Contrasts as a narrative technique in emigrant accounts - Research Article

Abstract

Contrasts contribute to the way in which we view the world. In folklore and in everyday narration, people use contrasts as a descriptive technique. The aim of this paper is to investigate this narrative technique by analysing the accounts of Swedish-speaking Finns who have emigrated to South Africa. As an analytical tool I use the three classical ethnological-folkloristic dimensions of time, place, and social setting when I examine how the emigrants construct contrasts and what they choose to contrast with something else. The contrasts used in emigrants' narratives may be complete, with the three components of the ideal contrast explicitly stated around a specific core: the base, its antithesis, and the explanation. They may also be curtailed, with the explanation left implicit. Finally, they may be wholly implicit, the comprehension based on a shared background in the interlocutor's pre-understanding.

Introduction: Contrasts

Contrasts contribute to the way in which we view the world. By contrasting one element against another, we underline a striking difference. We thus chisel out and highlight the difference between the two elements so that one of them stands out as different from the other. We have learnt to perceive contrasts as opposites.

Claude Levi-Strauss stressed the human way of thinking in terms of binary oppositions, and Mary Douglas's studies of pure and impure further deepened our ideas of the significance of opposites in human thought (for example, Levi-Strauss 1964; Douglas 1980). [1] Billy Ehn and Orvar Lofgren have pointed out that cultural analysts, by using the technique of contrasting when trying to understand their research material and describe their findings, can reveal underlying meanings in what may seem self-evident on the surface (see Ehn and Lofgren 1986, 111 ff). In folklore, contrasting is a well-known stylistic device; for example, in motifs dealing with the youngest son who triumphs over his older brothers, the rich man who fails while the poor man succeeds, the evil sister who is thwarted while the good sister becomes a heroine, or the cunning little man who outwits the stupid big man. Here the contrast is seen as a marker to show that the narrative is advancing; it constitutes the end of one section and the start of something new. In everyday narration, people likewise use contrasts as a descriptive technique. My aim here is to investigate this technique by analysing the accounts of Swedish-speaking Finns who have emigrated to South Africa. I did not expressly ask them to contrast the two settings in South Africa and Finland; the contrasts were spontaneously generated as constituents of the emigrants' narratives.

Emigration

Emigration from Finland is an old phenomenon; Finns were moving to what is now Sweden as early as the start of the sixteenth century. [2] But in the middle of the nineteenth century, emigration became intensive. The Nordic countries, especially Sweden and Norway, were the main destinations for people from Finland; between 1865 and 1930, however, most went to the USA and Canada. Others travelled to the southern hemisphere: Australia and New Zealand received many emigrants, and a few went to South Africa. It is difficult to say exactly how many Finlanders settled permanently in South Africa since there are no official statistics covering the whole of the period in question. But we know that South Africa never attracted huge numbers--a few dozen people each year; a few hundred altogether.

The material I am analysing here is a collection of interviews that I conducted with about twenty emigrants of Finnish-Swedish origin in South Africa in the years 1997-98. Emigration was common among people from Swedish-speaking Finland during times when it was hard to support oneself in the home country. Young people might go to America or some other foreign country to earn some money for a few years so that they could set up house; or a man might leave his wife and children in Finland to earn a better income elsewhere, and send money home to the family. There have been other factors apart from economic reasons such as these; for example, young men might evade military service by leaving home. Some of the migrants returned as planned; some went away and returned several times; some stayed away. It may be claimed that emigration was a tradition among young adults; many of my interviewees explained their decision to leave by saying that their fathers, mothers, elder siblings, and others in the neighbourhood had done the same.

The Informants

All the persons I interviewed are living or have lived in KwaZulu-Natal on the east coast of South Africa. The chief city is Durban, with around four million inhabitants. KwaZulu-Natal has an even, subtropical, damp climate. The economy is based on agriculture and industry, including a burgeoning paper industry in Richards Bay where some of the people from Finland have emigrated. The informants came from northern Swedish-speaking Osterbotten, a district that has often bled in times of emigration fever (Kummel 1980, 460ff; Kuparinen 1991, 280). High unemployment and the unprofitability of small homesteads in Finland have prompted people to move to foreign countries to make a living. In the 1920s, several Swedish-speaking Finns emigrated to KwaZulu-Natal. Another group of Finlanders came in the 1950s to escape post-war poverty, inspired and persuaded by those who had gone earlier. Some have also come more recently, either for personal reasons or to get away from unemployment in Finland.