Traditional Communication of the Abkhazians in Wedding Ritual Practices, Viacheslav Aiba
The study of traditional communication culture within wedding ritual practices demonstrates that among the Abkhazians in the late nineteenth to the first half of the twentieth century there existed a highly developed ceremonial communicative system.
We differentiate the communicative process of this cycle into three stages: pre-wedding, wedding, and post-wedding.
The marriage celebration, in turn, comprised the following ceremonial verbal and non-verbal means of communication, which structured the ritual–etiquette space.
Among them:
Reception of guests:
a) greeting;
b) spatial positioning of those receiving (hosts) and those entering (guests);
c) local attributes of communication;
d) interactions of guests with other guests.
Bringing in and visiting the bride:
a) greeting of the bride;
b) spatial positioning of the bride;
c) presentation of gifts to the bride.
Entertainment (dances, songs):
a) during the bringing in of the bride;
b) during the feast;
c) after the feast.
Reciprocal exchange of gifts.
The feast (banquet):
a) invitation to the feast;
b) ritual hand-washing;
c) seating arrangements;
d) signal to commence the meal;
e) election of the tamada (toastmaster);
f) serving and consumption of food and alcoholic beverages;
g) proclamation, number, and sequence of toasts;
h) facial expressions, gestures, and communicatively significant actions involving objects;
i) communications according to the following patterns: bride’s attendant – hosts; relatives – non-relatives; man – woman; elder – younger;
j) duration of the feast;
k) excesses and their resolution;
l) conclusion of the feast;
m) rising from the table;
n) ritual hand-washing.
Farewell:
a) blessing, good wishes;
b) spatial positioning of the communicants.
Abkhaz wedding. From the Documentary Film: “The song of the Mountains” | The full documentary: https://youtu.be/9-MgHDfHF4c
Alongside normative forms of communication, there also existed taboo forms, the actualisation of which led to the emergence of anti-normative communicative behaviour.
Thus, exogamy imposed a taboo on frivolous topics; other restrictions, however, were less stringent, which did not exclude the very fact of pre-wedding communication.
Post-wedding communication between the new affinal relatives was structured in the following order:
Visiting of the newly married woman by her attendant (usually three weeks after the wedding).
Visit of the young wife to close, “junior” relatives and neighbours (one to two months after the wedding).
Invitation of the son-in-law by his young affinal relatives, for example by his wife’s brother (prior to the formal bringing of the son-in-law to the house of his father-in-law).
Invitation of the young son-in-law (within a year after the wedding).
Invitation by the son-in-law to his wife’s kin (one to two or more years later).
Reciprocal invitation by the bride’s parents to the parents of the groom. This invitation is not obligatory, since the groom’s side is more active in rendering honours to the bride’s side, as though assuming an obligation for facilitating the departure from the household of a family member, a working and, above all, reproductive unit.