27.2008, Review: Discourse; Socioling; Writing Systems: Busch (2015)

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Subject: 27.2008, Review: Discourse; Socioling; Writing Systems: Busch (2015)

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Date: Mon, 02 May 2016 12:22:48
From: Matthias Fingerhuth [fingerhuth at utexas.edu]
Subject: Runenschrift in der Black-Metal-Szene

 
Discuss this message:
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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/26/26-3814.html

AUTHOR: Florian  Busch
TITLE: Runenschrift in der Black-Metal-Szene
SUBTITLE: Skripturale Praktiken aus soziolinguistischer Perspektive
SERIES TITLE: Sprache - Kommunikation - Kultur - Band 18
PUBLISHER: Peter Lang AG
YEAR: 2015

REVIEWER: Matthias Fingerhuth, University of Texas at Austin

Reviews Editor: Helen Aristar-Dry

SUMMARY

Outside of its historical context, runic script is rarely the object of
linguistic or philological inquiry. This book takes up a new approach to
runes, investigating how they are used in the subculture built around the
musical genre of black metal. The study is an adaptation of an M.A. thesis
written at the University of Hamburg in 2014. As such it has a broader scope
than would commonly be expected from such a work. It consists of six chapters,
along with a list of illustrations and an appendix that lists the used textual
and visual materials.

In the introduction, the author challenges the assumption that runes are a
dead script, contextualizes his study within the growing discourse on
variation in writing, and outlines the study’s structure. Chapters Two and
Three connect the book to the existing scholarly discourse. The second chapter
expands on the sociolinguistic discourse on variation in writing, relying on
Spitzmüller (2013) as a theoretical framework. The third chapter gives a brief
outline of Germanic runes as a historic writing system, based largely on Düwel
(2001) and Barnes (2012), and their use in more recent history: esotericism,
fantasy literature, right wing extremist or national socialist political
contexts, and the music subculture in question. The following chapters are
devoted to the case study. Chapter Four outlines the methodology of the study
and introduces the three corpora used in the investigation. The first consists
of texts taken from internet discourse from the black metal subculture
(predominantly interviews with bands and record reviews), online articles from
German newspapers, and scientific discourse on runes represented by Düwel
(2001) and Grünzweig (2004). This is contrasted with a second corpus of
interviews with two participants of the black metal scene, and a third, a
collection of artefacts involving runes from the black metal subculture. The
author puts forward four hypotheses that inform the empirical investigation,
as follows: (1) The black metal subculture enregisters runes with graphemic
knowledge that is mostly rooted in the history of the recontextualization of
the script. (2) Social indexicality, i.e. the placing of runes in a specific
social, subcultural, or political position, develops only when embedded into
complex multimodal texts. (3) Different subgenres or scene-identities use
runes differently. (4) The degree of commercialization has an influence on the
use of runes. These hypotheses are addressed in more detail in the following
chapters.

Chapter Five gives an analysis of the metascriptural discourse on runes as
present in online media and represented through two members of the black metal
scene. The beginning of the chapter briefly contrasts the discourse within the
scene with the linguistic discourse on runes and a discourse from the general
public as represented through online newspapers. Without going into further
detail on the discourses in broader society or among experts on runes, the
author finds that the discourse in the black metal subculture has a broader
thematic range. This subcultural discourse is concerned with spirituality or
magic (e.g. the use of the Algiz-rune as a sign for life), what the author
calls “lay linguistic aspects” (e.g. the history of the runic script), and
political implications (i.e. the association of runes with National
Socialism), but foremost with historicity and authenticity. This last
discourse connects the use of runes to a cultural tradition leading back to
the Germanic tribes and in this context addresses the appropriate use of
runes, and as such strongly overlaps with the other discourse elements.
Chapter Six then examines the runic artefacts from the black metal subculture.
The author has 22 different categories for these artefacts, with most items
being record covers and prints on merchandise like t-shirts. The analysis
covers a number of criteria, including the use of authentic runes vs. runified
Latin script (pseudo-runes), the runes’ appearance as handwritten letters vs.
computer-generated letters, the integration of the runic elements into their
graphic context, and the use of runes as single signs or within words. The
author’s observations on the frequency of specific design elements found in
the artifacts are connected to the conducted interviews with members from the
subculture. These interviews provide interpretations on the motivations and
patterns of the use of runes. Ultimately, the author concludes that all four
of his hypotheses have been confirmed. (1) The subculture enregisters runes
with specific meanings. (2) the social indexicality of runes is only
efficacious within their visual context. (3) Different groups within the
subculture and intended scene-identities are associated with specific uses of
runes. Notable among these is the use of runes in band logos of black metal
bands with a National Socialist political orientation.  Last, (4) the degree
of commercialization influences the use of runes and bears different
communicative functions. Where commercially less-successful bands tend to use
actual runes and are less likely to use scripts that appear to be written on a
computer, bands with commercial success are more likely to set their runic
script on a computer or to employ Latin type that only appears runic.

EVALUATION

The book provides an interesting case study that is rich in primary material
and gives insight into the enregisterment of runic script in the black metal
scene, a subject not previously described. The merits of the study lie in its
collection of metascriptural discourse from within the black metal subculture
and of artifacts from that subculture that employ some form of runic script.
Beyond the sheer collection of materials, underlying issues in corpus design
and in the use of the collected data undermine the validity of the study, as
follows.

One concern regards the study’s lack in awareness of the temporal component in
its analysis. Almost all visual artefacts come from the period between 1992
and 2014 and the online discourse relating to black metal is attributed to the
years between 2004 and 2013, but the newspaper articles that serve as the
contrast for this subcultural discourse do not match this period. Three of the
investigated newspapers are only represented in 2013 and 2014, but only one
newspaper is represented in the years between 2003 and 2013. The aim of
creating a corpus for comparison of discourses is thus not met. This is
unfortunate, but for the study itself it is of lesser significance, because
the author does not adequately contrast the different discourses in the first
place. Other than a table that shows collocations and compounds concerning
runes in the different corpora, little use is made of the contrastive corpora.
The author only gives two words each as examples for focal points in the other
discourses that imply a focus on linguistic and political aspects, but fails
to elaborate on these differences (p. 82-83). While the results in regard to
the specificity of discourse on runes in the black metal subculture might well
be accurate, in light of such flaws in design and methodology, they do not
support the argument and might as well have been omitted. What remains is an
acceptable analysis of the discourse within the community.

Similar concerns must be raised regarding the analysis of the visual
artefacts. It was compiled by asking members of the black metal subculture to
point out artefacts, as well as a combination of some form of sampling and
systematic inquiry within the online database Encyclopedia Metallum, a
database for metal bands. The result is an unbalanced corpus that does not
provide a firm basis for quantitative analysis. The number of artefacts
contributed by specific artists differs widely. The band “Amon Amarth” is
represented by 12 artefacts, “Enslaved” by 10, and “Skyforger” by 8, together
accounting for almost a tenth of the overall corpus. Such overrepresentation
of certain artists is likely to give them undue weight, an issue that the
author does not discuss in his analysis. Further, the corpus consists of 311
artifacts grouped into 22 categories. These categories receive little
attention in the analysis, which might be problematic in light of their
diverse nature (e.g. CD covers, promotional materials, Facebook profiles, and
tattoos). It is uncertain to what extent the author distinguishes between
these categories. Although the author may not have intended to create a
rigorous corpus for quantitative analysis, this issue becomes problematic when
the author employs it to defend one of the central claims of the study, that
of the influence of commercialization on the use of runes. 

The author describes a correlation between the listeners ascribed to an
artifact and their use of runes. The number of listeners is described by a
number assessed through the internet service last.fm. This way of assessing
the degree of commercialization seems in itself sufficient for the purposes of
the study. The effect described is that an increased number of listeners goes
hand in hand with a decreased use of historic runes. In this analysis, the
phrasing of the author and the collection of the materials in the appended
table suggest that the author does not discriminate between different types of
artefacts in this (p. 126). This is particularly concerning, as among the
numerous artefacts that are not labeled with any number of listeners are
artefacts produced by individuals or music groups that could actually qualify
for such an assessment, as well as Facebook profiles (p. 161), tattoos (p.
175), graffiti (p. 176), and promotional materials for music festivals (p.
179). Such materials should not be compared to record covers and merchandise
in their degree of commercialization, yet the text suggests that the author
includes them nonetheless.

The details of the analysis give further reasons for concern. According to the
study (p. 126-127), bands with fewer than 100 listeners use historic runes in
82.2% of cases, while bands with 100,000 to 150,000 listeners use them only in
55.6% of cases. While the author gives these percentages, a consultation of
the appended overview of the artifacts reveals that these percentages are
based on a very small database. While there are several dozen items from
sources with less than 100 listeners, there are only 7 bands with 100,000 to
150,000 listeners, and they have contributed only 9 artifacts to the database.
In light of this small sample size, the percentage differences might well be
due to chance.

The credibility of these numbers is further called into question by the fact
that there is no information on the artists that have between 101 and 99,999
or more than 150,000 listeners. If there actually is a pattern, this data
should have been employed to support the argument; but the analysis appears to
include only data that supports the author’s hypothesis. An impression of bias
is intensified by comparison of the observed “pattern” with that of the use of
pseudo runes, where the author detects a reversed trend, contrasting their use
among groups with less than 100 listeners to those of numbers between 50,000
and 100,000 listeners. This category does not match that of the previous
analysis, and again, there is no mention of the use of runes by bands with
listeners outside of this range. There are more possible examples of these
problems but this use of numbers is indicative of the problematic state of the
quantitative analysis of the artifact corpus.

In sum, while all the hypotheses the author puts forward might still be true,
the study contributes less to their confirmation than it claims. Based on the
materials presented, at most hypotheses (1) and (2) are supported. The notion
of a discourse on runes specific to the black metal subculture is plausible,
although the contrastive corpora remain virtually unused. The two conducted
interviews support the second hypothesis that the visual context is decisive
for social indexicality (although casting a broader net would have benefited
the study). As it is, it is dependent on the assessment of three individuals,
including the author. However, questions regarding the methodological rigor of
the study call the validity of hypotheses (3) and (4) into question. This
begins with the composition of the corpus of visual items, and from there
translates into the analysis. The analysis of the visual artefacts does not
sufficiently describe the use of runes in different groups within the
subculture, and in the same way the influence of commercialization on the use
of runes is not adequately supported by the artefacts. The strongest support
for these hypotheses is again provided by the interviews. Without them, the
claims about different uses of runes are essentially reduced to statements on
the use of individual runes by bands with National Socialist orientations. 

Some final notes concern the appended table that references the artifact
corpus. This collection is substantial and could provide a starting point for
further investigation of the use of runes in the black metal subculture. In
light of this, it is unfortunate that the table is arranged by the index
number of the author’s database. This turns into a nuisance when a reader
looks for specific information. As an example, details on the three artefacts
from the band “Falkenbach” are spread over the pages 161, 164, and 179. That
the “Dark Troll Festival”, a music festival, is attributed with listener
numbers just in the same way that bands are raises further questions about the
numbers found in the analysis and the accuracy of the data. There are
additional problems with the delineation between the subgenres and practical
complications to the author’s argument that the use of runes in artwork
effectively excludes an audience. At least in mail-order distribution,
transliterations of band names and album titles in Latin type are the rule,
not an exception.

These criticisms aside, the study raises a number of questions worthy of
further investigation. The different contemporary practices of rune use are
certainly an interesting object of study, and the author points to the use of
runes in videogames as a further place of possible investigation. The
different subcultural discourses, their interconnection with discourses in
broader society, and the enregisterment of runic script all merit further
attention. The book provides a starting point, although it ultimately falls
short of its intended goals.

REFERENCES

Barnes, Michael P. 2012. Runes: A Handbook. Woodbridge: Boydell Press.

Düwel, Klaus. 2001. Runenkunde. Stuttgart: Metzler.

Grünzweig, Friedrich E. 2004. Runeninschriften auf Waffen: Inschriften vom 2.
Jahrhundert n. Chr. bis ins Hochmittelalter. Wien: Edition Praesens.

Spitzmüller, Jürgen. 2013. Graphische Variation als soziale Praxis: Eine
soziolinguistische Theorie skripturaler 'Sichtbarkeit'. Berlin: de Gruyter.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Matthias Fingerhuth is a PhD candidate in Germanic Studies at the University
of Texas at Austin. His research interest include language standardization,
language contact, and linguistic historiography.





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