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Article published In: Pragmatics and Society
Vol. 16:4 (2025) ► pp.494–517

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The pragmatics of communication in traditional ritual performance (Japanese kagura)

Pragmemic triggers as performative acts

ORCiD logo with link | University of Minnesota
Published online: 16 June 2025
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https://doi.org/10.1075/ps.22086.bee
Abstract
Ritual is an intrinsic aspect of human life. Moreover, it is transformational. Ritual performers are engaged in behavior that alters the emotional, mental, and sometimes the physical state of participants in the ritual. In order to create this transformation, ritual performers must have a clear set of pragmatic communication techniques to engage participants and move them through the ritual process. Participants enter a ritual frame, engage in a set of processual experiences and emerge in a different state than when the process began. In this discussion, I examine the pragmatic techniques by which participants are guided from stage to stage through the ritual process. I propose that the principal mechanism for this movement are ‘pragmemic triggers’ that signal processual advancement from stage to stage. These can be verbal, gestural, behavioral or symbolic. For pragmemic triggers to be effective, first, ritual ‘frames’ within which ritual transformation takes place must be established. Second, performers guiding the ritual activate the pragmemic triggers that move participants from stage to stage in the process. Following these pragmemic triggers results in participants becoming engaged in a state of ‘flow’ that separates participants from everyday reality and propels them through the performative ritual process; and third, ritual performers ratify the transformation of participants at the completion of the ritual. I demonstrate the workings of this process in several Asian performance forms, represented in this discussion by an analysis of Japanese kagura.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Performance and religious ritual
  • 3.The pragmatic components of ritual performance
    • 3.1Flow, communitas and audience experience
    • 3.2Framing and frames
    • 3.3Pragmemic triggers
  • 4.Kagura — a Japanese ritual performance
    • 4.1Kagura — performance of renewal
      • Historical sacred deities
      • Local nature deities
      • Local history deities
    • 4.2Kagura performance
    • 4.3Kagura plays
  • 5.Pragmemic triggers — progression through the stages of ritual performance
    • 5.1Izumo-ryū tradition
    • 5.2Two other kagura forms — Yudate kagura and Shishi/Daikagura
  • 6.Conclusion — pragmemic triggers and ritual performance
  • References
References (39)
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