The Gate of Words: Language in the Rituals of Korean Shamans

The Gate of Words is a remarkable piece of work in several regards. On the one hand, Antonetta Bruno has shown a great capacity in her fieldwork to communicate with the shamans and their clients. On the other hand she makes good use of ethnolinguistic theories, demonstrating that 'to say something is to do something', and providing evidence that there is continuity between informal conversations, devinations, oracles and chants. The original contribution Bruno makes is that she shows that Korean shamanism mainly relies on the art of speaking, on dialogue.' Alexandre Guillemoz, ecole des Haute etudes en Sciences Sociales ' Antonetta Bruno's theoretical and methodological point of view is derived from comtemporary linguistic anthroplogy and folkloristics. She likes to see the Korean shamanic ritual, kut, as a communicative event, and thus tries to understand the whole process of kut through an analysis of language behavior and social interaction. This is a very significant and really new approach to the Korean shamanic ritual compared to previous researches of the same topic.' Hahn-Sok Wang, Seoul National University (incl. photogr., bibl. and index)