villages. We first look at the neighbor's turn. The neighbor instructs the deceased MiRa, who lies in the room in a coffin, in line 1 that he should take her tears to her brother in the hereafter. Symbolic condensation is explicitly communicated here. Crying is not just crying but takes on other functions: The deceased can take the tears which he receives for the others with him in the hereafter and share them; they should make existence easier for the whole community of the deceased, soften the earth for them. By evoking the image of sharing the tears, a community of the dead is created. 36 Here I draw again on participant roles as outlined in Bauman's article in this volume: participant, speaker, author, source, receiver, addressee, overhearer, target, audience, mediator. 37 See footnote 8 38 See footnote 8 39 See footnote 32 40 The transliterated line is here the location of the transcription symbols. Transcription convention: % = sobbing or crying sound, : = vowel lengthening, ('H) = audible inhalation, here often sobbingly done. The other conventions are the usual ones in conversation analysis. Punctuation marks are used as intonation signs. 8 Line 2 also represents an instruction to MiRa. He is supposed to talk to the neighbor's brother, who is already in the hereafter. She imagines the two men meeting there and talking to each other. In line 3 the neighbor directly addresses her deceased brother in the hereafter, who thereby becomes the target of her message. In line 4 she shifts address and talks again to MiRa. In line 5 she uses direct speech which is marked as such by the particle "tko" at the end of the line. Not only with reported speech, but also with such instructions to the dead the lament contains direct quotation. It can, along with Tannen,41 be viewed as an involvement strategy. The neighbor stages the dialogue that is supposed to take place between Mita and her brother theatrically and consequently makes it plastic for her audience. The neighbor goes on directly addressing the brother, but in the post-particle (tko)42 in line 7 the imperative orientation in the sense of "tell him" is grammaticalized. The animated speech produces a double-address to both the deceased brother and the neighbor in the coffin. Line 8 is still double direct speech consisting of what MiRa should say to the brother in the hereafter and what she herself is already directly telling him. Whereas she addresses the brother in line 8, she addresses MiRa in line 9. It is not absolutely clear to whom line 10 is addressed, but presumably to MiRa, because of the "also": she compares MiRa's children with her brother's. All the children are imagined to act positively in their fathers' senses. Since they are present, she confronts them with her expectations concerning the children's behavior. We witness a moralizing function here, that indeed plays an important role in the lamentations.43 In line 11 she explicitly addresses MiRa, giving him further instructions as to what to do for her brother in the hereafter. He should calm him. Line 15 contains another very frequent formula, whose grammatical form allows many variations. Here, the subject and the object are presented in the third person, perspectivizing herself as "his sister" from MiRa´s point of view. She then continues to talk primarily to MiRa. She also instructs him as to what he should not tell her brother (about unrest in Abxasia, line 17). 1 Neighb.: ai, Cemi cremlebi wauRe iq imasa, Sen genacvale, mita ai:, Iemi cremlebi Paure ik imasa, Uen genacvale miRa here, take my tears for him, genacvale, MiRa 2 uTxari Cem daCagrul, sacodav, Wkvian Zmasa utxari Iem daIagrul, sacodav, AQvian Omasa tell my oppressed, poor, smart brother 3 Zmao, Zmao, Sen mogikvdes da, Zmao (´H) Omao, Omao:, Uen mogiQvdes da, Oma:o%% brother, brother, your sister should die for you, brother 4 uTxari, uTxari, motyuebulo, sacodavo, Zmao-Tqo (´H) utxari, utxari, (´H) moRYuebulo sacodavo Omao-tko tell him, tell him, my deceived poor brother (tell him) 5 Seni Svilebi Sen nakvalevs misdeven-Tqo (´H) Ueni Uvilebi Uen naQvalevs misdeven-tko your children are following your traces (tell him) 6 Sen Svilebs moukvdeT mamida-Tqo (´H) Uen Uvilebs mouQvdet mamida%-tko%% your children's aunt should die (tell him) 7 rac ro piridan amogsvlia, Zmao, yvelafers imas akeTeben-Tqo (´H) rac ro Wiridan amogsvlia, Omao, (´H) Yvelapers imas aQeteben-tko 41 See footnote 32 42 In Georgian, reported speech is grammaticalized. "tko" stands for "tell her/him" and is simply attached to the utterance: an attached "o" stands, e.g., for the report of a third person's speech. 43 The communication of morals is the focus of Helga Kotthoff, Die Kommunikation von Moral in georgischen Lamentationen. In: Jörg Bergmann/Thomas Luckmann (eds.), Kommunikative Konstruktion von Moral. Band 2: Von der Moral zu den Moralen. Opladen 1999a, 50-80. 9 what came out of your mouth, brother, they do everything (tell him) 8 Seni suliko da sosos aravis darigeba ar unda (´H) Ueni suliko da sosos aravis darigeba ar unda your Suliko and Soso need lessons from no one 9 genacvale, mita genacvale, miRa genacvale, MiRa 10 Seni biWebic egre gaakeTeben, dagafaseben, genacvale Ueni (-) biAebic egre gaaQeteben, dagapaseben, genacvale your young boys will also do thus, will treasure you, genacvale, 11 jer-jerobiT, mita, uTxari, genacvale Ser-Serobit, miRa, utxari, genacvale now still, MiRa, tell him, genacvale 12 Seni saxeli ar SeurcxveniaT-Tqo Ueni saxeli ar Ueurcxveniat-tko they have not embarrassed your name (tell him) 13 da-Zmurad geubnebi, genacvale, gTxov, gexvewebi, daamSvido (´H) da-Omurad geubnebi, genacvale, gtxov, gexvePebi daamUvido, sisterly I tell you, genacvale, I ask you, plea with you, calm him 14 daamSvido, daawynaro, is da-damiwebuli, mita, (´H) daamUvido, daaPYnaro, is da-damiPebuli, miRa:%%, calm him, console him, his sister should become earth for him, MiRa 15 imas moukvdes da imas moukvdes da (´H) imas mouQvdes da%%% imas mouQvdes da%%% his sister should die to him, his sister should die to him 16 aba, kai ambebi miutane, genacvale, aba (´H) Qai ambebi miuRane, genacvale, please bring him only good news, genacvale 17 ar uTxra, ro ese arev-dareva ar utxra, ro ese arev-dareva:: do not tell him that there is unrest 18 Torem imis suls afxazeTSi gauxaria, genacvale torem imis suls apxazetUi gauxaria, genacvale for his soul experienced much joy in Abxazia, genacvale 19 pirvel rigSi imas eZaxian yvelaferSi Wirvel rigUi imas eOaxian YvelaperUi people always called him as the first44 20 aba, mita, daloce Seni Svilebi, genacval (´H) aba, miRa, daloce Ueni Uvilebi, genacvale well, MiRa, bless your children, genacvale 21 Seni katosTvis iloce, avadmyofia, genacvale (´H) Ueni QaRostvis iloce, avadmYopia, genacvale pray for your QaRo, who is ill, genacvale 22 mTeli Rame magaze erTi oTx-xuTjer unda vifiqro mteli Tame magaze erti otx-xutSer unda vipikro at least four to five times in the night I must think 23 neta rogor iqneba, neta rogor iqneba neRa rogor ikneba, neRa rogor ikneba how might things go for you, how might things go for you 24 vaime. vaime%% ((music)) 25 uime uime uime uime oh woe oh woe ((0.5)) 44 Meaning: invited him. 10 The neighbor modulates her voice for the lament: she speaks with a loud, creaky voice. Modulations of the voices are often used in lamentation as stylization. I will continue by elaborating the already mentioned phenomena of artistry in lamentation: 3.1. Constructed dialogue Constructed dialogue can serve as an intertextual link between many events. In Georgian lamentation we very often find a special form of it: in giving instructions to the lamented person as to what he should tell other deceased persons in the hereafter, the lamenter addresses her words to the nonpresent deceased person directly rather than indirectly. Thereby she makes the dead person in the room a mediator. As Bauman45 points out in his article in this book, in mediated communication we have discursive practices that transcend the face-to-face speaker-hearer dyad, a relaying of spoken messages through intermediaries. Lamentation can also become a speech routine by a mediator of utterances from a source to an ultimate targeted receiver, a long deceased person. This procedure here symbolically unites the living and the dead. In lamentation we always have an audience which is the receiver of the whole performance, even though messages are often not addressed to it. Since lamentation only takes place in front of an audience, it is an important factor of that discourse. In the neighbor's turn she quotes her own words to her dead brother in lines 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 12. MiRa is supposed to take them along as a message from her. She tells him that his children are following in his traces (line5), that they do what he told them (line 7), that they need lessons from no one (8), that they have not embarrassed his name (12). The children are present and are meant to hear her praise. They are of course also target addressees of her words. The voicing used in lamentation performances can generally be understood in terms of Soviet cultural semiotics,46 which analyzed the functions of direct and indirect quotation in fiction. Voloshinov47 distinguished two types of reported speech in fiction. The type which works with indirect quotation is said to be concerned with the stylistic homogenity of a text. The other type individualizes the language of characters and also the language of the teller. He refers to this as relativistic individualism and finds examples in the works of Fedor Dostoevski and Andrej Belyi. Characters are identified through their own quoted speech, through direct citation. Direct citation permits ellipses, omissions and a variety of other emotive tendencies which would be lost in indirect quotation. He demonstrates this, among other examples, by the exclamation, "What an achievement," which in indirect quotation one would have to transform into the clumsy phrase, "She said that it was a real achievement . . . ". Direct quotation evokes "manner of speech," not only individually, but also typologically. It is "speech about speech, utterance about utterance".48 Tannen,49 Brünner,50 Günthner,51 and Couper-Kuhlen52 have shown that reported dialogue can contain verbal and intonational characterizations through which - on the basis of stereotypes - 45 46 In this volume. 47 Michail M. Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination, ed., Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. Austin 1981. Valentin N. Voloshinov, "Reported Speech", in: Ladislav Matejka and Kristina Pomorska (eds.), Readings in Russian Poetics. Cambridge 1929/1978, 149-175. 48 See footnote 47 49 See footnote 32 50 Gisela Brünner, Redewiedergabe in Gesprächen. Deutsche Sprache 1 (1991),1-16. 51 Günthner, Susanne, 'The contextualization of affect in reported dialogues', in Susanne Niemeyer and Renée Dirven (eds.) The Language of Emotions. Amsterdam 1997, 247-277. 11 images of persons, social groups, etc. are transmitted. By the 'polyphonic layering of voices'53 protagonists are implicitly stylized and evaluated. The speaker anchors the voices in a storyworld and animates them in a way that corresponds to her current intention. Brünner54 underlines the performative character of directly quoted speech. Goffman55 uses the term "animated dialogue" in order not to suggest that it might be realistic reproduction. Throughout the text the voices of the deceased are intertwined with those of the living. The lamenting neighbor, for example, unites her dead brother and his children as addressees of her messages. Thereby a community of the living with the dead is again and again symbolized. The reality of this community is one of the basic religious convictions of most Georgians. It is conversationally (re)created. 3.2. Multiple address and sudden address shifts Connected with constructed dialogue is the phenomenon of unannounced address shifting. Multiple address is more the rule than the exception in Georgian laments. Sometimes it is heard to determine who the target addressee is and whose dialogue is being performed. Address shifts are very often not explicitly announced. It has to be inferred whose speech is put on stage. In line 23 the neighbor directly addresses the absent woman Qato by quoting to the public her own nocturnal thoughts about QaRo. In line 21 she asks MiRa to pray for the ill woman QaRo who is a relative. Since QaRo's other relatives are also present in the audience, they witness how the moRirali cares about her. In discussing the turns following the already presented one, we will return to this strategy. 3.3. Formulaic Self-Sacrifice The first line contains the formula "genacvale." Laments are permeated with this formula which often marks the end of a line (such as in lines 10, 16 and 20). It can very well make a line or make a line together with a name, such as in line 9. "Genacvale" expresses the process of immersing oneself in a person's sorrow and can be translated as "I take your place." "Genacvalos deda" accordingly means "I take mother's place." Boeder56 writes that in a certain contextual position one can as well translate the formula as "I die for you." "First, there are the abundant, often-repeated formulae whose fundamental semantic pattern states, at least etymologically, the following: the speaker wishes to shoulder the burden of pain (the illness, misfortune . . .) which the person addressed suffers. The addressee's misfortune should be conveyed to the speaker; the lamenter wants to symbolically shoulder the suffering person's pain." 57 However, as is often the case with formulae used to express strong feelings, their semantics is weakened in everyday life. In Georgia one hears this formula so often and in so many contexts that it can be taken as a mere expression of sympathy. There are many other formulae using the Günthner, Susanne, "Poliphony and 'the layering of voices' in reported dialogues: An analysis of the use of prosodic devices in everyday reported speech", Journal of Pragmatics 31 (1999), 685-708. 53 Elizabeth Cooper-Kuhlen, Coherent Voicing: On Prosody in Conversational Reported Speech. In: Wolfram Bublitz et al. (eds.), Coherence in Spoken and Written Discourse. Amsterdam (1999), 11-35. 53 See footnote 46 54 1991: 7, see footnote 50 55 Erving Goffman, Forms of Talk, Philadelphia 1981. 56 See footnote 17 57 Translated by H.K., See footnote 17 12 semantics of shouldering another person's suffering, for example "your sister should die for you" in line 3 and "your children's aunt should die" in line 6. The most common form is "Uen mogiQvdi" (I should die for you) as uttered by niece 2 in line 50. It is interesting that the neighbor does not say: I should die for you, but perspectivates herself as her brother's sister or his children's aunt. Perspectivation seems to play an interesting role in the use of formulae. Very generally, all humans' perceiving and acting is done from a specific viewpoint which, together with the scope and other structural characteristics of perspective, determines the space of perception and activity. Every experience is normally present in those aspects that are seen from the spatio-temporal point of view taken by the subject.58 In lamentation, however, experience is sometimes explicitly presented from the point of view of a deceased. Normal subjectivity of the experiencer/speaker is thereby symbolically deleted. The same is done in lines 14, in the formula "his sister should become earth for him" and in 15. The perspectives of several dead and living persons are thereby symbolically combined. Formulae of wanting to suffer for another or even exchange places with the dead play an important role in Georgia - as in the Near East in general.59 They have various pragmatic functions which for reasons of space cannot be explained in detail here. Line 6 is primarily addressed to MiRa, but targeted at the brother, and it is perspectivized with even greater complexity than in line 3. The neighbor perspectivizes herself as the aunt of her brother's children; in this role she wishes to perform a ritual self-sacrifice which would make her equal to her brother. We see here various communicative communalizations symbolically brought about, father and children, brother and sister and all (the living children and the sister with the deceased father/brother) together. Obviously the repeated use of formulae also contributes to sound coherence. As an illustration consider how many lines are connected by variants of "Uen mogiQvdi" (I should die for you) or "Uen mogiQvdes da" (the sister should die for you) or other variations of the same formula: 3, 6, 15, 43, 44, 48, 50, 55, 61. Turn-taking is also poeticized. Opening up the closing of the wailer´s turn often begins with an interjection or formula employment. "Vaime" is similar to the English "woe," an interjection which expresses sorrow and suffering. The neighbor closes her turn by this interjection and crying sounds. Also niece 1 in finishing her turn combines crying, the interjection "vaime" and the rhetorical question "what shall I do." Niece 2 closes her turn by the formula "Uen mogiQvdi" (I should die for you), and niece 3 utters "vai vai ra mPare xar, miRa Oia" which again consists of interjections and a formula of suffering. Besides expressing grief, formulae, interjections and also crying sounds fulfill a function in structuring the lament. 3. 4. Detailing and imagery A major form of creating conversational involvement in sensemaking is organized by imagery: the power of images to communicate meanings and emotions resides in their ability to evoke scenes, as we will see in the next excerpt from the lament for MiRa. Like constructed dialogues, details create vivid pictures, and understanding is derived from scenes in which people are placed in relation to each other. Details create mental images and can stand as metonyms for larger experiental chunks. The individual imagination of the wailer invites group imagination. Thus, a collective memory of 58 Carl F. Graumann, "Perspective and Horizon: The Individual and the Social Approach in Phenomenology and Sociology", in: Rainer Dietrich and Carl Graumann (eds.), Language Processing in Social Context, Amsterdam 1989, 95-122. 59 See footnote 17 13 the time spent together is not only organized but celebrated. Details and imagery play an essential role in making the xmit naRirlebi easy to memorize. Thus, the lamenting women play a major role in constructing social memory. The particularity and familiarity of details such as those communicated from line 16 onward in the neighbor's turn is very moving. In line 16 the neighbor starts telling MiRa to only pass on good news. Again and again we find in the taped laments instructions as to what should not be said in the hereafter. Very often political unrest is mentioned, of which there were various cases in the past few years, e.g., the war with Abxazia. The neighbor gives the detail that her brother was always immediately invited when he went to Abxazia (19); many Georgians had relatives there. The listeners are invited to create the whole scene of such an invitation themselves. In inviting all those present to recall what wonderful times they had spent in Abxazia, political positions are given voice, and a political memory is kept alive. To invite and be invited points to moral values that are highly regarded in Georgian culture. The deceased MiRa and those present are united in the remembered scenes. Let's look at the next turn. One of MiRa's nieces takes the turn: 26 Ni 1: mita Zia, mita Zia ar SemiZlia, ro ar gitiro miRa Oia %%%% mita Oia %%% ar Ue%miOlia%, ro ar giRiro Uncle MiRa, Uncle MiRa I cannot manage to not cry about you 27 me tirili ar SemiZlia,, (´H) me Ririli ar UemiOlia %%%%%, I cannot cry (well)60 28 ar SemiZlia da aivso guli (´H) ar UemiOlia da ai%vso guli%%%%, I cannot, but my heart is filled 29 Sen xom mamaCems ar elaparakebodi (´H) Uen xom mamaIems ar elaWaraQebodi%%%% you did not speak with my father61 30 ro SerigdiT, rogor uxaroda, (´H) ro Uerigdit, rogor uxaroda%%%%% as you reconciled, how happy he was 31 rad Camostexe mxari (´H) rad IamosRexe mxari %%%% why did you break his shoulder62 32 vaime, raRa vqna, mita Zia ar gagiSvebT (´H) vaime, raTa vkna%%%%, (´H) miRa Oia, ar gagiUvebt%%%%% oh woe, what can I do, Uncle MiRa, we will not let you go away 33 CavWidebT diSvilebi da ZmiSvilebi xels da arsad ar gagiSvebT (´H) IavAidebt diUvilebi da OmiUvilebi, xels da arsad ar gagiUvebt %%% hand in hand we place ourselves there, sisterchildren and brotherchildren, and do not let you go 34 vaime raRa vqna, vaime raRa vqna, (´H) vaime raTa vkna%%%%, vaime raTa vkna %%%% woe, what shall I do, woe, what shall I do 35 mamaCemi rogor daRonebuli ari (´H) mamaIemi rogor daTonebuli ari %%%%%% my father how sad he is 36 erTs ar gvaTqmeinebda, xalxo, mita Ziaze cudsa (´H) erts ar gvatkmevinebda, xalxo, miRa Oiaze cudsa, %%%% he never let us, people, speak ill of Uncle MiRa 60 Meaning: lament. 61 There was a conflict between the two. 62 Meaning: Why do you leave him alone now? 14 37 vaime, raTa vkna vqna, vaime vaime, raTa vkna, vaime%%%%%%% oh, woe what shall I do, oh [%%%%%%% The starting phrase of the niece, that she cannot cry but simply must, because her heart is so full (28), is in the frame of the genre, stereotypical but nevertheless points to the value of spontaneity. Again and again lamenters claim that they cannot act otherwise does. Then she speaks to MiRa and thereby also to those present about the disagreement between MiRa and her father. She gives some details about MiRa's and her father's behavior and feelings, for example, that her father allowed no one to speak ill of MiRa. Everyone can hear that the father's valuation of Mita was high and still is, despite the disagreement. A reconciliation between them had already occurred during his lifetime; it is regarded as very important in popular religion to reconcile oneself before death. Then the niece fictionalizes images of not letting MiRa go (line 33). Again she tells of her father. It appears to be morally important to let everyone know that her father and MiRa parted on good terms. But she does not tell the whole story of their quarrel. The audience can complete the scene from knowledge of similar ones from their own experience. Niece 2 takes the next turn. 38 Ni 2: [mita Zia, vzivar da gelodebi, rodis etyvi gulo Zalos miRa Oia, vzivar da gelodebi, rodis eRYvi gulo Oalos Uncle MiRa I sit and wait for what you will say to Aunt Gulo 39 marines dauZaxe, xelebi gamiziloso, mita Zia marines dauOaxe, xelebi gamiziloso, miRa Oia fetch Marina, she should massage my hands,63 Uncle MiRa 40 magram arc Sen eubnebi da arc is meZaxis (´H) magram arc Uen eubnebi da arc is meOaxis yet you say nothing and she also does not call me 41 rogorc maSin ar damiZaxa, mita Zia (´H) rogorc maUin ar damiOaxa, miRa Oia just as then she did not call me, Uncle MiRa 42 mec gamifrTxilda, cudaT ariso, magram ar movkvdebodi, ara, (´H) mec gamiprtxilda, cudat ariso, magram ar movQvdebodi, ara%% she paid attention to me, she doesn't feel good (she said), but I would not have died, no 43 neta Tu gabutuli xar CemTan, mita gatove, Sen mogikvdi, mita Zia, (´H) neRa tu gabuRuli xar Iemtan, miRa, Rove, Uen mogiQvdi, miRa Oia perhaps you will no longer speak with me, I should die for you, Uncle MiRa 44 magram megona, ro kargad dagtove, Sen mogikvdi, mita Zia magram megona, ro Qargad dagRove, Uen mogiQvdi, miRa Oia but I thought that you were well when I left, I should die for you, Uncle MiRa 45 guli amevso, aRar SemiZlia, mita Zia (´H) guli amevso, aTar UemiOlia, miRa Oia %%% my heart is filled, I am at wit's end, Uncle MiRa 46 ocdaxuTi wlis biZaSvili momikvda xalxo ocdaxuti Plis biOaUvili momiQvda, xalxo my twenty-five-year-old cousin64 died, people 47 da Cem das xma ar amouRia ar utiria mita Zia da Iem das xma ar amouTia, ar uRiria, miRa Oia and my sister made no sound,65 did not cry, Uncle MiRa 48 Sen mogikvdi, mita Zia Uen mogiQvdi, miRa Oia 63 Literally: rub. The uncle's hands often fell asleep. 64 Since Georgian has no gender, the cousin could be either male or female. 65 She did not lament. 15 I should die for you, Uncle MiRa 49 da rogor amoaRebine exla xma, mita Zia da rogor amoaTebine exla xma, miRa Oia and how you have forced them to cry, Uncle MiRa 50 Sen mogikvdi, mita Zia Uen mogiQvdi, miRa Oia%% I should die for you, Uncle MiRa 51 vaime, raRa vqna, mita Zia, , vaime, raRa vkna, miRa Oia %%%% oh, what shall I do, Uncle MiRa ((murmur)) 52 mita Zia is mainc damarige miRa Oia, is mainc damarige Uncle MiRa, at least advise me 53 valiko ro Camova da metyvis, valiQo ro Iamova da meRYvis when Valiko arrives and says 54 Zia ra uyavio, ra vuTxra, mita Zia Oia ra uYavio, ra vutxra, miRa Oia%%% where do you have your Uncle, what shall I reply, Uncle MiRa 55 vaime, raRa vqna mita Zia, vaime, Sen mogikvdi, mita Zia, vaime, raTa vkna miRa Oia %%%, vaime, Uen mogiQvdi, miRa Oia%%% oh, what shall I do, Uncle MiRa, oh, I should die for you, Uncle MiRa 56 su Seni sacodavi Tvalebi melandeba, mita Zia, su Ueni sacodavi tvalebi melandeba, miRa Oia%% all the time I see only your poor eyes, Uncle MiRa 57 su Seni gadmoxedva melandeba, mita Zia su Ueni gadmoxedva melandeba, miRa Oia%% all the time I see your look, Uncle MiRa 58 ro gadmomxedavdi xolme da gagixardeboda Cemi Semosvla, ro gadmomxedavdi xilme da gagixadeboda Iemi Uemosvla you looked at me and were happy that I came 59 xelebi damizileo, mita Zia xelebi damizileo, miRa Oia%%% massage my hands, (you said) Uncle MiRa 60 xelebi damizile, sul gamibuJdao xelebi damizileo, sul gamibuEdao massage my hands, which are completely asleep (you said) 61 Sen mogikvdi, mita Zia, Uen mogiQvdi, miRa Oia I should die for you, Uncle MiRa In line 38 niece 2 directly addresses her uncle. She first creates a concrete scene from her memory (I sit and wait for what you will say to Aunt Gulo); then she speaks with her uncle's voice. She offers details from earlier meetings, which she now shares with everyone present in the audience. Again we have a constructed dialogue. Niece 2 in line 40 contrasts her concrete expectations from the living uncle with the reality of the present moment. In line 41 she compares the present situation with the past. The sadness of the present situation culminates in the detail that neither speaks. She then gives details of an incident in which she was likewise not called because she was ill herself. Rhetorical questions are asked (43) which suggest the uncle's inability to speak. Death itself becomes plastic in this concrete detail of not speaking. As is typically done in Georgian wailing niece 2 also reminds the audience of a cousin who died young (line 46). She says that her sister did not cry in that case. In line 49 she turns MiRas attention to how everybody cries for him. Contrasts such as this are often constructed by the wailers. They have the following pattern: For X or Y I was 16 unable to cry, but for you my feelings are too strong. Although the control of feelings is culturally not desired at all (emotional expression is desired), it is often said that one is struggling for self- control but just cannot manage. This strengthens the emotional expression and its authenticity. Formulae follow. The comparison should not be taken literally but has the mere function of reflecting the grief everybody present expresses. Starting in line 52 she evokes a concrete scene by asking MiRa what she should say to Valiko, who up to now has not been informed of MiRa's death. In this way an absent person is drawn into the communalization process. She dramatizes the scene with Valiko, which is of course much more effective in enhancing emotions than generally acknowledging that MiRa is not among them anymore. Starting in line 56 she focuses on details of MiRa's appearance. She mentions the contrast between his poor eyes in line 57 and his happy eyes in 58. With these metonyms she compares the happy past and the sad present. Details, such as the massaging of the uncle's hands (59), which had fallen asleep, again visually evoke the scene; they are of course more easily remembered than general information would be. Details represent a sort of zoom effect in the narration. They work with analogy and association. Niece 2 and niece 3 end most of their lines with the call "miRa Oia" (39, 41, 43, 44, 45, 47, 49, 50, 51, 54, 55, 56, 57, 59, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 67,69). Niece 2 laments somewhat more melodically. The melody does not correspond to the music heard in the background, which here comes from a cassette recorder,66 but sometimes, however, is played live. The music does not accompany the lament, but is rather independent and also is played in another room, e.g., in the courtyard. It can, however, very easily happen that the lamenter orients herself to the music, as does Niece 3 who sings. The melody is quite typical for East Georgia. ( (music pause for a few minutes; change of music; tape was briefly turned off and again on)) 62 Ni 3: ra vqna, kidev unda usayveduro, dedaCemsa, mita Zia, (´H) ra, vkna Qidev unda usaYveduro de::::daIema::::, miRa Oia:::::%% what shall I do, shall I also reproach my mother, Uncle MiRa, 63 Zmao, Zmaoo, rogor daggurgurebs Tavze, mita Zia (´H) Omao:::, Omaoo::::, rorgor daggu::rgure:::bs tavze::::::, miRa Oia:::% brother, brother (she calls), how bitterly she bewails you67 Uncle MiRa 64 Tavs iklavda mamaaCemze, mita Zia:::, (´H) tavs i::::Qlavda:::: mama::::Iemze:::, miRa Oia::::: she killed herself because of my father, Uncle MiRa 65 saxvewrebiT vedeqiT me da Cemi da, mita Ziaa, (´H) saxvePre::bit ve:::dekit me::: da Ie:::mi da:::::, miRa: Oia::::%%% I and my sister stood there pleading, Uncle MiRa 66 itire-meTqi, deda mama itire-meTqi qalo (´H) iRere-metki, deda::::: mama iRire:::::-metki kalo:::::::, cry (I said) , mother, cry for the father (I said), woman, 67 xma ver amovaRebineT, mita Zia xma::: ver amo:vaTebine::t, mi:::Ra Oia:::%%% we have not succeeded, that she made sounds, Uncle MiRa 68 aki tirili ar vicio, deda, aki xmiT tirili ar SemiZliao, qalo (´H) aQi::: Ririli ar vicio, deda:::::, aQi::: xmit Ririli ar Ue::::mizliao::, kalo:::::: I could not cry (you said), mother, I could not cry , (you said) woman 66 As already said, D. PapuQaUvili taped the lament for us; he specialized in staging the musical background for laments, Western classical or Georgian folkloristic. 67 Literally: how bitterly she coos to you. 17 69 rogor amoaRebina, mita Zia (´H) rogor amoaTebina, miRa Oia:::::::%%% how does her, Uncle MiRa 70 rogor amoaRebina jigris simwarem xmaa dedaCemsa rogor amoaTebina Sigris simParem xmaa::, dedaIemsa:::%%% how does a good man let her cry bitterly, my mother 71 vai vai ra mware xar, mita Zia vai vai ra mPare xar, miRa Oia oh alas, oh alas, how bitter you are, Uncle MiRa Let´s examine the text from line 62 onwards. Niece three asks her uncle what to do and tells him by performing words she herself had uttered in another context how her mother is bewailing him. Niece 3 constructs the words of her mother (63 and 68) and her own words (66). Her mother is present and listens to her daughters performance; again we witness multiple addressee orientation: the dead uncle is the direct addressee, her mother and the audience are indirect addressees. The mother is complimented and the audience is informed about her deep grief. In line 68 Niece 3 animates her mother´s voice for the public, but also directly addresses her by calling to her; indirectly she is of course also talking to the audience. As already pointed out, we often find sudden address shifts in Georgian lamentation. In line 67 the uncle is addressed, in 68 the mother and the public, in 69 again the deceased uncle. Line 70 is presumably addressed to MiRa, the public, and the mother likewise, line 71 is primarily addressed to MiRa.. Again we witness multiple address and sudden address shifts as a communicative communalization strategy. It combines the realm of the living with that of the dead. Since niece 3 sings we will take a look at the notes of lines 68-71: The Georgian ethnomusicologist Prof. QuQuri IoxoneliSe from Tbilisi transcribed the notes of this passage. These strategies make the discourse vivid and imaginative. Together, the poeticized line structuring, the special vocabulary of the interjections and formulae, constructed dialogue, detailing, imagery, and multiple address have an involving and evocative effect on everybody. They create the sensual experience that is necessary to create a space, in which normal true or false statuses are abandoned, a space in which oral art is combined with magic. As Finnegan pointed out so convincingly in her work on oral literature68 we never have the texts in isolation. They have to be understood in connection to the processes of which they are a part. I would like to add that we also do not have artistry in isolation. In the Georgian grief complex, most 68 Ruth Finnegan, (1977), see footnote 34. Ruth Finnegan, (1990): Introduction; or: Why the Comparativist Should Take Account of the South Pacific. Oral Tradition 5/2-3 (1990),159-184. 18 artistic elaborations play a role in staging religion. Therefore I would like to point to some other dimension of the ritual process. 4. On the external structure of Georgian grief rituals Ritualization starts as soon as a death is made public. The family in which someone has died announces the death by crying loudly (Uecxadeba) around the village. This cry is of course seen and experienced as a cry of shock but it also initiates a special period for the whole neighborhood. Now it is the duty of neighbors and relatives to hurry to offer their assistance. The grief family is provided for by neighbors until the burial. Work and festivities all stop at once. Ablutions with ritual provision of wash water begin. In East Georgia the wash water must be dumped far from the house as impure. In some West Georgian regions it is regarded as luck-bringing water for use in irrigating the fields. Regional differences are written into the grief complex in many places.69 The recreation of regional culture is one layer of the symbolic in the ritual process. All mirrors are immediately covered with black cloth in order to avoid seeing the deceased's reflection. This would according to folk belief mean death for the affected persons. The deceased is then dressed, in Georgia usually in Sunday clothing. The grieving familiy is not permitted to wash themselves. All forms of personal hygiene are stopped.70 In the period up to the burial neighbors and male relatives hold night-vigils over the dead. They sit around the fire while doing so. People believe that the deceased, including the one who has just joined them, will also meet around the fire in the afterworld. We can observe a continuing parallelization of earthly ritual action with what is supposed to happen in the hereafter. Thus it is also assumed that wine or vodka and roast sunflower seeds, which all neighbors bring with them, are likewise eaten by the deceased. During the night-watch the visitors must enjoy themselves, in order that the deceased can also enjoy the merriment. Interesting mixtures of orthodox Christianity and natural-religious elements are observable in all Georgian regions. In former times the church played no role in the grief ritual complex. In the post- communist era, however, it has become customary for a priest to visit a family, bless the deceased and the mourning family, offer prayers and provide advice on the ceremony. As we all know, in the communist period church religious exercises were inopportune. Forms of unofficial religious practice, however, were all the more popular and were also more difficult to persecute, since they were exercised privately. Nowadays, the Orthodox church tries to gain influence everywhere. Although the grief rituals were independent from official religion, and very often act out imaginations of the hereafter which are incompatible with official Christian versions, most Georgians are very willing to integrate a priest into the ritual. The church has a high prestige at the moment. In folk religion all of ritual mourning is regarded as a sacred duty to the deceased person. Standards of appropriateness, which make it possible to judge the performance, combine religion and art. When ritual activities are forgotten, the community of the deceased may according to religious 69 Especially conspicuous is the performance of differences between East and West Georgia. Western and Eastern lamentation styles are regarded as hardly compatible by the Georgians. Kotthoff deals with the distinction of regional identities in joint lamentations: Helga Kotthoff, (1999b): Affekt-Darbietungen in interkulturellen Lamentationen in Georgien. In: Stefan Rieger et al. (eds.), Interkulturalität. Tuebingen 1999b, 231-251. 70 Forms of letting-oneself-go as an expression of grief are found in many cultures; see Stubbe 1985, footnote10. 19 ethnotheories be offended and revenge itself on the descendants of those who carried out their duties poorly. Concern for the well-being of the deceased in the hereafter is omnipresent in everyday Georgian life, and it is always linked with concern for one's own well-being. Since every family lives in a close social network, which also displays its supportive capacity in a phase of grief, each death is an event of great social significance for the whole community. Many photos of other deceased persons are arranged on the table behind the open coffin. These deceased persons are believed to receive the just deceased in the hereafter. They are often directly addressed in the lament. The time order of the ritual is roughly the same everywhere in Georgia. The burial must take place at the latest on the seventh day after death, at the earliest on the third day. During the day people lament until the coffin is lowered into the grave. After the burial kelexi takes place, a large "sad meal".71 On the seventh and fortieth day people mourn and lament again; again there are meals. In Xevsuretia and TuUetia the lamentation is held over the so-called plasi, a rug on which selected personal possessions and pieces of clothing belonging to the deceased person have been arranged.72 These are afterward given by the family to good friends of the deceased. After a year a very large meal in honor of the deceased is held, called Plistavi. Now "Aeris gaxsna" must take place, the raising of the roof (the end of grief). The meal ends with cheerful toasts to those present, the living. Now normality is supposed to be reestablished. For example, marriages can be celebrated again. Many of the named activities can be carried out more or less aesthetically or approppriately. People may dress the deceased elaboratedly, etc. They can arrange many flowers in the room and thereby beautify it. They can lay the table beautifully, decorate the food and much more. Standards of appropriateness always prevail which are prescribed as unwritten law for the purpose of common mourning. The small step to what is seen as "overdone" would be just as fatal as dispensing with aesthetics. Standardization allows minor individual deviations. 71 One could fill pages with the semiotics of culinaria during kelexi. I limit myself here to a few essential observations. In the last few decades often over a hundred persons have been at kelexi in the village. When the group returns from the cemetery, people first wash their hands (the cemetery and the dead are regarded as unclean). Then they take their places. Arranged pickles, tomatoes, various vegetable pastetes (pxali), two-to- three types of cheese, smoked and cooked fish, pickled sour vegetables, a bean dish (lobio), potatoes and wheat cooked in honey (candili) are on the tables. Then bozbaUi (a soup made from lamb with vegetables) is served, as well as the following courses, always cooked by men. The women prepare everything, place food on the tables and continuously serve guests. After this there is xaslama (cooked beef) and as final course there is Uilaplavi, a rice dish with meat from joints of lamb and and black pepper. On the fortieth day after the death (ormoci) still more is put on the tables, for example, additionally sweet cakes and fruit. According to the testimony of various villagers, the funeral dinners in pre-communist times were much more modest; the communists had begun to expand kelexi, ormoci and clistavi. It is interesting that the politically motivated limitation of eclesiastical elements of the mourning ritual presumably caused the quasi-religious elements to increase and thus to stimulate changes in the ritual complex. Today the great mourning meals represent a financial burden for almost all families. However, all those present must contribute some money (called pativiscema = honoring a person), whereby the family keeps a record of the contributions, because they must then also pay the same sum at the mourning meals of the other families should the occasion arise. It is interesting that people remember over many years exactly who paid (financial) homage to whom. Presently a renewed change in ideals toward more modest meals can be detected. People also feel a need to distance themselves from the communist influences. Korkoti, a wheat porridge, is cooked on religious days in honor of the dead by the family of the deceased and distributed to neighbors. People thereby observe the ritually prescribed odd number of plates. As well here people assume that the deceased eat the same things. 72 These forms are also practiced in reduced and altered forms in other Georgian regions. In TuUetia and Xevsuretia the plasi-weeping is strongly ritualized and carried out in public. In other regions they occur in a private frame and at one chosen time. 20 Concluding remarks: Lamentation is a ritual of shared grieving which reinforces and intensifies sociality among village people, especially among women. In these ritual dialogues the loss of a person is communalized, and by aestheticization it is quasi-therapeutically worked out. The loss is symbolically shared, whereby the social network of the whole community is reaffirmed. Aestheticized speech, demanding bodily control during the performance of "being beside oneself," makes possible a consensual coming to terms with the loss and the creation of a shared cultural memory. The ceremonial genre of lamentations refers to cultural ties and emotional expression. Ritualized genres of mourning occupy a broad space in the communicative household of Georgian culture. The simultaneous attention to the deceased and the living demands a high temporal, physical and artistic engagement. As artists of pain, lamenters enjoy a high moral reputation everywhere in Georgia (except Tbilisi). Their art is highly regarded not only in terms of genre criteria, but also in terms of criteria of individual expressive improvisation. A good lament evokes many tears among those present; it is "beautifully sad". Religiosity plays a stronger role in Georgia than it does in the Western world. Thus there is no table where a drinking toast is not offered asking for Uendoba, forgiving the sins of the dead, in order that they can have peace. Interestingly the lamentation genre of the "unofficial religious"73 survived the Soviet period intact. It was too closely linked to emotional needs and too strongly integrated into normal everyday life for it to have been effectively forbidden. Durkheim, van Gennep, Radcliffe-Brown, Feld74 and many other anthropologists argued that the function of ritual weeping among those left behind is to affirm the existence of a social bond between two or more persons. In the case where the social tissue is threatened by the departure of a person, the social structure is knit together again by a theatrical performance of shared emotions. The Georgian "xmit natirlebi" simultaneously combine several purposes: They allow people to aestheticize feelings of sadness on the occasion of death, they transmit them, organize social memory, and they bind the community together by sharing grief and reaffirming its moral values. For the lamenters aesthetical grieving means to keep control over their feelings. They cannot let themselves go. For some of the listeners the process is the other way round. They are inflicted with their pain. Georgians, and especially Georgian women, certainly perform "grieving work" (to use this ugly term from German psychoanalysis), but much more, they perform "grieving art" as I hope to have shown. 73 See footnote 12 74 See footnotes 14, 29, 28, 8 21 Literature Ariès, Phillipe, Geschichte des Todes, München 1981. Bakhtin, Michail M., The Dialogic Imagination, ed., Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. Austin 1981. Bauman, Richard, Verbal Art as Performance, Rowley, Mass. 1978. Bauman, Richard, Story, Performance and Event, Cambridge 1986. Bauman, Richard, "Mediational Performance, Traditionalization, and the Authorization of Discourse", in this volume. Bergmann, Jörg and Thomas Luckmann, "Reconstructive Genres of Everyday Communication", in: Uta Quasthoff (ed.): Aspects of Oral Communication. Berlin/New York 1994. Boeder, Winfried, "Über einige Anredeformen im Kaukasus", Georgica. Zeitschrift für Kultur, Sprache und Geschichte Georgiens und Kaukasiens 11 (1988), 11-20. Brünner, Gisela: Redewiedergabe in Gesprächen. Deutsche Sprache 1 (1991), 1-16. Burke, Kenneth, The Rhetoric of Religion. Studies in Logology. Boston 1961. Burke, William L., "Notes on a Rhetoric of Lamentation", Central States Speech Journal 29 (1979), 109-121. Caraveli, Anna, "The bitter wounding: The lament as social protest", in: Jill Dubisch (ed.), Gender and Power in Rural Greece, Princeton 1986, 189-194. Caraveli-Chaves, Anna, "Bridge between worlds. The greek women's lament as communicative event", Journal of American Folklore, (1980), 129-157. CocaniOe, Giorgi, Giorgobidan giorgobamde, Tbilisi 1993. Cooper-Kuhlen, Elizabeth, Coherent Voicing: On Prosody in Conversational Reported Speech, in: Wolfram Bublitz et al. (eds.): Coherence in Spoken and Written Discourse. Amsterdam (1999), 11-35. Danforth, Loring M. and Tsiaras, Alexander, The Death Rituals of Rural Greece. Princeton 1982. Durkheim, Emile. The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, New York 1915/1965. Edwards, Viv and Sienkewicz, Thomas J., Oral Cultures Past and Present, London 1990. Ekman, Paul, An Argument for Basic Emotions. Cognition and Emotion 6 (1990),169-200. Feld, Steven, Sound and Sentiment: Birds, Weeping, Poetics, and Song in Kaluli Expression, Philadelphia 1982. Feld, Steven, "Wept Thoughts: The Voicing of Kaluli Memories", Oral Tradition 5/2-3 (1990), 241-266. Finnegan, Ruth, Oral Literature in Africa, Nairobi 1970. Finnegan, Ruth, Oral poetry: Its nature, significance, and context, Cambridge 1977. Finnegan, Ruth, "Introduction; or: Why the Comparativist Should Take Account of the South Pacific", Oral Tradition, 5/2-3 (1990), 159-184. Gennep, Arnold van, Les rites de passage, Paris 1909. Gluckman, Marcel, Les rites de passage. In: M. Gluckman (ed.): Essays on the ritual of social relations, Manchester 1962, 1-52. Goffman, Erving, Frame Analysis, New York 1974. Goffman, Erving, Forms of Talk, Philadelphia 1981. Goody, Jack, Religion and ritual: The definitional problem. British Journal of Sociology 12 (1961), 142-164. Graumann, Carl F., "Perspective and Horizon: The Individual and the Social Approach in Phenomenology and Sociology", in: Rainer Dietrich and Carl Graumann (eds.), Language Processing in Social Context, Amsterdam 1989, 95-122. Günthner, Susanne, 'The contextualization of affect in reported dialogues', in Susanne Niemeyer and Renée Dirven (eds.) The Language of Emotions. Amsterdam 1997, 247-277. 22 Günthner, Susanne, "Poliphony and 'the layering of voices' in reported dialogues: An analysis of the use of prosodic devices in everyday reported speech", Journal of Pragmatics 31 (1999), 685- 708. Hochschild, Arlie, The Managed Heart: Commerzialization of Human Feeling, Berkeley 1983. Hymes, Dell, "Ways of Speaking", in: Richard Bauman and Joel Sherzer (eds.), Explorations in the Ethnography of Speaking, Cambridge 1974, 433-451. Hymes, Dell, "In vain I tried to tell you". Essays in Native American Ethnopoetics, Philadelphia 1981. Irvine, Judith, "Registering Affect: Heteroglossia in the Linguistic Expression of Emotion", in: Catherine Lutz and Lila Abu-Lughod (eds.), Language and the Politics of Emotion. Cambridge 1990, 126-162. Iser, Wolfgang, Das Fiktive und das Imaginäre. Perspektiven literarischer Anthropologie. Frankfurt 1993. Jakobson, Roman, "Concluding statement: Linguistics and poetics", in: Thomas Sebeok (ed.), Style in Language, Cambridge, MA. 1960. Knoblauch, Hubert, "Anthropologie der symbolischen Kommunikation. Die Phänomenologie des Alltags und die Fragestellungen der Anthropologie der Literatur", Arbeitspapier Nr. 10 des Sonderforschungsbereichs 511 an der Universität Konstanz 1996. Knoblauch, Hubert, "Pragmatische Ästhetik. Inszenierung, Performance und die Kunstfertigkeit alltäglichen kommunikativen Handelns", in H. Willems and M. Jurga (eds.), Theatralität. Opladen 1997. Kotthoff, Helga, "Verbal Duelling in Caucasian Georgia", in: Uta Quasthoff (ed.), Aspects of Oral Communication, Berlin/New York 1995a, 112-138. Kotthoff, Helga, "The Social Semiotics of Georgian Toast Performances: Oral Genre as Cultural Activity", Journal of Pragmatics 24 (1995b), 353-380. Kotthoff, Helga, "Die Kommunikation von Moral in georgischen Lamentationen", in: Jörg Bergmann and Thomas Luckmann (eds.), Kommunikative Konstruktion von Moral. Band 2: Von der Moral zu den Moralen, Opladen 1999a, 50-80. Kotthoff, Helga, "Affekt-Darbietungen in interkulturellen Lamentationen in Georgien", in: Stefan Rieger et al. (eds.), Interkulturalität, Tuebingen 1999b, 231-251. Kotthoff, Helga, "Gender, Emotion and Poeticity in Georgian Mourning Rituals", in: B. Baron and Helga Kotthoff (eds.), Gender in Interaction. Amsterdam 2000, (forthcoming). Leach, Edmund, Rethinking Anthropology, New York 1968. Leach, Edmund, Culture and Communication, Cambridge 1976. Luckmann, Thomas, Unsichtbare Religion, Frankfurt 1991. Luhrmann, Tanya M., Persuasions of the Witch´s Craft, London 1989. Catherine Lutz, Emotion, Thought, and Estrangement: Emotion as a Cultural Category. Cultural Anthropology 1, 3 (1986), 287-309. Lutz, Catherine and White, Geoffrey M., "The Anthropology of Emotions", Annual Review of Anthropology 15 (1986), 405-436. Lutz, Catherine and Abu-Lughod, Lila, (eds.): Language and the Politics of Emotion, Cambridge 1990. Mauss, Marcel, Soziologie und Anthropologie. Bd. 1 und 2. München 1978. Meuli, Karl, Gesammelte Schriften, Bd. 1 und Bd. 2. Basel 1975. Metcalf, Peter, Huntington, Richard, Celebrations of Death. The Anthropology of Mortuary Ritual. Cambridge 1979/1991. Montada, Leo, "Moralische Gefühle", in: Gertrud Nunner-Winkler and Gil Noam (eds.), Moral und Person, Frankfurt 1993, 259-278. NakaUiOe, Ketevan, "Gruzinskie PlaIi", Working Paper of the SavaxiUvili Institute, Tbilisi 1993. Ochs, Elinor and Schieffelin, Bambi, "Language has a Heart", Special Edition of Text (1989), 7-25. 23 Ong, Walter, Orality and Literacy. The Technologizing of the World. London/New York 1982. Radcliffe-Brown, Alfred R., The Andaman Islanders, New York 1964. Samarin, W. F., "The Language of Religion", in: Ulrich Ammon, Norbert Dittmar and K.J. Mattheier (eds.), Sociolinguistics/Soziolinguistik. 1. Halbband, Berlin 1987. Sandig, Barbara, "Sprachliche Perspektivierung und perspektivierende Stile", Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik 102 (1996), 36-63. Sapir, Edward, "Speech as a Personality Trait", American Journal of Sociology 32 (1927), 892-905. Schütz, Alfred, "On Multiple Realities", in: Collected Papers, Den Haag (1962), 207-259. Senft, Gunter, "Trauer auf Trobriand. Eine ethnologisch/linguistische Fallstudie", Anthropos 80 (1985), 471-492. Seremetakis, Nadia C., The Last Word. Women, Death, and Divination in Inner Mani. Chicago 1991. Sokolov, Yuri, Russian Folklore. New York 1950. Stubbe, Hannes, Formen der Trauer. Eine kulturanthropologische Untersuchung, Berlin 1985. Tannen, Deborah, Talking Voices: Repetition, Dialogue, and Imagery in Conversational Discourse, Cambridge 1989. Tiwary, K. M., "Tuneful Weeping: A Mode of Communication", Working Papers in Sociolinguistics No. 27. Austin, TX 1975. Voloshinov, Valentin N., "Reported Speech", in: Ladislav Matejka and Kristina Pomorska (eds.): Readings in Russian Poetics. Cambridge 1929/1978, 149-175. Urban, Greg, "Ritual Wailing in Amerindian Brazil", American Anthropologist 90 (1988), 385-400. Werlen, Iwar, Ritual und Sprache. Zum Verhältnis von Sprechen und Handeln in Ritualen. Tübingen 1984. White, Geoffrey, "Moral Discourse and the Rhetoric of Emotions", in: Catherine Lutz and Lila Abu- Lughod (eds.), Language and the Politics of Emotion, Cambridge 1990, 46-69. 24


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Additional tools
VAT Invoicing Rules
- Second Directive on VAT Invoicing (Council Directive 2010/45/EU) and Explanatory Notes
- First Directive on VAT Invoicing (Council Directive 2001/115/EC)
- Background documents
Second Directive on VAT Invoicing (Council Directive 2010/45/EU) and Explanatory Notes
The second Directive on VAT invoicing was adopted on 13 July 2010 and its provisions shall be applied by Member States as from 1 January 2013.
It aims to promote and further simplify invoicing rules by removing existing burdens and barriers. It establishes equal treatment between paper and electronic invoices without increasing the administrative burden on paper invoices and has the aim to promote the uptake of e-invoicing by allowing freedom of choice regarding the invoicing method.
For a clear understanding of the main VAT invoicing rule changes as from 1 January 2013 a set of Explanatory Notes
has been written in 21 languages. Please click on the speech bubble.
The European Commission on 28 January 2009 adopted a proposal to change the VAT Directive (2006/112/EC) in respect to the invoicing rules, and published a Communication on the technological developments in the field of electronic invoicing.
The aim of the proposal is to increase the use of electronic invoicing, reduce burdens on business, support small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) and help Member States to tackle fraud. The proposal simplifies, modernises and harmonises the VAT invoicing rules. In particular, it eliminates the current barriers to e-invoicing in the VAT Directive by treating paper and electronic invoices equally. The proposal is a key element of the Commission's Action Programme to reduce burdens on business by 25% by 2012, and is part of the Commission's strategy to combat VAT fraud more efficiently. For more information see the press release (IP/09/132 ), the frequently asked questions(41 kB) , the proposal for a directive (COM/2009/21), and the Communication (COM/2009/20).
Preparatory study on VAT invoicing
A study on the VAT invoicing rules contained in the VAT Directive (2006/112/EC) was carried out for the European Commission by PricewaterhouseCoopers. It aims to look at the four principal areas of invoicing - the requirement to issue an invoice, the content of an invoice, electronic invoicing and the storage of invoices - with a view to mapping the existing legislation in all Member States, analysing burdens on business and Member States' control needs, and providing recommendations for a more harmonised and modern set of VAT invoicing rules. The main parts of the study and their annexes are available from the following links:
Annex 1: Overview of the questions related to the mapping of the legislation(414 kB)
Annex 2: Overview of the implementation of a selection of the most important articles(110 kB)
- Annex 3: Mapping of legislation database
Warning: This database on VAT Invoicing rules in EU Member States has been developed by PriceWaterhouseCoopers as part of the study carried out for the European Commission. It provides general guidance only and does not replace professional advice. The Commission accepts no responsibility or liability whatsoever with regard to the information obtained using this site and the performance of the database. The data is a snapshot of national legislation as at 1 January 2008. No updating is foreseen. Loading times may be long, and the content does not print in an easily readable format.
- Annex 4: Key findings(181 kB)
- Annex 5: Detailed overview of the results of the survey related to the take-up of e-invoicing(126 kB)
Annex 6: Detailed overview of the results of the feedback of the participants of the Billing Conference related to the take-up of e-invoicing(151 kB)
First Directive on VAT Invoicing (Council Directive 2001/115/EC)
The main piece of EU legislation on VAT invoicing is Directive 2001/115/EC, which has amended the 6th VAT Directive and had to be implemented into national Law before the 1st January 2004. The VAT invoicing rules are now contained in the VAT Directive (2006/112/EC). For details on how to apply the new rules in practice consult the list of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) for traders.This measure has been of significant practical benefit to firms operating within the Internal Market because it ensures that they have only to deal with a single, simplified set of rules on invoicing valid throughout the EU instead of different sets of national legislation. At the same time, the Directive requires Member States to recognise the validity of electronic invoices and allow cross-border electronic invoicing and electronic storage. The result is a significant reduction of firms' administrative costs, in particular for medium-sized and small firms and an important boost to electronic commerce, which was hampered by obsolete invoicing rules. The simplified rules also aim to facilitate tax authorities' efforts to fight fraud.
The Directive was adopted by the EU Council on 20 December 2001. The Commission proposal was presented in November 2000, as part of the new VAT strategy launched by the Commission in June 2000 to bring about pragmatic improvements in the operation of the VAT system. The VAT strategy has been updated in October 2003.
The Directive on VAT invoicing establishes
- a list of ten mandatory general items of information that must be included on every invoice, plus four additional items that may be required in specific circumstances,
- simplified arrangements for small companies and small-value invoices,
- the requirement for Member States' tax authorities to recognise the validity of electronic invoices without any notification or authorisation system, on condition that the authenticity of origin and integrity of data are guaranteed through the use of electronic signatures or Electronic Data Interchange (EDI). Electronic signatures allow someone receiving data over electronic networks to determine the origin of the data and to check that it has not been altered. EDI is a system of secure electronic information transmission used by businesses,
- the possibility in certain circumstances of outsourcing invoicing operations to a third party or to the customer (i.e. self-billing),
- free choice of the place and method of storage of invoices and the acceptance of electronic storage, including on-line storage in a Member State other than the Member State in which the firm in question is located.
The proposal was prompted by complaints to the Commission from traders. Invoices are an essential part of the VAT system since they constitute the evidence on the basis of which the purchaser can deduct VAT that has been charged to him.
Each Member State had different rules concerning the obligatory information to be included on invoices and the form the invoices should take in order for VAT authorities to recognise their validity. With the establishment of the Internal Market firms were increasingly carrying out taxable operations in Member States where they are not established, and were finding that those operations were subject to several sets of VAT legislation. Moreover, many firms operating on an EU-wide scale had started centralising their invoicing operations, entrusting to a single branch the task of issuing invoices on behalf of all other branches established in different Member States. This centralisation of invoicing operations, which can have a clear economic rationale, was made difficult by the existence of fifteen different sets of invoicing rules.
Electronic invoicing
Electronic invoicing, which can cut invoicing costs significantly, is now developing rapidly, notably as a result of the growth of electronic commerce. But in some Member States, electronic invoicing was previously prohibited or had to be accompanied by parallel transmission of paper invoices. In others it was permitted subject to varying conditions. Firms established in several Member States required therefore special authorisations in certain countries to apply cross-border invoicing arrangements and had to use a technology specific to each Member State for the creation, transmission and storage of the electronic invoices. They also had to cope with recording different items of information for each country, storing information for a different period in each country and sometimes even making simultaneous electronic and paper transmissions of data.
Background documents
- Short list of most frequent questions (MEMO/04/15 )
- List of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) for Traders
- Commission Recommendation of 19 October 1994 relating to the legal aspects of electronic data interchange (EDI)
- Communication from the Commission to the Council and the European Parliament: A Strategy to improve the operation of the VAT System within the context of the Internal Market. The strategy paper has been updated in October 2003.

subset: commoncrawl


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New Plan For the Pump
Updated: 05/12/2008 - A new plan introduced by House Republican could suspend the sales tax on the gas tax from Memorial Day to Labor Day.
Updated: 05/12/2008 - A new plan introduced by House Republican could suspend the sales tax on the gas tax from Memorial Day to Labor Day.
Posted: 05/11/2008 - Employees from Syntel killed in minivan crash.
Posted: 05/11/2008 - Sparta man survives 100-foot fall while hiking in Colorado
Posted: 05/11/2008 - Human rights activists in Detroit protest Chinese government
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Posted: 05/11/2008 - 18 dead in Missouri, Oklahoma after new round of tornadoes
Posted: 05/11/2008 - Drivers could catch a break from higher gas prices if some state lawmakers have their say.
Posted: 05/10/2008 - Local pilots are encouraging children to become pilots.
Posted: 05/10/2008 - An African cat is still missing after it and a bear escaped from an animal sanctuary.
Posted: 05/10/2008 - A Grass Lake woman is recovering from an accident involving her granddaughter.
Posted: 05/10/2008 - Noose reported in worker's locker at VA hospital in Saginaw.
Posted: 05/10/2008 - Comstock Park teacher ordered to stay away from student.
Posted: 05/10/2008 - Woman pays off 1976 parking ticket issued in Calumet, Michigan.
Posted: 05/10/2008 - A Sparta man survives a drastic fall while hiking in Colorado.
Posted: 05/10/2008 - Protesters in Detroit decry Chinas human rights record.
Posted: 05/10/2008 - A motorcycle shop owner in Lyons, Michigan gives a customized motorcycle to a soldier who lost both his legs in Iraq.
Posted: 05/10/2008 - Hulk Hogan's son sentenced to 8 months for crash
Posted: 05/10/2008 - Abandoned vehicles rise as Flint River lowered for cleanup
Posted: 05/10/2008 - Smoking ban likely would be felt by Detroit's casinos
Posted: 05/09/2008 - Thieves are stealing gas from stations, farms, construction sites, and your car.
Posted: 05/09/2008 - Adults drink on bus while kids dance inside.
Posted: 05/09/2008 - Pilot walks away from wreckage.
Updated: 05/09/2008 - East Lansing Police incurred nearly $50,000 as a result of Cedar Fest and that price could keep rising.
Updated: 05/09/2008 - Food prices are going up and mid-Michigan is feeling the pain
Updated: 05/09/2008 - More than 100 district employees received layoff notices, though administrators hope many will be called back.


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46 Kids' Rooms You'll Both Love!
Colorful accents and sophisticated antique finds do have a place in your child's roomright next to their favorite toys.
15 Lightened-Up Desserts to Make Tonight
Enjoy sweet treats without over-indulging with these healthy desserts.
Plan ahead: This easy dough can be frozen for up to three months.
Recipe: Buttermilk Pie with Pecan Crust
Recipes & Food
Crafts & DIY Projects
©2015 Hearst Communications, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Being Green • Why did I get this ad?


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From this historic collaboration between a beloved naturalist and a great American photographer emerges a South we've never encountered before.
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