Sevdah: Cultural Conceptualizations of Bosnian Folk Songs

The present corpus analysis takes a Cultural Linguistic approach to the cultural concept of sevdah that is culturally and historically deeply rooted in the Bosnian language. Since the musical genre sevdah, also termed “Bosnian Blues,” is a designated Bosnian specialty in the Balkans, it presents us with the ideal corpus to analyze the overall cultural cognition that shapes language use and its underlying cultural conceptualizations in the Bosnian context. The central themes of sevdah are love, yearning for love, and desire. The analysis of the roughly 45,000-word large corpus yields insights that are reflective of the Western, Oriental, and Slavic influence on the Bosnian culture. It is established that the sevdah emotion has two loci in the human body. As it is in tune with Western cardiocentric conceptualizations, the seat of emotions in sevdah is the heart, and its second locus is the soul (duša), which draws on Bosnia’s Slavic heritage. The soul serves a pivotal role in the processing of emotions and is central in Bosnian love and life affairs. Furthermore, the corpus analysis shows that in the narrative evolving around the loved one there are elements of medicine (desire is a terminal illness, desire is a sickness), nature (desire is draught, love is a natural force, women are flowers), and food (the lover is a dessert, sex is a sweet food). Lexically, sevdah is the root for a number of words, whereby they highlight its salience in the Bosnian culture till this day. The Bosnian sevdah is the root of life and therefore constitutes one of the cornerstones of Bosnia’s identity.