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Through oral tradition, relationships between people and the water are manifested. Tales and anecdotes about destructive water creatures, the universal flood, and other aspects of water, apart from being told as a mere element of diversion like all kuentos and anecdotes, serve to hand down information that helps understand and face today’s world through past events related to water. As mentioned earlier, I want to analyze what the tales

and anecdotes express about these relationships. My approach in this is primarily semantic.

Every narrative contains several semantic dimensions or layers that range from more psychological or philosophical ones to more cultural or social ones. It is the meaning’s cultural dimension that shall be discussed here. By narrating tales and anecdotes, people convey cultural knowledge in both conscious and unconscious ways. During a performance, meaning can be deduced from four elements: the wording or language material which is of interest to linguistics, the wording’s texture or organization (like a genre’s or narrator’s style), the narration or organization of the narrative’s story line, and dramatization, that is, the performance’s organization, where acoustic, visual and kinetic aspects become relevant (Jason 1977:99). In the tales, meaning is expressed through the actors’ characterization and their deeds, the handling of time and space categories, the use of symbols and metaphors, or the theme and motifs which the tale addresses, among others. The audience creates meaning through the valuation of these and other elements in both cognizant and incognizant ways according to the narrator’s approach. The dynamics of attaching cultural meaning to the tales and anecdotes, both by the narrator and his audience, is the study’s subject. Since meaning is based on the cultural context, the relationship between text (the recorded tale or anecdote) and context (the performance’s circumstances and the cultural background of the people involved) must be explained.

The analysis of the tales and anecdotes presented in this study was made along the following lines. Information about the valuation of the tales was first obtained from the narrators themselves. During the tales’ transcription and translation --preferably with the performer himself-- ambiguities were solved and special features of the wording explained. The use of specific voices and the linguistic material’s arrangement during verbalization give the tale its variations and influence the listener’s valuation of the tale. During the tales’ analysis, the narrator’s decisions concerning some of the most incisive phrasings or word choices are explained and the influence of these choices on the possible interpretations is described. Ensuing talks conveyed information about how each narrator valued the narrative in terms of its cultural meaning. The narrator clarified the tale’s type and theme, gave his opinion about the protagonists’ conduct --which disclosed his socio-cultural norms and values-- and treated other aspects of the version he considered relevant. The aim of these talks was not to discuss all significant elements of Huastecan Nahua oral tradition about water, as the participants themselves see it, but to discuss, above all, the semantic elements in the text that are of concern to the narrator. This approach resulted in a broad, general comprehension of the narrative’s different meaningful elements and their

significance. These elements and their meaning, as understood and intended by the narrator, were confronted with the opinion of other Nahuas in order to register complementary valuations and thus obtain an overview of the multiple outlooks on tales that exist within Nahua society.

A valuation of each tale was also brought about through a more systematic analysis of its categories. This second part of the analysis is based on the tale as a literary work (partly following Bal 1999 and Jason 1977) in which the wording, texture, dramatization and especially the narration of each tale are examined. After presenting the tale or anecdote, discussing its tale type, and sketching some of the most notable and meaningful circumstances of the performance context, a preliminary description is given on the actors and their roles within the tale. The narrator’s typifycation of the agents transforms them into actors; characteristics such as their appearance in other narratives, specific features denoting a certain character trait, or other qualities that somehow place them in a general framework of reference are dealt with here. In the succeeding discussion, this portrayal is completed with current and past ideas about the characters in real life. Secondly, the spatiotemporal circumstances in which the events occur are addressed. Story time is an important element in tales as it reconstructs the Nahua concept of history as the understanding of a series of former events and the way this understanding is shaped through narrative. Discourse time gives insight into events held to be either more or less meaningful while narrating. The set of temporal relations between story and discourse provides a means to discern the narrator’s valuation of the tale’s different elements. Space is relevant; it grants a notion of the collective as opposed to other entities that reside in the same living space. The way in which spatiotemporal circumstances are handled in narratives provides information about assessment during performance --and, consequently, about tale types--, Nahua cosmology as expressed through tales, and how the narrated events are conceived within this reference framework.

Whenever necessary, the analyzed tales are completed with already published material from Huastecan Nahua narrative that throws light on certain details of the tales discussed. To illustrate the dissemination of a specific theme or event, tales from other Nahua peoples, especially those living in the adjacent Sierra Norte, other indigenous peoples living in the Huasteca area, as well as other indigenous peoples of Mexico are used. This material will situate the Huastecan Nahua tales within the current and past Mexican indigenous context of tale telling and will accentuate its particular handling of these events and themes.

The analysis of each tale’s different aspects is mixed with a discussion on discourse (as a system of statements through which participants come to an

understanding about themselves, their relationship to each other and their place in the world), in which a general interpretation is given about the specific tale’s meaning to Nahuas and how this meaning is expressed while narrating. Here, the motifs and events and the narrator’s way of presentation are interpreted against their setting’s cultural background: contemporary life. Also, they are compared to valuations about the literary production, specifically about the events addressed in the tales and their assessment. This contextualization permits a demonstration of parallels and divergences between the oral presentations of the norms and values and the ones present in socio-cultural reality, which will show their interaction.