Theory of rhetoric and phraseology

The majority of the group's membership consists of folklorists and phraseologists of Estonian Literary Museum. Besides, some scholars from UTCL working on rhetorical topics (J. and R. Undusk, et al.) are engaged as foreign members. In 2003 the group launched a new series Reetor which will publish works on the minor forms of folklore, phraseology, theory of rhetoric and figurative speech, as well as folk humour and theory of humour.

Main research objectives

Continued publishing of academic collections of the minor genres of Estonian folklore in the series Monumenta Estoniae Antiquae. In addition to five-volume Estonian proverbs (1980-1988), two volumes of Estonian riddles, an analogous edition, were issued in 2001-2002. The third volume which includes scholarly overviews of the history of collecting and publishing Estonian riddles, their content and form, figurative and functional aspects, geographic distribution, equivalents of Estonian riddles in the tradition of the neighbouring Finnic, Baltic, Slavic, and Germanic languages as well as some other appendices will be published in 2005. The edition is based on a complete data bank that contains, in a typological arrangement, all hitherto recorded authentic texts of Estonian riddles, together with supplementary data (solution, time and place of recording, collectors, source abbreviations, cross-references between typologically compound forms, etc), and statistics. A paper version of Estonian riddles I-II was produced from this data base via a computer program written particularly for this purpose. As next, an academic edition of Estonian proverbial phrases a. o. fixed expressions (idioms, similes, etc.) is planned to be compiled and published (see also the next section).

Studying minor genres of folklore. In recent years the team led by Asta Õim has created an extensive data base of Estonian proverbial phrases and phraseologisms, and their adherent user interface; software devices for processing the manuscript of corresponding academic edition will also be provided in the future (cf. the previous section). The mentioned data base allows to speed up and enhance substantially the research on phraseology, the principal current topics of which include the structure and figurative semantics of folk similes; categories and subcategories of proverbial phrases a. o. fixed expressions; occurrence and internal structure of particular thematic fields and conceptual clusters in phraseology; problems of developing specific software for serving phraseological corpora and data bases. In Estonian paremiology the recent focal topics have been: relationships of different structural levels (syntactic - modal - figurative) and metaphor-theoretical aspects of proverbs, especially those emerging in animal metaphors. Two extensive monographic studies are currently in progress - one on typology and images of animal proverbs, the other on the history of collecting and publishing Estonian riddles.

Theory of rhetoric and figurative language. This work is divided into two branches. One of them is to analyse the logical and ideological constructions and historical change of grand domains in language usages, the so-called discourses, practiced by our UTCL foreign members J. Undusk, E. Annus, etc. Among the aims of this work is to test the applicability of concepts entrenched in classical rhetoric or introduced by new rhetoric (like synecdoche, topos, oxymoron, enjambement, etc.) in contemporary research in culture typology and intertextual analysis. Literature, theatre, historiography, religious and philosophical texts, mainly descending from the Estonian and Baltic German cultural space of the 18th - 20th centuries, but also on a temporally larger European scale - the broad variety of source materials have been and are being used as polygons of observation for these purposes. Another branch embraces the analysis and criticism of theories of figurative speech developed in modern (first of all, cognitive) linguistics and psychology, and evaluating their degree of applicability for explaining the imagery of proverbs, idioms, etc. A. Krikmann has done some research on these matters and held classes at the University of Tartu. Efforts will be made to integrate the cognitive and culture-theoretical viewpoints on figurative language and rhetoric, and make the existing results more comparable.

Contemporary folk humour and theory of humour. As principal sources of study, both Estonian archive texts belonging to the older layer of folk jokes, as well as modern multilingual joke material obtained from the internet are being used. L. Laineste has created a data base of Estonian web jokes (ca 40,000 texts, plus supplementary data). Topics of active research include ethnic jokes in Estonia and on the international scale; political humour in the previous USSR (and the socialist camp in general) aimed at Stalin and other targets; contemporary trends of humour research and developments of humour theories (particularly the incongruence theory); the typology of classical ("Aarne-Thompson") jokes; structural differences and relationships between the older non-punchlined and newer punchlined jokes.

International contacts

Jointly with the Finnish Literature Society and University of Joensuu, the follow-up volumes of the edition of shared proverbs of Finnic peoples have been prepared (the first volume, Proverbia septentrionalia, the output of a grand Finnish-Estonian project of 1960s-1980s, was published already in 1985, FFC no. 236). Members of the research group have participated in international conferences on paremiology held by the Institute of Lithuanian Literature and Folklore (2001 and 2004) and in annual conferences of the International Society for Humor Studies (2002 in Italy and 2004 in France). A. Krikmann is the editorial consultant of Proverbium: Yearbook of International Proverb Scholarship published annually by the University of Vermont (editor in chief Wolfgang Mieder); he also has lectured on various linguistic and folkloristic topics at the universities of Joensuu and Turku. J. Undusk (UTCL) has especially good connections with many European scholarly institutions (Institute of Literary Studies of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Stockholm University, The Herder Institute in Marburg, J. W. Goethe-University in Frankfurt am Main, etc); he has also been a recipient of many foreign grants and awards.

Publications

Books:

Eesti mõistatused (Monumenta Estoniae Antiquae IV: Aenigmata Estonica), I-II. Koost. A. Hussar, A. Krikmann, R. Saukas, P. Voolaid. Toim. A. Krikmann, R. Saukas. Tartu: Eesti Keele Sihtasutus, 2001-2002.
Krikmann, A. Netinalju Stalinist - Интернет-анекдоты о Сталине - Internet Humour about Stalin. Tartu: EKM, EFKA, 2004.
Uurimusi folkloori lühivormidest. Toimetaja Arvo Krikmann. Reetor 1. Tartu: EKM, EKFK, 2003.
Õim, A. Fraseoloogiasõnaraamat. Teine, täiendatud ja parandatud trükk. Tallinn: Eesti Keele Sihtasutus, 2000.
Õim, K. Võrdluste struktuurist ja kujundisemantikast [On the structure and figurative semantics of similes]. Reetor 2. Tartu: EKM, EKFK, 2003.

Articles:

Krikmann, Arvo. Вклад современной теории метафоры в паремиологию. - Tautosakos darbai XV(XXII) [Folklore studies XV(XXII)]. Pareng* Nijol* Laurinkien*.Vilnius: Lietuvi* literat*ros ir tautosakos institutas, 2001, 17-92.
Krikmann, A. Proverbs on Animal Identity: Typological Memoirs. - Folklore: An Electronical Journal of Folklore. Ed. by M. Kõiva & A. Kuperjanov. 17, 7-84, 2001.
Laineste, L. Suunad huumori uurimises. - Keel ja Kirjandus, 11, 793-804, 2003.
Undusk, J. Estnisch als Göttersprache Aspekte der Sprachverehrung. - Finno-Ugrians and Indo-Europeans: Linguistic and Literary Contacts. Proceedings of the Symposium at the Groningen University, November 22-24, 2001. (Studia Fenno-Ugrica Groningana, 2). Eds. R. Blokland, C. Hasselblatt. Maastricht: Shaker, 2002, 370-392.
Undusk, J. Oxymoron als Profanation des Heiligen: Zu Thomas Bernhard. - Interlitteraria 7 (2002): World Drama on the Threshold of the 21st Century: Tradition and Avant-garde. Vol. II. Tartu: Tartu Ülikooli Kirjastus, 2002, 365-379.
Undusk, J. Retooriline sund eesti nõukogude ajalookirjutuses [Rhetorical constraints in Soviet historiography]. - Võim ja kultuur [Power and Culture]. EKM, EKFK, 2003, 41-68.