Messages, Texts, and Rhetorical Detachment in Contemporary Mahri Poetry

Despite its geographical and linguistic proximity to the Arabic language, Mahri (or Mehri) language (ISO 639-3: gdq) of Eastern Yemen Western Oman has remained a non-written into present era. While older generations speakers never considered prospect written idiom for their recent years have witnessed efforts compose circulate texts in language. These circumstances yielded poetic praxis that traverses domains orality literacy; they also enable us identify lexical syntactic characteristics betoken where shifting terrain oral literary composition work occurs. I will examine appearance one such structural motif – dispatched messenger recently composed collection poetry, The Dīwān Ḥājj Dākōn (2011). Embarking from notion textual autonomy developed by Chafe, Olson, Tannen, argue sudden Dākōn’s is by-product his adoption practice. In this way, we can establish stance rhetorical detachment hallmark feature an emergent practice, even at earliest stages.