Votive Offering of Tablet as a Speech Act

Abstract

A Votive tablet is a kind of folklore genre and at the same time it is a repository of our contempolary popular culture. For it is one of the traditional means of problem-solving and it also appears as an unorganized form of collective behavior in the whole society. The purpose of this paper is to show how an act of votive offering can relate a meaning-world within an individual to a collective meaning-world. The subject of a votive tablet is determined by two opposite forces. One force tends to restrict the field of selection for the subject, and the opposing force encourages variety in the expression of the subject. The study of the latter is concerned with understanding various symbols used in votive tablets in connection with popular cults, in which we find the very core of the iconographic study. However, at the first step towards this study it is mandatory to define the restrictive rules used in the selection of a sucject for votive tablets. The subjects of votive tablets devide into the following six categories : 1) Addressee (benefactor) : divinities, saints, their agents, or their symbolic belongings. 2) Addresser (or beneficiary) : all kinds of social categories. 3) Content of the statement (negative states): diseases, traffic accidents, flood, epidemic, etc. 4) Content of the statement (positive states) : good fortune or removal from misfortune. 5) Beings or occurences which cause the negative states. 6) Means of grace : religious rituals, pilgrimage, etc. These items are derived from my intepretation that an offering act is a kind of "illocutionary act" (concept elaborated by J. L. AUSTIN and J. R. SEARLE). The classification of subjects reflects this fact. For example, a prayer is not a mode of communication only for transmitting information, but it contains an element ("illocutinary force") which cause the addressee's reaction (m this case it is called "miracle") . An offering act of votive tablet can have different functions according to the time the offering is made(before or after the realization of desire) : magic, prayer, gratitude, report. For the same belief can be expressed in different types of illocutionary acts : prayer, magical formulae, inscription in picture, miraculous story, etc. This fact also gives an account of social efficiencies of votive tablets which take effect in the reproductive process of a religous belief. A miraculous story can be transmitted in many kinds of traditional and modern mass media : rumor, religious sermon, popular print, popular books, newspaper, radio, television, etc. For religious agents to skillfully utilize this kind of story is an important requisite for success ; for believers it reinforces their motives for religious practice. In other words an offering act of votive tablets, in the same way as other secular illocutionary acts, produces various kinds of social relationships and constructs a social world through them. Up to now sociological study of religious phenomenon neglects the a social character of a religious act itself. Socio-linguistic study of religious acts and research for the intertextuality of different kinds of religious and secular texts can clarify not only their internal structures but also their social functions in the social and cultural worlds.