Folklore Exam 1 (IU Dr. Barker F101)

What reasons did we give for arguing that folklore is not trivial?

Who is William Thoms?

a british writer who coined the term "folklore" and wrote the first book about folklore, titled "The Folk-Lore of England"

What are central characteristics of the "definitions" of folklore?

Communication in small groups

What are Brunvand's five qualities with true folklore?

(1) Folklore is Oral (proverbial sayings), Customary (superstitions/beliefs), and Material (costumes)

(2) it is traditional in form and transmission (

3) it exists in different versions or in variants

(4) it usually has an anonymous author

(5) Folklore tends to be formularized

What are folklore's dual natures?

D. Noyes - Repudiation versus Nostalgia

H. Glassie -Tradition versus Variation

Who are the folk? What is a folk group?

folk are the group of people discussing folklore, a folk group is any group of people who share at least one common factor

When was the American Folklore Society created? What was AFS's early mandates? (See slide with 1888 issue of Journal of American Folklore.)

1888.

"For the collection of fast-vanishing remains of Folk-Lore in America..."

- "Old English Folklore"

- "Negroes of the Southern United States"

- "Indian Tribes of North America"

- "French Canada, Mexico, etc."

We have said that all true folklore is performed, why?

Be familiar with the humanities/social-science dualities of hand-clapping games we identified in lecture?

- Know the "most famous" definition, Dan Ben-Amos's

"Folklore is artistic communication in small groups"

Understand the idea that folklore is not necessarily untrue or old-fashioned (Simms and Stephens, 2-3)

understand the idea that folklore is a way to help understand what it means to be a human

(Simms and Stephens, 3)

- Know the three levels of culture:

Also Know that folklore is not high culture or popular culture. (Simms and Stephens, 3-4)

folk, high/elite, popular

Understand that it is often difficult to parse the exact level of any given aspect of culture.

And, it is certainly the case that elite and popular aspects of culture often blend with folk

aspects. (Simms and Stephens, 4-5)

Know that folklore is largely informally learned. (Simms and Stephens, 6-7)

- Know the three categories of folklore:

verbal, material, customary (Simms and Stephens, 13,

16, 17)

- How and why is Plato's Phaedrus relevant to contemporary conversations about writing

versus orality and/or 21st-century communicative technologies?

Separating the knower from the known. Oral Culture is gained from information

ex internet

- Approximately, how old is the technology of writing?

5,000 BCE

Know the EIGHT technical differences between orality (speech) and literacy (writing).

(1) Speech is full of paralinguistic cues.

(2) Speech has intonation and rhythm.

(3) Speech can be modified on the spot.

(4) Speech is primarily disposable.

(5) Speech is primarily used for interactional purposes.

(6) Speech relies on relatively simple syntax.

(7) Speech contains a lower level of content per sentence.

(8) Speech is situationally transparent.

- In what ways is John Baker, Jr's genealogical work important in the contexts of history, orality,

and writing?

- Know the definition of a submarine sandwich. (p 79)

there are 13 derivations of this term. It is defined as 'a sandwich served on a large italian roll containing a variety of italian meat and cheese, lettuce, tomato, onion and garnished with olive oil and assorted spices'

- From the reading on folk etymology and word formation, you should know the definition of

folk etymology, and you should be able to list an example or two.

Folk etymology is defined as when obscure morphemes are misanalyzed in terms of more familiar morphemes and an example is "garter snake → garden snake" as well as other ones listed earlier like "coleslaw → cold slaw"

- The key lesson of folk etymology is that even though the linguist will say that words are

formed because of "misanalysis," the newly formed words are completely and perfectly

productive for the folk who use the term. That is, calling a garter snake a "garden snake" does

not stop or lessen the communicative aspects of language and discourse.

The key lesson of folk etymology is that even though the linguist will say that words are formed because of "misanalysis," the newly formed words are completely and perfectly productive for the folk who use the term. That is, calling a garter snake a "garden snake" does not stop or lessen the communicative aspects of language and discourse

- Be familiar with the list of differing ways that new words are added to languages (pp 2-3).

- acronyms- formed with the initial sounds and uniting them into a pronounceable word such as NATO

- blends- combinations of the parts of two words such as smog from smoke and fog

- clipping- way of shortening words without paying attention to the derivational morphology of the word such as dorm from dormitory

- coinages- are words that are created using any of the methods above and without employing any other word or word parts such as Exxon and Kodak

- conversions- are new words created simply by shifting the part of speech of a word to another part without changing the form of the word such as laugh, run, buy, and steal started as verbs and nouns aka functional shift

-eponyms- are words that are names for people, places, objects somehow connected with people for instance Washing DC for george washingotn and the district of columbia part for christopher columbus

- Approximately how many languages are spoken in the world?

Over 6,000

- Human language can express an infinite number of meanings.

- Word meaning is almost always arbitrary

- Human language is unique in the animal kingdom.

- At what levels of language does folklore operate (e.g. accents, lexicons, sentence constructions, linguistic performance patterns?

We have used the analogy that human language is like and instinct, why?

- Know the ages and stages of language acquisition.

-4-6 months: Babbling

-10-13 months: Making words

-24 months: Make short phrases

-3-4 years: Form sentences

-5-6 years: Full grammar and linguistic capabilities

- What is ethnography of speaking?

concerned with "the use of language in the conduct of social life"

Be familiar with language variation by region in the United States, be familiar with the lexical

distribution of select terms featured in lecture: (e.g. /you guys/, /soda/, /pajama/, /lawyer/.

What is folk etymology? Be able to provide examples.

a popular but mistaken account of the origin of a word or phrase.- Garter Snake "Garden Snake"- coleslaw "cold slaw"- Alzheimer's Disease "Old Timer's Disease"

- From a folklorist's perspective, is ain't a word? Why? Why not?

yes, met-language example

- Why do we refer to the folk poetical phrase, "Ain't ain't a word and I ain't gonna use it" as metalanguage?

language about language

Does rhyme assist with memory? How?

yes, people often use rhyming songs to memorize things such as the ABC's

How does rhyme coincide with mnemonic devices?

"Leaves of three leave them be"

Rhyme is an expressive device used in mnemonic protection of traditionalized knowledge.

How does rhyme interact with play?

-use it in play

-jump rope

- Tongue twisters

- Counting-out rhymes

Know the definition of genre.

- What are the central differences between older, classificatory definitions of genre are current,

performance-centered definitions of genre?

Know the definition of a proverb

Concise, traditional statements of apparent truths and applicable wisdom used in "everyday" verbal communication.

Be familiar with the idea that proverbs often exist in contrastive pairs.

We say that proverbs' inherent ambiguities allow them to be applicable in a wider range of

social circumstances, why? [see the A friend in need, is a friend indeed examples.]

- Understand that verbal folklore can begin in writing, then move into oral circulation. (See,

for example, The best things in life are free).

Know the definition of a joke.

a thing that someone says to cause amusement or laughter, especially a story with a funny punchline.

Jokes often rely on insider (i.e. emic) knowledge.

Know Sherzer's Definition of the term, joke, on page 36.

- Be able to identify a riddle joke vis-à-vis a narrative joke (Sherzer, 36-39)

- In Sherzer's article (pages 39-50), he deals with the fact that jokes are the verbal genre within

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which people can playfully and provocatively talk openly about, otherwise, taboo topics: i.e.

politics, ethnicity, sexuality.

- From Sherzer's Jewish Jokes section (45-50), students should recognize that whether or not any

particular performance of a joke is "offensive" depends as much upon the social contexts

(who, what, when, where) as it does upon the semantic content of the joke.

What is a metajoke (Sherzer, 50-51)

Self-referential humor, also known as self-reflexive humor or meta humor, is a type of comedic expression that—either directed toward some other subject, or openly directed toward itself—is self-referential

- In Sherzer's Joke Tellings and Performances section (51-53), students should recognize the

orientation of jokes toward the inflection of performance theory as a dramatic analogy in which a

performer is judged by an audience.

- In Sherzer's proverbs (56-60) section, students should track the facts that proverbs are

traditionalized as pre-packaged expressions of communal wisdom, or to put it as Sherzer does,

as answers to a question, as advice, or as summation (58). Also, students should be able to

identify the key structural and thematic elements of proverbs.

- Know that "Proverbs are short and concise. They have a binary structure in which one twopart relationship is compared or related to another." (Sherzer, 56)

- Recognize that the playful, traditionalized rhymes exist as children's genre that plays with

taboo topics like the grotesque and sexuality. So, the child's rhymes are analogous to adults'

jokes (Sherman & Weiskopf, 11-13).

- Recognize that adults can quickly recall children's rhymes when prompted (Sherman &

Weiskopf, see discussion of "memory cascade" on page 13).

- Be able to identify children's rhymes from the examples listed in the Sherman and Weiskopf

reading.

- Be familiar with the key characteristics of narrative

(e.g. character development, revelation of

characters' inner thoughts)

How do folklorists divide myths, legends, and folktales?

Folktales are stories with people as main characters that sometimes include feats of strength. Myths are stories told to explain the world around us, from the origin of the world, to why there are seasons. Finally, legends are grounded in reality, but aren't necessarily true

Know the definition of and examples of folktales.

Know the definition of a fairytale

How widespread are Cinderella fairytales?

Over 500 versions

Do Cinderella motifs and themes show up in other genres of folklore (e.g. sayings)?

Yes, underdog team

How do issues of "historical, textual accuracy" and "taste" align with a descriptive approach

to understanding folktales?

As is the case with folk sayings (e.g. proverbs), folktales move in and out of folk culture and popular culture. They move in and out of oral communication and writing (including other communicative technologies like film and the Internet.)

What is a tale type?

Tale types refer recurring plot patterns in folk-tales.

What Disney film is connected to tale type, AT 985, Brother Chosen Rather than Husband or Son?

Frozen

- Know the definition of a fable.

A brief, single episode (oral or written) that, because it employs speaking animals, plants, and inanimate objects, as well as human characters, is said to illustrate metaphorically and satirize/comment upon the behavior of human beings.

Was Aesop a real, historical person?

A largely invented narrator, standing in for the anonymity of oral creation and transmission of fable-like tales.

What is an epimythium?

Around the 1stcentury c.e., written versions of fables began acquire a concluding proverbial moral

What is anthropomorphism, and what role does it play in fables?

is the attribution of human characteristics (thought patterns, emotional states, behavioral patterns) to non-human objects (e.g. animals, cars, plants)

- As a folk theory, anthropomorphism can be summarized: Animals behave in ways similar to humans for similar human reasons.

- Be aware of "The Crow and the Pitcher" as a traditional narrative and as a scientific set of

experiments. What does the intersection of folklore and science say about science? What does

the intersection say about folklore?

Variability of the epimythium(moral)makes the fable more powerful as a rhetorical tool

Know the differences between Disney's Snow White and the Grimm Brothers' version of Snow

White.

- Be able to identify a fable, as compared to a folktale or legend.

- Know the key plot elements of "The Princess and the Donkey."

- Know the key plot elements from the Panchatantra selections.

What are the key narrative elements of Adams' legend of the Bell Witch?

What is a validating formula?

Formulaic aspects of legends that support the stories' truth values, (e.g. "I know the person this really happened to." Or, "I read this in the newspaper.")

What is localization?

The adaptation of folkloric narratives, customs, and material aspects of culture to a particular place.

What is a motif (vis-a-vis a tale-type)?

What are active and passive traditions bearers?

What is the cursed-rock tradition in Adams, TN?

if you take a rock from the bell-witch cave you will be haunted/ unlucky

What is the mirror summoning tradition in Adams, TN?

Saying "I hate the Bell Witch" multiple times in the mirror (like Bloody Mary)

What is legend tripping?

Customary trips to horrific, haunted, and/or supernatural sites made - especially - by adolescents as a rite-of-passage.

Why do we say that questioning whether a legend is true is a key component of performing

narratives?

•What is death, where do we go when we die?

•What is right and wrong?

•How do we value right and wrong?

•Where do we come from?

•How was the earth created?

•What is the cosmos?

•Who created the cosmos?

•Is anyone, anything in charge of the cosmos?

- What is a motif-index (vis-à-vis the Tale Type Index)?

Be familiar with William Bascom's definition of a myth.

to be a form of prose narrative, believed to be true by the members of the society whose culture holds the myth

Know the similarities and differences between the Deluge Myths told in North America, the

Middle East, India, and Australia (text of narrative posted to Canvas files)

Folklorists usually consider the narratives in the Book of Genesis to be a conglomerate, a mixture of narratives that represent an oral tradition of variant Myth narrative.

Understand the basic differences of theories for diffusion or polygenesis as explanations for the

similarities shared between flood myths told across cultures.

Know the narrative and core elements of the La Llorona legend.

How do La Llorona narratives represent and comment on social issues such as colonization,

gender, and ethnicity

Where do La Llorona legends appear in popular and elite culture?

Recognize that myths from all of our reading examples existed in oral circulation.

recognizes that myths from all of our reading examples involve fantastic and etiological

elements.

Be generally familiar with the narrative components of the assigned myth readings.

Be familiar the discussion of orality and literacy in the contexts of religion and myth (pp 10-

11)

Know the differences between 'myth/mythology/mythos/mythography' helpfully introduces

the term worldview, which entails "attitudes, aspirations, forms of interactions." (pp 11-12)

- Understand the 'Truthiness' chart:

Legends: plausible, possibly true

Tales: not true, fictional

Myths: symbolic truth, and, for some, literal truth (13)

- Understand the 'Timeliness' chart:

Legends: in the real, historical world

Tales: in a fictional world of no particular time ("once upon a time")

Myths: before or at the formation of the world, after or at the end of the world, or

posing eternal principles that infuse but also transcend human history

- Understand that a good way to think about ritual is as a collapse of quotidian and mythic

"time" into an experienceable present (p 16/17).