The Oral Communication System in the Traditional Algerian Society: An Anthropological Analysis of the Kabyle Folktale (original) (raw)
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This article explores the cultural and linguistic aspects of Moroccan traditional tales, which are performed in public by storytellers. We examine how the dialect, Moroccan Darija, is used in these performances. Some expressions such as proverbs may be readily understood crossculturally, while others are culturally specific. There are also opening and closing expressions or expressions with religious overtones which may be used so often that they can be qualified as formulae. The article presents examples of various types of repetitions, such as diacope (repeating words separated by other words), epimone (repetition to stress a point) or polyptoton (use of different words based on the same root); examples of synonyms to emphasize a point; use of antonyms; rhymes; changes in tone; use of sarcasm, all of which highlight the poetic richness of Moroccan Darija, an oral language long undervalued by scholars.
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This paper is an attempt to explore Folkloric material in Yasmina Khadra's What the Day Owes the Night, to reconsider folklore, not as a remnant of the past, but as an artistic vehicle to locate cultural belonging. It examines the different elements by which folklore shapes individual and collective identity in colonial Algerian literature. The novel of Yasmina Khadra represents material and spiritual folk constituents of the Algerian national and cultural identity during the French colonization, mainly the moral struggle of the protagonist between his Algerian cultural heritage and the French-acquired culture. The novel is rich in cultural, artistic, and folkloric elements of the Algerian individual and collective identity. It also exhibits the contrast between the local, and everyday French habits, causing a chasm between the two cultures the protagonist is struggling to bear and fill. This research indicates that the protagonist's internal conflict reflects the larger struggle that nearly all Algerians went through during French colonization by imposing the colonial culture on their own. Research findings demonstrate that folklore is a popular material that springs out from recurrent situations of everyday life. Khadra's What the Day Owes the Night expresses verbal art as academic parlance to encounter identity issues. Khadra effectively captures the essence of Algerian society and its diverse cultural fabric through vivid descriptions and storytelling, shedding light on the intricate nature of identity in a colonized nation.
Algerian Women’s Būqālah Poems: Cultural Politics, Oral Literature and Anti-Colonial Resistance
Būqālah refers both to a ceramic pitcher as well as to poems ritually embedded in the traditional, favorite, divinatory pastime associated with women city dwellers of specific Algerian towns such as Blida, Cherchell, Tlemcen, Constantine, and Algiers. This essay considers the shift from orality to a written archive of French and Algerian collections of būqālah poems by focusing on analyses of Algerian Arabic oral literature as an expression of feminine cultural protest and resistance to the domination of language policies under French colonialism. What are the ways in which an intimate ritual-one linked to orality, the divinatory, women's poesis, and the Algerian Arabic dialect-begins to carry political meanings during the War of Independence and in post-1962 independent Algeria? Contributing to the circulation and creation of new meanings, forms, and venues for būqālah poetry are Algerian radio and television broadcasts, Internet postings, and the publication of the 1962 French poem "Boqala" by Djamila Amrane.
Rilce, 2020
In my paper I analyze transformations happening in the oral tradition of the Jbala, an Arabic speaking ethnic group inhabiting the western and central part of the Rif mountains of northern Morocco. My analysis centers on the work of two modern poets, who although they see themselves belonging to the oral tradition, compose their poetry in writing. Their poetry is, therefore, characterized by use of two different, and, to some degree, opposite modes of language – the oral and the written. This is especially interesting in the context of the Arabic language, where, officially, only Standard Arabic exists in two modes – oral and written, while its dialectal varieties are seen as exclusively oral forms of communication and ‘vulgar’ poetry. The textual analysis will be substantiated by information received directly from both poets. To complement this analysis I examine this tradition through the lens of major cultural and identity changes occurring in local Moroccan genres and traditions at the national level and argue that the oral tradition of the Jbala is converging with the more popular and prestigious tradition of the malhun.
Women's Political Strategies: The Power of Telling Silence in Maghrebian Folktales
2014
Resistance embraces many coping mechanisms employed for survival including silence when it is used as an aid to the survival and healing of the individual. Throughout many Folktales in Monia Hejaiej’s Behind Closed Doors: Women’s Oral Narratives in Tunis, Jilali El Koudia’s Moroccan Folktales, Zineb Ali Benali’s Kan ya makan, L’ Algerie Conteuse, Dreams of Trespass: Tales of a Harem Girlhood by Fatima Mernissi, Maghrebian women use silence not as an indication of modesty and submission but as an act of defiance and strength. In the Maghrebian culture, silence is seen as a feminine virtue which signifies modesty and obedience. However, the silence of women, as presented in the folktales in the aforementioned books, extends beyond their muted voices. Women have used it as a powerful way to handle the pain of their lives. Silence has been used as a voluntary act, a freely chosen refusal to speak. Therefore, it becomes a political discourse and act through which women subvert the patria...