Page 152 [152]
OCR
RACHEL MIKos them successfully, as well as a willingness and ability to reflect on their deeper meaning. As occurs in western riddling, many of the riddles rely on the unusual conceptual overlapping of categories in order to provide the element of surprise, but what is striking is the advanced level of cognitive abstraction they also require, particularly in the case of iconopoeic words. It should be considered that the function of Mongolian riddles substantially differs from the so-called function of riddles in Western cultures. As mentioned above, riddling in Western cultures is largely seen as a performative display of wit, a method of linguistic and metalinguistic enhancement, a tool of cognitive language development for children. As Peppicello and Green write: ...the contextual frame for riddling is one of performance, as opposed to the normal communicative frame in utilitarian speech. The latter is highly contextualized, and it’s goal is to facilitate the flow of information; the former suspends normal context, and it’s goal is to impede the flow of information for the purpose of outwitting the riddle.’ The kind of metaphorical use of language predominant in Mongolian oral usage in the countryside® is likewise equally prevalent in the riddling corpus, which can lead us to the conclusion that these riddles — if it is not as much the case today — were also formed one part of what could be termed the linguistic and cognitive and cosmological education of the younger members of the family, what has been termed by some as the ‘university of the nomads.’ One riddle scholar tellingly writes of the feeling of ‘disappointment’ at end of European riddles: We might point, for example, to the common feeling of deflation and disappointment that emerges with the solution to a riddle: What has golden hair and stands in the corner?... When we discover, with more or less equal delight and dismay, that our princess is a broom, we may be left to wonder: Is anything left over from the initial movement of enchantment? ° The feeling of disappointment that arises here originates from the seemingly inevitable semantic and symbolic narrowing of the field of referential possibilities that ensues with the revelation of the solution to the riddle. The object with golden hair, standing in the corner, is just a broom, and thus can no longer be a princess. The ‘initial movement Peppicello, William J. — Green, Thomas A.: The Language of Riddles, p. 5. See Oberfalzerova, Alena: Metaphors and Nomads. Triton, Prague 2006. ° Hasan-Rokem, Galit — Shulmin, David (eds.): Untying the Knot: On Riddles and Other Enigmatic Modes. Oxford University Press, New York — Oxford 1996, p. 5. 150
