Hirmu verbaliseerimine (tänapäevases legendis)
The verbalizing of fear (in contemporary legend)

Summary/Abstract: This article focuses on the process in which the dumb, unorganized and mostly physically perceived experience of fear is getting structured logically and verbally. The process of verbalization has an autocommunicational function in culture. It makes the nebulous and incoherent experience of fear more neutral, so the disorienting feeling of danger cannot last a very long time. I distinguish five levels of verbalization process: 1) naming — the first semiotisation of the experience of fear, 2) finding the discourse — modeling the experience with tools of linguistics, 3) finished narrative — delimiting the frightening experience by certain characters, linear understanding of time, casual correlations and intertextual threads, 4) codesignal — getting more and more homogeneous with contemporary part of collective memory, 5) falling apart — the experience of fear is losing its significance and actuality, becoming reduced and perceived as humor. The article is based on the concept of verbalization by Bill Ellis that he discusses in his book called “Aliens, Ghosts and Cults. Legends we Live” and on the ideas Juri Lotman expressed in “Semiotics of Culture”, “Universe of the Mind”, “On The Semiosphere” and “The Semiotics of Fear”. The aim of this kind of synthesis is to make clear on which mechanisms of culture the verbalizing process is based on. The concept of autocommunication and culture as a bilingual system is one possible way of describing it. I have used this synthesis for an analysis of the fear of swine influenza in spring 2009.

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