Semiotics of Peasants in Transition: Slovene Villagers and Their Ethnic Relatives in America

201 Pages·2002·1.293 MB·English

by  Irene Portis-Winner

Semiotics of Peasants in Transition
Sound and Meaning
The Roman Jakobson Series
in Linguistics and Poetics
C. H. van Schooneveld,
Series Editor
Irene Portis-Winner
R
Semiotics of Peasants in Transition
Slovene Villagers and
Their Ethnic Relatives
in America
Duke University Press Durham and London 2002
∫ 2002 Duke University Press
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper $
Designed by C. H. Westmoreland
Typeset in Minion by Keystone Typesetting, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication
Data appear on the last printed page of
this book.
To Benjamin and Kyla with love

Contents
Acknowledgments ix
I The Dynamics of a Dialogic Relation between a Peasant
Village and Its Ethnic Counterpart: A Semiotic Approach
Prologue: ‘‘The Strange Intruder’’ (from Peirce): A Peasant Village
and Its Many Others 3
1. A Glance at the Village and Its Sister Ethnic Communities
in Cleveland and Hibbing 11
II Theoretical Issues and Terminology:
From the Outer to the Inner Point of View
2. Nationalism, Ethnic Identity, Transnationalism: Issues of
Terminology 31
3. Can We Find the Inner Point of View? Interpretative Anthropology,
Performance Anthropology 43
4. Semiotics of Culture 50
III The Village and the Slovene Communities in Cleveland and
Hibbing: A Historical Perspective
5. Zˇerovnica: Its Past and the Question of the Future 77
6. The Story of the Ethnic Community in Cleveland 106
IV Semiotic Portraits
7. Semiotic Portraits in Cultural Context 127
8. Concluding Remarks 152
Notes 157
Selected Bibliography 161
Index 181

Acknowledgments
I wish to thank the following foundations and individuals who supported
this study: the International Research and Exchanges Committee (IREX) in
1992 provided a grant in aid for travel to Zˇerovnica, and in 1995 it supported
my travel to the Czech Republic to present some of my findings at a con-
ference on Jakobson. The Joint Committee on Eastern Europe of the Ameri-
can Council of Learned Societies provided grants in 1973 for work in Zˇerov-
nica, in 1975–76 for work among Zˇerovnicans in Cleveland and Minnesota,
and in 1977 for the research and writing of a position paper on the semiotics
of culture. A USIA grant provided funds for presenting some of my theoret-
ical work at the Masaryk University in Brno, Czech Republic; and a grant
from the Immigration History Archives of the University of Minnesota
provided a grant for the use of their archival materials, opening these
holdings to me most generously. All these grants are gratefully acknowl-
edged. My last stay in Slovenia in 1995 was partly financed by the Scientific
Research Center (Znanstveni in raziskovalni center) of the Slovene Academy
of Sciences and the Arts (SAZU). Its Director, Dr. Oto Luthar, invited me to
present a paper on my project at the Slovene Academy of Sciences and Arts.
In Zˇerovnica and its sister village Grahovo, many helped. We must let a
listing of a few su≈ce. In 1964–65 the late Marija (Micka) Mertelj provided
space in her house in Grahovo for our family, my husband and two (then)
teenage daughters. And her son Marijan, now deceased, and his wife, Ma-
rija, and their daughter, Meta Polovicˇ, continued this hospitality. In Zˇerov-
nica proper, my heartfelt thanks go out to the family of the late Matija and
Marija Rok. Matija Rok had been the village headman of Zˇerovnica until the
Communist administration deprived the village of its autonomy. He still
held much of the village documentation such as maps and deeds in his
possession, and he was a welcome fount of information and wisdom. Both
Matija and Marija Rok became close friends, and their hospitality knew no
bounds. The same can be said of the next generation of the family, the Roks’
daughter Marija, now deceased, her husband Anton (Tone) Primozˇicˇ, and
their daughters, Marija and Antonia (Toncˇka), both of whose births and
first birthdays we celebrated in Zˇerovnica in the 1960s. Much help was also
received from the various priests in the Grahovo parish that includes Zˇerov-