8.1
What is it that you wish to research? – Please state this in the form of a
research question as you begin
your
essay. How effective is the use of
metaphorical language with its origins in traditional Kurdish village life
for
effective communication among the urban youth who are speakers of Behdini
Kurdish?
8.2 Why
is this research important to you, or to others? – Tell us how your topic is
connected to literature and
other
research you have done. How do you expect this research to make a contribution
to the wider body of
knowledge
in your discipline?
-1. The
Behdini dialect has been sparsely documented, so it is useful at that level to
learners of Behdini.
It will
also be a contribution to the debate about what makes 'good Kurdish'. See below.
8.3
What motivates you to do this research? – If your research is practitioner
based explain how that is
relevant
to your study. To preach the gospel
aptly, and to take captive every thought.
Whether or not this comes to be stated explicitly - and I would prefer to make my thesis acceptable as a secular linguistic study in its own right- my thinking springs from a
conviction about how
the
kingdom of God grows. It does not grow
through violence, neither does it grow
through
Western money or clever strategy, but rather through speaking the word of
God. But the
gospel
must be spoken with aptness, accuracy and flavour. "Sweetness of speech increases
persuasiveness"
Prov 16:21. Kurdish believers are
poorly equipped to use the weapon of the word
skilfully. Their language has not been well
developed. Kurdish culture has for
centuries been suppressed, because its language has been despised as unworthy
of use in education and worship. And
yet, even within this
ideological
straightjacket, the richness of the Kurdish language has been preserved within
an oral
tradition. Kurdish proverbs and idiom are honoured as
almost sacred scripture.
So, I
propose four avenues that could be explored for research topics:
A)
Kurdish Proverbs. This seems to be the
safe option. There are a number of
books of Kurdish
proverbs. A first step would be to translate Omer
Salihi's Gotinet Peshiyan or one particular author's work
Kurdish
Wisdom. The latter is a neighbour,
fluent in English, retired and keen to help.
The research
question
could be to test familiarity and comprehension, with different regions and age
groups.
B) A
Comparative Study of English idiom.
When I listen to preachers who have an exceptional
command
of colloquial English I am awed at how they keep you listening because they are
constantly
painting
pictures. I long to be able to
communicate with cogency statements like – to pull a couple out
at
random -"how will your wealth help you when old age comes knocking?",
or "this verse is the death
blow to
Western individualism". How will a
new generation of Kurdish preachers be raised up who
can
preach winsomely, holding people's attention in the same way that the revered
story-tellers of old
used
to? I could use a book of English idiom and document Kurdish equivalents. For example, a wild
goose
chase has a Kurdish equivalent: "khew jee choo u kew jee choo":
'missed my lie-in and missed
the
partridge too!'
C) An
Analytical Collection of Behdini Idiom
I have
been documenting a lot of colourful Kurdish language in this past year. This is not in itself an
academic
exercise, more the labour of love of one who is at heart a Kurdish
folklorist. But I am sure
there
is ground-breaking work here somewhere.
For example, I have not seen anyone try to document
the
huge amount of rhyming and alliterative language in Kurdish. We have bits and bobs, they have jil
u
mil. We like things spick and span,
they like things ser u ber. Or take
animal idiom: I wonder
whether
I could beaver away at documenting and then testing this huge lexis. If I were to ferret around
for
long enough, or even just swan around the chaykhanes as a sort of 'idiom
squirrel' there would be
enough
animal metaphor and simile to keep you reading til the cows come home. The analysis could
look at
how effectively an older generation's idiom connects with the Facebook urban
generation.
D)
Public Speaking
A
different approach would be to analyse a selection of speeches, perhaps from
political congresses,
festivals,
mosques or TV chat shows. Here the aim would be exploring how far renowned
Kurdish
public
speakers are using their language metaphorically in order to connect with a
society whose roots
are in
mountain villages. I would want a
substantial reading list on sociolinguistics, and some
typologies
of language development, perhaps from the English language example. Britain's seafaring
heritage
still provides us with a huge catalogue of colourful idiom, from the tide
turning to marriages
on the
rocks to nailing your colours to the mast, even though we forget the roots of
many of the
phrases. Landlocked Kurdistan no doubt has a whole
range of idiom that endures from its nomadic,
pastoralist
heritage.
Many
Kurdish linguists have a reductionist typology of language development, which
is centred
around
a hostility to loan words. In English,
of course, a purist approach would not appreciate the way
in
which foreign words have been adopted but infused with a different
meaning, the shift from French
demander
(to ask) to the English 'to demand' being a famous example. Melvyn Bragg's The
Adventure
of
English has whetted my appetite for the study of language development.
I look
forward to bringing to the research a background in Kurdish history, but to
shift a gear into more
purely
linguistic research. I have a lot to
learn in the field of linguistics, but I am happy to expand my
historian's
mind with some new linguistics tools.
Because I love this people and see many of them
suffering
terribly in the current crisis, I am all the more motivated to immerse myself
in their thoughts.
To top
and tail this essay with a Christian worldview, I want to "take captive
every thought to make it
obedient
to Christ". People think using
words. And it would be a privilege for
me to devote some
years
of my life to analysing their words. Of
the above topics that I have introduced, a study of animal
idiom
would be my preferred choice. This
essay has been of necessity a hurried work, but I hope that
it
demonstrates an alertness to the wealth of unexplored territory in the Kurdish
language, and a
willingness
to listen to supervisors' guidance on what would be most suitable.
