ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with the way in which a sense of ethnic identity may be discovered through analysis of informal genres, such as casual chat. It focuses on the aspect of informal conversation that consists of taking someone into one’s confidence by using an example of a Buryat peasant woman of the Siberian taiga forests. Before going on to discuss casual chat as a genre, the chapter provides some background information about a tiny group of people living in the 1970s in two villages to the west of Lake Baikal. Casual chat may be contrasted as a genre with gossip, which is fundamentally a conversation about third parties and about unusual or idiosyncratic situations. Buryat women are identified with an intelligence which is controlled by men, but which also turns into what is ‘inner’ about the community. In ethnic relations, Buryat women, to a far greater degree than men, are expected to keep up traditions in dress, cooking and demeanour.
