SPEECH CODES IN THE BOOK OF DEDE KORKUT: PERFORMATIVITY, FORMULAICITY, AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF EPIC MEANING

Abstract

This article examines the system of speech formulas (prayer, blessing, curse, oath, soylama, boylama, exclamation, lament, etc.) in The Book of Dede Korkut through structural-semiotic and oral-performative approaches. The central claim is that, within Turkic epic tradition, the word is not a neutral unit of communication but a performative act that enables events and binds them to a value regime: prayer and blessing are followed by success and victory, curse by punishment and disaster, while soylama functions as an “ethical seal” that inscribes the event into cultural memory. Consequently, the epic’s poetic language is not ornamental aesthetics but a normative-ritual mechanism of cultural regulation.
The study argues that the epic text operates through three interdependent speech layers: (1) ritual speech (prayer, blessing, curse, oath), (2) poetic speech (soylama, invocation, address, exclamation, lament, wisdom-type pronouncements), and (3) narrative speech (prose description and dialogue). Their interaction produces a hybrid text that is simultaneously ritual, poetic, and normative. Prose “carries” the plot forward, whereas verse assigns meaning and evaluation; poetic segments emerge at points of heightened tension and generate semantic centers of the narrative. Parallelism, repetition, and formulaic patterns (especially trial-and-journey formulas), a syllabic rhythm oriented toward performance rather than rigid meter, and a dense symbolic lexicon (horse, road, mountain, blood, hearth, name/lineage) connect poetic speech to collective memory while sustaining improvisational capacity in oral delivery.
Methodologically, the article integrates three frameworks: the Parry–Lord oral-formulaic model (formulas and themes as tools of rapid composition), performativity (speech acts that produce socio-sacral reality), and structural-semiotic analysis (formulas as cultural codes). On this basis, it proposes a functional-semiotic classification of formulas and outlines a general semiotic register across sacral, social, dialogic, didactic, emotional, strategic, and metanarrative functions. The findings show that in Dede Korkut verse acts as a primary “meaning generator”: blessings, laments, exclamations, and wisdom fragments create “semantic knots” that connect events to ethical norms and legitimize heroism. The voice of Dede Korkut is thus not a detached narrator but a judging authority: blessing and curse regulate cosmic balance, while performative silence may operate as a “zero sign” that conveys moral intensity and finality.
In its comparative section, the article juxtaposes three related yet distinct Turkic epic models—Dede Korkut, Manas, and Koroğlu—from the standpoint of prose–verse distribution and the intratextual role of speech formulas. In Dede Korkut, verse produces a “knotting” pattern (critical meaning centers); in Manas, the scale and continuity of poetic material yield a “flow” model grounded in performance-memory ontology; and in Köroğlu, prose and verse alternate according to an “alternation” principle, balancing plot transmission with emotional and ideological elevation. Overall, the article argues that prose–verse segmentation reveals the epic’s “sign economy” and correlates with historical-social transformations in the functions of the word as law, memory, and public stance.