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Article published In:
Pragmatics & Cognition
Vol. 24:3 (2017) ► pp.474–495

It’s got some meaning but I am not sure…

The role of the particle (wa)-ma in the oral and transitional poetry of the Jbala (northern Morocco) from the cognitive perspective

| Universidad de Navarra, Pamplona, Spain

In this research I aim to contribute to a better understanding of transitionality in poetic language by applying for the first time the hypotheses recently developed by pioneers in the emerging field of cognitive poetics to a living tradition. The benefits of working with a living tradition are tremendous: it is easy to establish the literacy level of the authors and the mode of recording of poetic text is also easy to elicit or, when necessary, to control. I chose a living poetic tradition originating from the Jbala (Morocco). Although it is not epic and local poets create only relatively short poetic texts, memorisation is also used; it has been demonstrated that oral improvisation and the use of memory are not mutually exclusive. This suggests that research on the living Jebli tradition holds promise for our understanding of oral poetry, and for revisiting the intriguing question of formulaic language.

Keywords: literacy, orality, transitionality, cognitive poetics, oral poetry, particles, creativity, Arabic language, Morocco
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The Jbala and the corpora, with an emphasis on the oral-transitional-dictated distinction
    • 2.1The Jbala
      • 2.1.1The genres: Between orality and literacy
    • 2.2The corpora
  • 3. (wa)-ma and its function in the Jbala oral tradition
    • 3.1General use of (wa)-ma in the Jebli Moroccan dialect of Arabic language
    • 3.2Use of (wa)-ma in Jebli poetry
    • 3.3Role of (wa)-ma according to the Jebli poets and their audience
  • 4.Results
  • 5.Discussion
    • 5.1What are the uses of (wa)-ma in the Jbala tradition?
    • 5.2Are the findings of Bonifazi and Antović & Pagán Cánovas reflected in the Jbala tradition as well? Or, in other words, do particles obey some or all of the same principles in epic and lyric oral poetry?
    • 5.3Is the frequency of use of (wa)-ma the same in both oral and transitional texts?
  • 6.Concluding remarks
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 28 February 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/pc.18017.gin
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