Over the past two decades increasing attention has been given to exploring the highly dynamic interactive relationship between language and culture, specifically the way in which language systems, understood as supra-individual entities, both reflect and constrain processes of identity and selfhood formation. Our notions of self and personhood, drawn from our tacit understandings of the dominant cultural conceptualizations circulating around us, are transmitted from one generation to the next though a combination of language and social practice. Together they bring about the implicit conceptual consensus that characterizes a given population of speakers at any given point in time. For example, people living in Europe today would reject out of hand the notion that humans descended from bears. Yet, as will be demonstrated, in Europe there is solid evidence for the presence of an older consensus view, an older interpretive frame which not only entertained that possibility, but also mirrored it in language use and social practice.
In this investigation you will discover that words can be stubborn, that they can carry memories turning them into remarkable mnemonic devices. Even though you might think you know the meaning of curious expressions like bugbear or bogeyman, this study will take you to places you never thought you would go. You will come face to face with the older meanings and sociocultural instantiations of these and other related terms, meanings that have continued functioning, hovering there in the background just out of reach. What will be brought into view is evidence for a relatively cohesive and persistent pattern of beliefs and social practices connected to this older pan-European animist cosmovision and its ursine genealogy.
More concretely, we will be tracing the submerged currents of belief flowing, until now unnoticed, just beneath the surface, which are linked to commonplace expressions such as bugbear and bogeyman in English and the vast plethora of Germanic counterparts, e.g., Mummbär, Bummbär; Mutzebär, Butzebär, Butzelbar, Putzebär, Wutzebär, and Wutzelbär, alongside others such as Bärbautz, Bärbutz, Bärwauz, Bärpoppes, Bärpopel and Bäramockel in which Bär ‘bear’ is either the first element or the second. In addition to bugbear and bogeyman, there are the many related expressions found in Romance languages that refer to a similar type of preternatural creature, such as babau, mamau, baubau, maumau, babao, bobò, pabu, babú, bú, alongside barabao and maramao. In this investigation the cultural entailments of these terms will be brought to the fore and analyzed diachronically along with their sociocultural situatedness, past and present.