Although traditional verbal charms and incantation rituals have received extensive attention in Slavic ethnolinguistics and folklore studies, the need still exists for a more in-depth poetic and contextual (re)analysis of ritual texts, especially of the interrelation between their stylistic, compositional, referential and functional properties. In this context, the article points towards the possible benefits of an integrated pragmatic and (ethno)poetic text analysis that centers on the semiotic concepts of iconicity and indexicality. Through an examination of a number of South and East Slavic samples the authors discuss the various ways in which poetic and figurative stylization and structuring in verbal charms correlates (indexically and iconically) with their meanings and functions within the performative (actional-ritual) and broader sociocultural context. In doing so, they attempt to demonstrate how an analysis along poetic-pragmatic lines may prove fruitful for the revalorization of the poetic, performative, social, and cultural efficacy of charms and incantations as verbal rituals, and hence for a recovery of the sociocultural “memory” of these ritual texts
