160134 PS Meaning in ritual and performance (2024W)

This proseminar concerns the performative and ritualised functions of language and communication as well as the role of language in the creation and maintenance of rituals. Instead of a structural analysis of rituals, the focus here is on symbolic meanings, and how they are created, mediated, negotiated and contested through performative and aesthetic processes. Further, the unit deals with the function or interaction between these symbolic meanings and social processes, such as community formation, community socialisation and the formation and assertion of individual social roles within groups.

The proseminar begins with an introduction to the field through the presentation of the most relevant theories as well as practical examples of everyday and social rituals. These include initiation rituals, medical, cultural-religious and institutional rituals. By examining aesthetics and performance in everyday contexts, such as music concerts, students are meant to gain an eye for the presence and significance of rituals in everyday life. Building on this, students are made familiar with theoretical and analytical approaches with a focus on the role of language(s) and other semiotic resources, including embodied and aesthetic elements. Due to the interest in symbolic and social meanings, the emphasis will be on ethnographic methods of data collection and analysis.

To make these concepts more tangible, over the course of the unit students will engage with rituals in their own lived experience. They will be walked through ways of identifying, describing and analysing ritualised phenomena before independently applying these components to an example of their own choosing. Besides the material, students are meant to increase their familiarity with different academic text genres. To this end they will first present their chosen phenomenon in an academic abstract, then in a poster and finally in a short ethnographic report. Additionally, a selection of texts will be discussed in the class, both to go into further depth on the material and to demonstrate the differences in writing style and conventions in different areas of research, and to practice critical but constructive engagement with academic texts.