Rajoshree Chatterjee1 & Jayshree Chakraborty2
1Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur. Kharagpur – 721302. West Midnapore, West Bengal. ORCID ID: 0000-0001-5145-1889.
Email id: rajoshri.chatterji@gmail.com
2Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur. Kharagpur – 721302. West Midnapore, West Bengal. ndian Institute of Technology Kharagpur. ORCID ID: 0000-0002-7926-2956. Email id: shree@hss.iitkgp.ernet.in
Volume 11, Number 3, October-December, 2019 I Full Text PDF
DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v11n3.06
Abstract
The present paper aims to explain the process of meaning making in Bengali elementary Choras (children’s nursery rhymes) by their intended target audience, little children, who are yet to develop their semantic, cognitive or linguistic skills. Chora, the Bengali oral folkloric counterpart of nonsensical verses for children, can be characterised as a type of dynamic discourse where socio-cultural elements occur abundantly though asymmetrically. Outlined by intermittent cohesive gaps, such discourses are however found to be thoroughly enjoyed and appreciated by the little children, despite their lack of prior textual and/or contextual awareness. Following this, it is observed that such rhymes or Choras are more about experiencing amusement that the children derive from the verses rather than understanding their denotative or connotative sense. Meaning making of such rhymes by the little children, we claim, occur not through the processing of semantics of the text but by directly experiencing the communicative intent of the discourse. Coherence of such dynamic and discontinuous discourses is therefore attained when their pragmatic intent, that is enjoyment – intertwined in the verses, is identified by the little children and reciprocated through affirmation. The analysis detects the predominance of coherence constructed at the discourse level and accordingly the methodology adopted to explain cognizance in elementary Choras is the theory of Discourse Coherence (Wang and Guo, 2014) which claims that coherence in discourse can be achieved jointly by the discourse producer as well as the receiver.
Keywords: Choras, Cohesion, Discourse Coherence, Pragmatic Intent