Page 137 - Communication Processes Volume 3 Communication Culture and Confrontation

112 Guy Poitevin

Method and Perspectives

The Myth: A Rational Act of Speech
My first assumption is that myth is an oral narrative, a social form of
symbolic communication. The approach accordingly finds its starting
point, ground and legitimacy in the linguistic status of the oral narra-
tive as discourse (Thompson 1981: 132–36). The first thing to be done
in this regard is to rescue the myth as act of speech.
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In the Marathi language the words katha and dantakatha are used
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to indicate what is called myth in English: Dantakatha is commonly
perceived and defined as: ‘A popular story; an inauthentic tradition; a
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legend’ (Molesworth 1986: 400) or as, ‘lokkatha, a popular narrative; an
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imaginary kalpanik story gosta, a story deprived of scientific standard
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śastrapramanvirahit or circulated by word of mouth tondatond, calat
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alel, gosta’ (Date and Karve 1988: 1609).
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The word has no entry as a compound name in the Sanskrit–English
dictionary of Sir Monier Monier-Williams (1999: 247). But both its
parts come from Sanskrit, each of them carrying the following pre-
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sent meanings: danta being a tooth, an elephant’s tusk, the peak of a
mountain, a projecting portion on the side, a knee (Molesworth 1986:
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400), and katha meaning:
1. A feigned story; a tale, fable, apologue.
2. A legend of the exploits of some god related with music and sing-
ing, and with embellishing marvels invented at the moment—
forming a public entertainment.
3. Used in the sense of importance, weight, significance ….
4. Speech, saying, telling (ibid.: 132).
The Sanskrit root verb kath means ‘to converse with any one, to tell,
relate, narrate, report, inform, speak about, declare, explain, describe;
to announce, show, exhibit, bespeak, betoken; to order, command;
to suppose, state’ (Monier-Williams 1899: 247). The Sanskrit noun
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katha accordingly is reported with various connotations or forms of
stating, mentioning or talking: ‘conversation, speech, talking together,
talk, story, tale, fable, story-telling, disputation, fiction, feigned story,
narrative, discourse, relation, narration’, any articulated speech which
may be a narrative, a dialogue or a statement about a project.