Pragmatics of Irish emigrant ballads in light of the national identity problem

Abstract

The article discusses the pragmatic potential of the Irish emigrant ballads from the perspective of cultural linguistics. From the viewpoint of pragmatics, a ballad as an act of indirect communication can not only describe national traits, but also can serve as a mechanism to form national self-consciousness. The analysis of subject organization and spatial, temporal and axiological specificity of Irish emigrant ballads reveals the principles postulating the idea of national unity existing in Irish culture. Its appeal to the audience, high figurativeness and intensive usage of cultural notions allow us to consider the issue of national identity beyond the content of the text and also from the communicative perspective. The ballad performance correlates with a performative speech act where the performer verbalizes a number of the process parameters of actions accomplished by the character. This aspect is associated with the behavioural models reflecting the processes of assimilation followed by adoption of a new cultural paradigm. Therefore, the ballads of assimilative, integrative and unification orientation are distinguished. The assimilative function reflects an ability of an emigrant to become part of a new environment; the integrative function is associated with an ability to preserve the national identity in a new culture; the unification function shows correlation of the individual value categories with the native cultural values, but unlike the integrative ballads and unifying ballads it cannot potentially form a diaspora.