5

Mischievous Souls

183-215

5.0

Joking in the Reception of Outlanders

183-5

5.1

Anecdotes & Joke-Songs

185-9

5.2

Speaking "Lies"

189-94

5.3

Shamanic Humor I

194-6

5.4

From Praying to Playing

197-201

5.5

Gossip-Spirits

201-4

5.6

A Play-World

204-6

5.7

Shamanic Humor II

206-10

5.8

The Truth of "Lies"

210-4

5.9

Humor as Incognito Shamanism

214-5

p.

Mongolian

meaning

239

aimag

province

bo:

shaman-ic/-ism

del

garment

ezen

owner

ger

yurt

hos^u

banner

240

manjig

tassel

nutag

homeland

ongon

spirit or talisman

ovog

clan

ovo

cairn

sum

district

su:ns

soul

tenger

sky

udgan

shamaness

yos

custom, tradition

zarin

male shaman

zasal

shamanic curing

5.0

Joking in the Reception of Visitors

183-5

p. 183

""These people joke about everything, so it is imposssible to know when they are telling the truth ["u:nen"] and when they are telling a lie ["hudal"]." These were the words of a young man from Ulaanbaatar".

p. 184

""I just can't get ... around their minds ["uhaan u:l hureh"] ," ... a Halh man ... complained".

p. 183

"You must watch out while you are in the Darhad lands. The wilderness is full of restless {homeless wandring ghosts of the dead} souls and hungry bears. Shamans are abundant. ... In fact, I am myself a shaman!" ...

p. 184

"I gather that you are going to sleep at [an out-of-doors site]. You'd better watch out for that place. It is full of cho:tgo:r ["demons"]. People avoid going there after dark. Once, a guy ... in the middle of the night ... his horse ... its head was being dragged to the side. When he saw that ... happening to his dog, he understood that a water demon must be present. Humans can't see them, but animals can. Why, you don't have a dog with you? Oh, I must lend you one of mine for the night. Cho:tgo:r are dangerous; they eat people's souls!"

"representing ... aspects of the shamanic cosmos, joking, play, and irony are constitutive of it. ... For in a context of shamanism ..., the displacements inherent in humor become ... shamanic practice and shamanic agency. ...

In fact, the preferred manner of talking about shamanism in ... Ulaan-Uul often seemed to be through joking. ... In many ways, this "shamanic humor" (as I call it here) is the ultimate mode of shamanism ... . As we are about to see, this ... must be understood both in the general sense ... of the black side of Darhad people, and in the more narrow sense that joking performs a certain job in the shamanic cosmos, in that it instigates particular effects. In ... community ... joking has acquired shamanic efficacy in its own right, and studying it ... tells ... something about the revival of shamanism in northern Mongolia".

5.1

Anecdotes & Joke-Songs

185-9

"I was told, a proper onigoo ['anecdote'] always builds on a true (u:nen) and concrete (bodit) event, which may well be delivered in a detailed (mariin) and hyperbolic (hetru:u:legei) fashion, but cannot contain any purely fictitious (zohiomol) or untrue (hudal) content.

... the concept of jokes in the Euro-American sense does not exist among Darhads; only anecdotes do -- humorous narratives based on real events. ... While jokes ... are built up to facilitate ... a specific point in their narration (the punch line), the typical onigoo ... is delivered with the aim of eliciting a continuous trickle of mirth throughout its narration."

p. 187

"Joke songs are used as entertainment on festive occasions such as weddings ..., and the lunar New Year. ... Most Darhad joke songs consist of two verses {stanzas}, each four lines {verses} long,

with alliteration as the dominant principle of composition."

{/homeopropheron/, in Old English, Old Norse, Old High German, Old Saxon, Old Irish, Finnish, and Somali poe:sy}

p. 188

"In fact, new Darhad joke songs ... seldom seem to be composed anymore; people instead tend to reproduce the existing repertoire, often by seeking explicit guidance in Tsemged's books, which include detailed explanations of the songs' origins in local lore."

p. 188, fn. 4

"Still, the joke song tradition was apparently thriving in the Bayan-Zu:rh district south of the Shishged during the late 1990s ..., just as it is alive and well in the Renchinlhu:mbe district, too".

p. 188

"In the Mongolian version of this folklorization process, the so-called song tradition of each tribe seems to have played a major role (Bulag 1998, 27-41). ...

p. 189

The outcome of all this ... is that the joke songs -- along with shamanism -- became emblematic of Darhad culture."

5.2

Speaking "Lies"

189-94

"It is quite striking how often Darhad occult specialists, when conveying their shamanic knowledge, do so in a joking manner. ... More precisely, this joking among specialists keeps other people mystified about two things : (1) the esoteric knowledge ... (that is, shamanism ...), and (2) the "layered" constitution of specialists' minds. In that sense, joking emerges as a distinct technology ... which, as a prevalent mode of occult communication, plays a vital role in the reproduction of the specialists' authority. Indeed ... Ulaan-Uul's occult specialists could often be heard talking about shamanic matters by adopting this playful "way of speaking" (Hymes 1974) rather than, say, a more symbolic one."

p. 191

"Female roebuck are very dangerous to hunt. You need to know how to distinguish between those with a master {"ezentei"] and those without one. If

p. 192

you happen to kill one with an ezen, ... The ezen may become angry and cause trouble for you and your family! ... Mungarad Taiga is full of ongod.

Watch out if the roebuck stares back at you. ... It means that it {viz., its ezed, acting from within it} is cursing you! ...

p. 194

You'd better visit a shaman now! Perhaps the roebuck cursed you! Don't sleep with your wife."

"According to the classical (Aristotelian) definition, to speak ironically is to say the opposite of what one means : the speaker "figuratively" means the opposite of what he "literally" says (Barbe 1995, 62). But ... this definition ... neglects what linguists {rhetoricians} refer to as the pragmatic context of utterances, which often must be taken into account in order to identify ironic intent : ... the conversational implications, the relationship between the listener and speaker, and so on (Barbe 1995, 24-59 ...)."

"so-called radically pragmatic approaches play down the distinction between the figurative and the literal and focus on the propositional attitude of ironic utterances : the speaker's attitude ... and his interlocutor's ability (and wish) to detect this attitude (Barbe 1995, 73-92). According to this analysis, then, the interpretive task ... was ... to detect ... intentions ... .

His [the shaman's] ironic attitude made it impossible {inscrutable} to decide whether he was "using" or "mentioning" ... the shamanic spirits ... (Barbe 1995, 45-51; Clark and Gerrig 1984; Sperber and Wilson 1981, 315)."

5.3

Shamanic Humor I

194-6

{In the contexts of their expounding metaphysical factualities, Darhad shamans jokingly declare themselves to be uttering mendacities, such that} "this statement itself becomes part of the irony, so that a "bisociation" (to use Arthur Koestler's term [1964]) occurs between play and {a humorous feint at} lying. Thus, to cite Marike Finlay, "the first interpreation follows if the [phrase] 'I am lying' [is understood] according to a meta-linguistic level of enunciation; the second if we [understand] the phrase according to an object-level of enunciation. The choice ... is ... ambiguous" (1988, 235).

This in turn calls to mind Gregory Bateson's ... play frame. Play ... requires a "degree of meta-communication ... which carries the message 'this is play'" (2000, 179)."

"The ethnic stereotype of Darhads, we see again here, contains more than a glimmer of truth. The ... play frame, along with radically pragmatic ... irony, confirms the prevalent stereotype among Halh people that Darhad joking, and more more specifically ... the use of ironic mention, do indeed make the speaker's mind "layered" (davhar) {into language, meta-language, meta-meta-language, etc.}".

"Arguably the effect of ... {satirical} joking is to initiate a so-called sequential paradox {or rather, a quaestionality consisting of chain sequence of quaestion leading to quaestion leading to quaestion ...}, whereby ... ironical attitude sets in motion a{n indefinite} regress in the listener's search for the speaker's intention ... : "the ruling ... satisfies a criterion for ... false; that finding satisfies a criterion for finding it true; and so on ... (paraphrasing Honderich 1995, 643-44).

Many Darhads are themselves quite aware of this distinct "way of speaking" (Sherzer 1983) and its effects. ...

[quoted from a Darhad :] Darhads speak poetically. We use metaphors ["zu:irlel"] and alliteration ["tolgoi holboh"] a lot. We always joke in secret ["dalduur shoglogod"] {i.e., we leave any hearer wondring whether an apparent joke, i.e. an irony, was intended as such or not -- so that whether the intention be a joke or not, becometh accounted (among 'hearers', audientes as in Manikhaiism) a secret whose resolution must be known only to shamans}."