A Study On The Sacrificial Words Of The Wa Ethnic Group In Daiglazhai, Ximeng County

The object of this study is the sacrificial speech of Wa people in Daigela village,Ximeng county of Yunnan province.Based on the recordings of spoken samples of sacrificial speech,transcription and translation in IPA and text,the deep-seated meaning and the linguistic features of sacrificial speech will be analyzed.Since it is thought of as being passed down as oral traditions from generation to generation by Pa t(?)hai(Wa religious preachers),we have to take the particular social and cultural context of Wa people into account-which this study will discuss in detail.Chapter one focuses on the Daigela dialect.At first,the phonological system will be described.Research shows that,compared with other local dialect of A Wa dialects of the Wa language,there are nine pairs of lax-tense vowels(i?e???a?o???u???(?))in the phoneme system of the Daigela dialect.There is evidently no difference in the phoneme system between the sacrificial speech and the spoken Daigela dialect.Chapter two is an analysis of the sacrificial speech's contents.It essentially consists of calling the ghosts and gods,explaining reasons and sacrifices,introducing the involved people,praying and expelling the ghosts and gods.Among these,many formulaic words are to be found.The sacrificial speech embodies the connotations of Wa people's primitive religions,such as the belief on animism,both respect and fear for ghosts and gods and sacrifice as a kind of redemption.It also covers and reveals many aspects of Wa people's folk life and customs.For example,the practice of mutual help,the respect for mother's brothers,the order of seniority,the difference expectations towards men and women,etc.Chapter three concerns itself with the characteristics of sacrificial speech.It pays attention to rhythm and prosodic harmony.Its semantic features include the use of homologous words and pragmatic features as well as the repeated use of the ho norifics and terms of humility,such as(?)iem and re(m).The sacrificial speech is making use of various rhetorical devices,such as metaphors,parallelisms and hyperboles.The last chaper deals with the awareness and usage of idioms found in sacrificial speech.The research chooses 40 idioms as an investigation subject and 42 Daigela people as a sample.The analysis then focuses on the awareness and the usage rates of different groups and the relation between linguistic variables and social variables.The factor analysis deals with gender and age.The study shows clearly that the male gender has a higher usage rate than the female one,elderly people show a higher awareness rate and usage rate than middle-aged and young people.Most respondents foster positive attitudes toward idioms,except for some young people.It can be assumed that the awareness of sacrificial speech is determined by significant intergenerational differences.The concluding remarks summarize the status quo of sacrifices in the Daigela village,and analyse positive and negative impacts of sacrifices to the Wa society.