Evidentiality as an ‘internal commentary’ on the text: Testimonies about the ‘wild man’

Reports about the “Bigfoot” are very heterogeneous. There are some authentic records of oral narratives but more often they come secondhand, when the words of tradition keepers are retold by the outsiders. Moreover, sometimes these words are initially shaped in the foreign language, which is not native to the informant. The texts of this kind typically indicate the source of the narrator’s information: whether he witnessed the event, or transmitted his message from hearsay (heard it from a direct witness, or another “reteller”, etc.). The presence of such “verifying comments” gives grounds to speak of evidentiality as a special narrative category in the traditions of “mythological prose”.

“Credibility of messages” is ensured by several rhetorical methods: by describing recent events as maximally obvious, or, alternatively, by relying on long-standing information, which is presented as time-tested and firmly established. Sometimes it is a “personal testimony” of the narrator or, on the contrary, the authorship is transferred to another, while narrator asserting oneself only in the role of a relay. It can be also done either by referring to rumor, to the general perceptions of local residents, or to a specific “authoritative source”.

The authoritative status of the source is guaranteed by kinship/ acquaintance with the original narrator, by his belonging to the group of socially, culturally, religiously significant persons – for instance, to the militaries who have a wider experience of the outside world, or to the intellectuals (in a broad sense) who are seen as reliable carriers of “positive knowledge”. In some cases, the source can be a “personal history”, a specific case, or the event itself, described without reliance on someone else’s words. More often the information recorded by the “external observer” is transmitted not by participants/witnesses of the event, but by anonymous or group “retranslators”, whose presence lengthens the chain of information to three or even four links.

The very position of the “external observer”, usually the author of the “final” text, is quite mobile: he can be a native of a given local tradition, a foreign expert on a given region, or (most often) an inquisitive dilettante, fascinated by the search for Bigfoot.

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