What Inari Saami Idioms Reveal About the Time Concept of the Indigenous People of Inari

What Inari Saami idioms reveal about the time concept of the indigenous people of Inari ANNA IDSTRÖM Abstract Inari Saami is an indigenous, endangered language spoken in northern Fin- land. It is demonstrated that the Inari Saami idioms systematically reflect the conceptual metaphor time is nature. The ubiquitous English metaphor time is money, on the other hand, is claimed to be extremely rare in Inari Saami. This finding is explained in the framework of Edward Hall’s theory of time concepts by comparing the language with features of the Inari Saami material and social culture. The traditional Inari Saami culture was polychronic; the timing of human action was based on observations in the natural environment and spon- taneous reactions to these observations rather than on preset schedules. This time concept results from the prerequisites of human adaptation to the harsh natural conditions of Lapland. The language reflects the culture. It is empha- sized that the idioms of endangered, indigenous languages should be urgently and exhaustively documented. Keywords: Inari Saami; idiom; metaphor; time concept; endangered language. 1. Introduction The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate, through one case study, why the idioms of endangered languages should be urgently and exhaustively documented to show what kind of insights they can provide about the culture where they have been used. As Piirainen (2004, 2006, 2008), Teliya et al. (1998) and many others have pointed out, it is important to keep in mind that the phraseology of indigenous languages has not been systematically studied. Consequently material is scarce and typologies are not yet possible. Even so, in this paper it is shown that Inari Saami idioms yield some insights into Inari Saami conceptual 160 Anna Idström metaphors and their cultural background. Here I will discuss only one example, namely, metaphors of time. Conceptual metaphor theory (Lakoff and Johnson 1980, 1999) provides a useful model for analysing the systematic features of the metaphors found in idioms. The proponents of this theory have been criticized for understating the significance of culture as an underlying basis of conceptual metaphors and over- stating the contribution of individual cognition to the phenomenon known as “conceptual metaphor” (Dobrovol’skij and Piirainen 2005: 124; Quinn 1991: 65). Thus conceptual metaphor theory alone is not a sufficient basis for under- standing the cultural foundations of idioms. It is, however, a worthwhile starting point for such a study and it can be supported by an appropriate anthropological framework. That can involve comparing the results of linguistic analysis with a comparable analysis of literary documents thus involving, as well as a purely linguistic analysis, the material, spiritual and social culture of the people who speak the language. Dobrovol’skij and Piirainen (2005: 187) and Piirainen (2004: 49) have un- derlined that an examination of as complete as possible a compilation of an inventory of figurative units within a given domain should be a basic require- ment for any reliable study of figurative language. This point cannot be overem- phasised. It is necessary to analyse a large number of idioms referring to the same semantic field in order to discover conceptual domains that systematically motivate the figures of speech. The material researched here consists mainly of phrasal idioms, but, in ad- dition, I have analysed compound words which behave much like phrasal idioms in the sense that informants recognize the mental images – metaphors or metonymies – immediately, and the cultural motivation of the figure of speech seems clear as well.The compound words taken into account in this study belong to the same set of metaphorical mappings as the phrasal idioms and thus provide evidence for the same conceptual metaphor. Furthermore, since the number of available examples is limited, we must analyse what we have. 1.1. The Inari Saami language Inari Saami is an indigenous language traditionally spoken in the area around Lake Inari in northern Finland, in the villages of Kaamanen, Partakko, Nellim, Inari and Ivalo.The language was spoken by Inari Saami families until the 1950s. Thereafter rapid language shift to Finnish took place and Inari Saami ceased to function as a language of communication for decades. It has, since the 1990s, been actively and successfully revitalized, and the revitalization continues today. It is currently spoken by about 350 people, but only around 250 elderly people Inari Saami idioms of time 161 speak the language as their first language (Morottaja 2007; Marja-Liisa Olthuis, pers. comm.). This study focuses on the form of Inari Saami language which was spoken before the the language shift to Finnish and the accompanying radical change of the culture, which will be described below. The old Inari Saami still vividly remember the old way of life. The possible changes in the Inari Saami metaphors due to the revitalisation are beyond the scope of this paper, although they would make an interesting research area for further studies. Morottaja (2009) notes that some of the idioms familiar to the old Inari Saami are unknown to the young members of Inari Saami society. Inari Saami belongs to the Saamic branch of the Uralic language family. The continuum of the Saamic languages stretches from central Scandinavia to the Kola Peninsula in Russia. The most widely spoken Saami language is North Saami with about 20,000 speakers, most of whom live in Norway, in the Kautokeino region. Inari Saami is closely related to North Saami, but these two languages are not mutually intelligible. Inari Saami culture was traditionally based on fishing, hunting and reindeer- husbandry in the harsh conditions of Lapland (see T. I. Itkonen 1948; T. Lehtola 1998; V-P. Lehtola 2002, 2003 and Morottaja 2005 for details). Since reindeer harnessed to a sledge or skis were the main means of transport in winter and a boat or feet in summer, it was important to know as exactly as possible what the weather and the snow conditions might be. The Inari Saami made ev- ery endeavour to predict the weather and timed their actions according to the weather (Idström 2008). The standard of living was modest, occasionally even poor (Koskimies and Itkonen 1917). Human life depended overtly on natural resources, fish and game of the wilderness. Inari Saami culture has been largely neglected by the academic research, but some recent studies on the North Saami reindeer herding culture (Heikkinen 2002: 200–205; Näkkäläjärvi 2000) suggest that the Saami generally consider freedom as the positive value of the traditional Saami life. Dependence on nature is seen as the natural way for humans to live, not a limitation to freedom. Since the nineteenth century and increasingly in the twentieth century, however, changes to the environment of the Inari Saami have had significant consequences. Such changes include the damming of fishing rivers used since time immemorial, regulation of lakes in 1940s, motorization and capitalization of the reindeer economy in 1960s, penetration of the road network into the heartlands of Lapland and the consequent influx of Finnish set- tlers. These have all undermined the foundations of the traditional Inari Saami culture. Not withstanding these changes and also not unexpectedly given the durabil- ity of phrasal lexemes, the old Inari Saami way of life is still reflected in the Inari 162 Anna Idström Saami metaphors of time. My intention is to describe in detail the relationship between the traditional Inari Saami culture and these idioms. 1.2. Brief theoretical background To begin the linguistic analysis, I will define the concepts of metaphor and metonymy briefly. Metaphor is a linguistic phenomenon which (according to cognitive theory) is based on the cognitive process of mapping between a source domain and a target domain; the target domain is construed and described in terms of the source domain. Metaphoric mapping is based on a sense of some kind of real or imagined similarity or analogy. Metonymy is closely related to metaphor, but it links the source domain and the target domain on the basis of contiguity (Allan 2008: 12). For the purposes of this article idiom can be defined broadly as a conventional, multiword, metaphoric or metonymic expression. (See Piirainen 2008: 208–213 for more elaborated definition.) The overlapping of the concepts arises from a shift in viewpoint; the same expression can be called a “metaphor” if we want to emphasize mapping, i.e. the cognitive process that causes the noticeable figurative motivation of the expression, or it can be called an “idiom” if we want to emphasize the phraseological aspect, i.e. the fact that the expression is syntactically frozen, shared by the language community as a cultural convention and expresses more than the constituting words alone. A conceptual metaphor is an abstraction for which a “cognitive” status is postulated within the framework of cognitive theory. The systematicity of metaphoric mappings in conventional expressions has become the subject of an expanding discipline since the publication of Lakoff and Johnson’s Metaphors we live by in 1980. Cognitive metaphor theory rests on the observation that the metaphoric expressions of a language show a tendency to follow a pattern: a target domain is described by several conventional linguistic expressions in terms of a coherent source domain. The domains seem to have a topological, structure-preserving relationship. What causes this phenomenon is not com- pletely clear. Lakoff and Johnson (1980, 1999), Kövecses (2005: 7; 2002: 104; 1995: 140) and many other scholars claim that we understand the target domain in terms of the source domain. In the early phase of development of the conceptual metaphor theory, Lakoff and Johnson (1980: 3) wrote: “Our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature.” Thirteen years later Lakoff (1993: 208) illustrates this by saying, “What constitutes the love is a journey metaphor is not any particu- lar word or expression.

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