Page 165 - Communication Processes Volume 3 Communication Culture and Confrontation

140 Guy Poitevin

Every day, in the middle of the night, a horse would descend from
heaven. The donkey would then become a prince, ride the horse and
go around the whole world. One night, the queen woke up and saw
this happening.
She asked the donkey to tell her the whole story. That was when one
came to know that the donkey was a form, rupa, of a god.

Structural Analysis

Appearance versus Reality: Logic of Revelation
The crucial binary opposition is between empirical appearance and
true reality. A logic of revelation serves the purpose of the narrative
of progressively unveiling the true identity of the donkey whose nature
remains hidden, unsaid and, therefore, unrecognized. The global struc-
tural pattern of the narrative seems best visually represented through
a design of vertical ascension from bottom to top. The whole dynamics
is one of assertion and vindication of supreme ascendancy through a
progressive unfolding of the donkey’s strength and power. The result
is a radical inversion of status from subordination to supremacy with
a claim to recognition of supreme divine royal authority. The narra-
tive itself provides the key with a final statement explicitly telling the
addressee or the audience what is to be understood and eventually
believed against all appearances. The discourse is addressed to those
who share the same belief with regard to the donkey, in particular the
-
community of the Vadars who recognize the donkey as the specific
.
emblem of their caste.
Binary Oppositions: Subordination versus Ascendancy
Binary oppositions of subordination and ascendancy are constantly
repeated in various sets of opposition. They follow each other through
reversals of situations that mark the distinction of levels as the narrative
unfolds step by step its semantic import. They constitute the pervad-
ing logical modality of the discourse. The narrative articulates them in
three parts that may look like the three acts of a drama of progressive
revelation. I attempt to project the logical structure of each part in table
form as this helps underscore the semantically significant oppositions
on which I shall comment (Tables 4.3, 4.4 and 4.5).