Relationship Between Artistic Words and Culture in the Narrative Genre of the Thai Ethnic Group’s Literature in Vietnam

Authors: Nguyen Thi Hai Anh (Thai Nguyen University of Information and Comunication Technology, Vietnam)
Speakers: Nguyen Thi Hai Anh
Strand: Critical Linguistic Anthropology
Session Type: General Session

Abstract

Through a long history of movement, the Thai people (1 of 19/53 ethnic minorities in Vietnam with their own writing) soon created a rich and diverse literature. In which, the narrative genre has many outstanding achievements. The article conducts an intensive research on the aspect of artistic words in the genre of literacy narrative of the Thai ethnic group in Vietnam. Research methods such as fieldwork, statistics, analysis, comparison, interdisciplinary research, work analysis by genre characteristics, etc. are used flexibly. On the basis of the concept of the narrative genre, the artistic words, and the basic characteristics of culture and narrative genre of Thai ethnic literature, the article shows the close relationship between artistic words and culture. Those are high aesthetic words with comparison speech, comparison images, system of idioms, proverbs, ancient folk songs imbued with Thai people’s style; simple and natural words from the way of saying and the way of expressing feeling which is honest, sometimes “rough” of the people; the words are full of satire, sarcasm, and high philosophy expressed through the words indicating names of the characters, play on words, not-serious speech, reverse speech and contrast speech expressing the dialectical thinking and the optimistic spirit of the Thai people. This is one of the factors that most clearly express the aesthetic, ideological and cultural values of the Thai people in Vietnam.

Keywords: Literature, Narrative genre, Thai ethnic group, Vietnam