CAMBIOS ESTRUCTURALES EN LA SP-A INDUCIDOS POR CONCENTRACIONES MICROMOLARES DE CALCIO

Van Straten (1996) made an intensive study of folktales, which she calls fairy tales, as a literary genre possessing form and function. She analyses and compares certain South African and European fairy tales that were transcribed from an oral source and from indigenous storytellers, as well as from a variety of sources that range from Nguni to Sotho traditions.

Van Straten (1996) selected and analysed folktales about children and ogres, compared their form and content, and what role these folktales played in the development of children. She is relevant to the current study by the mere fact that she researches folktales. However, she focuses on stylistic fairy tales and those that have children and ogres as characters, while the present study focuses on all four categories of Siswati folktales and incudes human beings, birds and animals of all ages. The research study also does not compare Siswati folktales with European folktales; only Siswati folktales are analysed in search of how to curb the manipulation practices that destroy the good behaviour of the emaSwati and those of other African cultures.

Van Straten (1996) employed the formalist ’stylistic analysis of the fairy tale advanced by Luthi (1986) and Freudian psychoanalytic theory to describe the form of European fairy folktales with particular respect to the way in which story motifs are treated. Van Straten used Luthi’ (1986)’s theory to assess the value of fairy tales in the development of a child. Moreover, her study gives an overview of society’s evaluation of fairy tales, both conscious and unconscious, over the past two thousand years.

Van Straten’s (1996) research relates very well with the study under investigation as it provides answers as to whether folktales can still be used as a teaching tool to control manipulation in society. Furthermore, threw light on the study in terms of how the emaSwati evaluate and value their folktales. Van Straten (1996) focuses on how fairy tales’ function in psychological terms, and on how they have been both valued and misjudged by society, and in education in particular, during their long history.

Like Guma (1967), Van Straten (1996) differentiated between fairy tales, myths, and legends as follows:

 Myths deal with matters of belief, such as the origin of the world and its natural phenomena, and with the great forces that rule the destinies of human kind; they include religious beliefs loaded with dogma and moral theory. These stories are believed and they form a structure of the entire society.

 Fairy tales make no claim on belief and are smaller, wilder, and lighter, than other types of folktales due to the particular abstract form. (Van Straten 1996:78)

Max Luthi’s stylistic analysis of the fairy-tale and Freudian psychoanalytic theory is useful as a basis for comparison of certain South African and European fairy tales because, while they are based on very wide empirical observations of form, they do not omit the functions of a correlative form. This study of fairy tales also provides insight as to why this particular art has persisted from very ancient beginnings right through to the present. This informed the study’s enquiry into whether folktales still maintain

manipulative behaviour. Van Straten (1996) incorporated the Luthi (1986)’s stylistic approach with the psychoanalytic approach to test how stylistic folktales reflect their functions in psychological terms. Van Straten (1996)’s choice of the psychoanalytic approach aligned well with the present study, which also employs the psychoanalytic approach as incorporated with discourse analysis to analyse Siswati folktales – even though these theories do not test how folktales reflect their functions but how manipulators deceive the minds of their victims in Siswati folktales.

Van Straten (1996) applies Luthi’s stylistic criteria to a selection of South African folktales selected to represent what Luthi would term “abstract fairy folktales”, i.e. they are distinct from legends, saga, anecdotal tales, fables, trickster’s tales, etiological tales, or migratory legends represented in various cultures from Zimbabwe to the Transkei. Van Straten (1996) distinguishes the South African and European folktale storytelling traditions. The European fairy-tale tradition is largely literary with a preponderance of written text over those in oral circulation. The situation in Africa is different because, in rural areas, folktales are still told in the time-honoured manner; there is a numerous variety of tales in currency and they all enjoy equal respect.

In urban communities experiencing cultural transition, the oral tradition has largely been lost with the breakdown of the nuclear family and of the small stable village community, and to date there has been little attempt to replace this loss. In the literary West, printed tales gained dominance over oral tales and were regarded as authentic versions in the eyes of the public. In contrast, the researcher will try and analyse Siswati folktales as they are told and written from an African context and not consider the comparison. All folktales will enjoy equal opportunities of being analysed in search of manipulative behaviour practice.

Van Straten (1996) also discovered that Western philosophy has the tendency to purify tales in text and to authenticate a single instance of tale type, which is not the case in African context. When van Straten compared European tales with their possible counterparts in the African tradition, she concluded that there is no single tale that

corresponds with a European prototype, but that a group of tales bearing similar motifs makes a more meaningful object of comparison.

For the purpose of comparison, each European prototype was set against a group of African tales bearing recognizably similar motif and structure despite their being by no means identical in form. Van Straten (1996) justifies the designation of the fairy-tale “as a paradigm for the journey of the developing ego in the young child”. She further confirms, that fantasy, specifically in fairy-tale form, plays a very important role in the young child’s resolution of inner conflict, adaptation to the family, and hence to the society. Like Dlamini (2000) and Lubambo (2015), Van Straiten (1996) admits that the tale enables the child to develop cognitively, enhances ego developments in its many facets, and can play a valuable and enriching role in the education of children today. Unlike Van Straten (1996), whose focus is on the development of a child through folktales, this study targets all ages and all types of folktales that have the potential to provide answers to the research question on manipulative behaviour in Siswati folktales.

Besides the differences found between Southern African fairy tales and European fairy tales, Van Straten (1996) confirms that these tales have inner wisdom embodied in concrete and memorable forms, and that wisdom must accompany the perilous yet imperative journey of the psyche through the many transformations required by the self, from infancy to middle and old age.