Inspirational Insights: The Problematic Vernacular

Abstract

Although many disciplines dropped the use of “vernacular” in the 21st century because of the term’s connotations of primitivism, classism, and marginalization arising from 19th-century colonialism, the term has risen in usage among folklorists and ethnologists in the early 21st century. Three distinct streams of usage are identified and analyzed for their nuanced meaning: linguistics, religion, and architecture. Folkloristic and ethnological usage is traced to concern whether ‘vernacular’, despite its problematic historic context, is preferable to ‘folk’ as a modifier of areas of inquiry, many of which are into fluid, non-objectified categories such as belief, faith, and play. A rhetorical shift coinciding with social change from analog to digital communication is apparent to binaries of official/unofficial and formal/ informal in cultural analysis. A further and possibly fringe development has been an ideological strategy represented by the compound term ‘stigmatized vernacular’ that embraces rather than repudiates cultural hierarchy. The evaluation of the problematic adoption by 21st-century folklorists and ethnologists of ‘vernacular’ is that it reifies the very problems that the users intended to resolve.

Udmurt Religious Practice Today: Between Native Traditions and World Religions

“…1 Albeit that this notion is problematic (Bronner 2022;Valk 2023), I use it to refer to the intrinsically Udmurt religious practice that existed before Evangelisation and which continued to exist thereafter, although in changed ways. It is what the Mari have called 'traditional religion'.…”

The (Mal)Functionality of Vernacular

“…They resented labels that displayed them as "vernacular", or "anachronistic", that is, stubbornly backward and locked into the past; instead, they viewed themselves as a tradition-based, redemptive society whose faith is a formula for contemporary living (Hostetler 1993;Kraybill 2001;Bronner 2005;Weaver-Zercher 2005). This is a far different model and way of thinking for folklore, or the vernacular for that matter, that Leonard Primiano (2001) based on institutionalized Catholic educational experience (Bronner 2022b).…”

“…Yet rather than apply a folklife approach to lived religion that was associated with the historical ethnological work of Don Yoder (1990), Primiano (1995) chose to use the modifier vernacular that made its analytical meaning more nebulous, and as I have argued, actually exacerbated the problems he intended to resolve (Bronner 2022b). I told him so, but his defense was that its "fuzziness" -what Valk calls instrumentality -invited reflection on belief practices that were non-institutionalized without fixing a method, approach, or analytical outcome.…”

Editorial Impressions: About ‘Vernacular’ and the Other Concepts

“…Apparently, there is ongoing competition in distancing oneself from loaded concepts. However, it is complicated to tell which one involves the smaller burden of colonialism, ethnocentrism, or "primitivism, classism, and marginalization", as Simon Bronner (2022) claims regarding the recent rise in application of the concept 'vernacular' in folkloristics. Curiously enough, several prominent scholars propose that the 'vernacular' concept is a cure for scholarly pains in approaching people's worldview and designates personal spiritual self-expression, engagement and understanding (see Primiano 1995;2012;Bowman and Valk 2012;Valk 2023).…”