Folklore Midterm Exam

Folklore

Informal, traditional culture

Ethnography

Writing about people

Anthropology

Study of humankind

Cultural Relativism

Looking at the culture based on its own values

Folklore Domains

Verbal

Customary

Material

Belief

Romantic Nationalism

True nation identity lies in shared culture, language, folklore

Unilinear theory of cultural evolution

All human societies and cultures move along a single evolutionary progression

Folk group

Any group of people who share at least one common factor and have some traditions they call their own

Culture

Shared knowledge, values, beliefs, and practices of a group of people

Conservatism

To not change

Dynatisim

To change

Transmission

How things are spread

Differential Identity Theory

A person’s folk group membership is not only defined by their shared similarities with other members, but efforts to differ from other groups

Groups

Social base if folklore it encompasses our wide reaching networks, our imagined, bounded communities, and how we negotiate the tensions between the two

Shibboleth

Symbolic means of distinguishing outsiders and insiders (code/custom/pronunciation)

Ethnocentrism

Ones group is superior to others’ and judging other based on their standards

Emic

Insider perspective based on local beliefs, terms, values, etc

Etic

Outsider perspective using external theories and frameworks

Key interlocutor

Well-connected gatekeeper of the culture

Star performer

Best individual in particular expressive form as decided by the folk group using emic standards

Tradition

The creation of the future out of the past; a set of practices created in the past that are purposefully maintained in the present

Genre

An orienting framework for the production and interpretation of discourse

Text

An object of interpretation; analyzable unit of folklore; not just written

Context

Frame of reference for texts

Narrative

Story; verbal or written account with a beginning, middle, and end

Folk Narrative

A story that is continually recreated rendered legible in the present, and negotiates the tensions between between the individual and the community

Myth

A sacred narrative:

-fact

-remote past

-different world

-sacred

-non-human

Legend

A mono-episodic narrative presented as miraculous, uncanny, or bizarre (most common):

-fact

-recent past

-world of today

-secular or sacred

-human

Folktale

Narrative told as fiction:

-fiction

-any time

-any place

-secular

-human or non-human

Localization

Relevant to local

Motif

Smallest element in an narrative having a power to persist

Tale-type

Recurring, self-sufficient plot or set of motifs

Personal Experience Narrative

A first person story about something that happened to the teller; unique in content, traditional in form/telling

Folk Music

Tunes sung with or without verbal texts or played on instruments in folkloric performance settings (informal jam session)

Ballad

A song that tells a story

Zipper song

Repeating chorus and blank spaces to add new words

Functional song

Word and tune match for a specific activity

Near song

Weak melody, agile use of words

Jokes

A form of stylized verbal, visual, or physical play, that is meant to be humorous within its performance frame

Intertexuality

The relationship between texts; how a texts meaning is shaped by referencing, evoking, or echoing other texts

Some jokes require other texts to understand the joke

Unlaughter

Requires the audience to have “gotten” the joke, but they chose or aren’t prompted to laugh at the joke

Narrative jokes

Typical short stories with a punchline at the end of the joke

Riddle jokes

Q+A format intended to make the audience guess of be surprised

Inside private jokes

Small group reference that reinforces group boundaries; outsider incomprehension is essential to the function

Two people = dyadic joke

Anti-joke

Form of joke that subverts the traditionally expected structure and punchline of a joke the punchline isn’t aligned with

The Joke cycle

A collection of jokes, usually shorter in length (typically riddles or one liners) that are circulated and told as a cohesive and open corpus

Proverbs

Concise, traditional, statement of apparent truths and applicable wisdom

True proverbs

Speaking to general truth/wisdom; complete sentences

Proverbial Phrases

Brief commentary on actions of current time; incomplete sentences

Proverbial comparisons

Direct comparison to something

Wellerism

A proverb appearing in a Tripolitania frame that undercuts or literizes the saying; ironic

Following format: quote, speaker, context

Riddle

Traditional question and answer puzzle that deliberately obscures its referent through metaphor or misdirection

Folk speech

Traditional short expressions that mark group identity through idiom: “leftover category”

Individual context

What you need to know about the individual in particular

Social context

The Who what when where why of the story; how it exists in the social setting

Cultural context

What’s happening around in the setting

Comparative Context

How this relates to other stories in similar places, etc

Customary Folklore

the things we do

activities performed with

such regularity that they are

considered expected

behavior or part of social

protocol

Folk Games

customary play in which

participants engage in

agreed-upon contestation or

conflict that is guided by

rules

agreed-upon, but subject

to negotiation!

often competitive, usually

some form of “winning”

Play

activity engaged in for

enjoyment or recreation rather

than for a serious or practical

purpose

How do anthropologists and folklorists

conceptualize folklore?

Four categories of folklore is verbal, customary, material, and beliefs in folk groups

In what ways does the history of the study of

folklore impact the way people popularly

understand it today? How does this history inform

how scholars understand folklore today?

The folk, historically, were viewed as the lower class, illiterate group of people. Now everyone is the folk in some way or form as everyone has traditions and groups they are apart of

How do we as ethnographers, both folkloristic and anthropological, understand “group?” How, for us, is it bounded?

Groups can be in communities, but are also in other sections of life like religion, interests, race, etc.. It is bounded by the imagined communities or the ins and outs of the group

How does this conception of group inform our understanding of folklore?

We can understand that there are positions in which certain folklore will make sense in the context of being in the group and will be perceived differently outside of the group.

What are the impacts of folklorists’ representations of folk groups?

Folklorists that search for the inside scoop on a group, get the emic perspective from key interlocutors or star performers, and some get the basic outside perspective of a folk group which can still be useful in looking at the large picture of society. However, it is still important to have an understanding of cultural relativism, which is looking at group from their perspective of norms

How do folklorists understand tradition, genre, and text?

Tradition is practices from the past that are still maintained by a group in the present.

Genre is how people act in certain scenarios

Text is anything that can be analyzed in folklore

What does it mean to say that traditions are

invented? What’s at stake, politically?

They are preservations of things; however, times change and that means some traditions must also change

How do individuals draw from and reproduce

traditions? How do they use text and genre to do so?

People are constantly shifting and carrying on the responsibility of traditions in which they are grounded in the genres using texts as things of the past and dynamic resources for communication.

What is folk narrative? How is it different from other forms of narrative?

Narrative that is rendered from sources for present context, it differs from other narratives because it applies to a specific appeal between the individual and the culture

Differences between myth, legend, and folktale

Myths are usually sacred and happen in another worldly context, like creation stories.

Legends are also perceived as real stories, but there is a certain level of uncanniness that creates the uncertainty in believing legends

Folktales are distant past and are typically all fiction with both human and animal characters—think talltales

What tools can we apply to collecting and

analyzing folk narratives?

When looking at folk narratives, you analyze in four ways: text, comparative, function, and performance. The contexts of analysis are cultural, social, individual, and comparative

How do everyday stories fit into the definition of folklore?

There are first person accounts, or more properly known as personal experience narrative that most stories contain different content but follow a similar model of telling.

What does folklore do in the world?

It entertains, shows artistic expression, teaches, validates societal rules, helps to escape from menial rules, allows for usually non-permissible acts, creates rules and structure for actions, and critiques societal control

How does attention to the structure of a story lend

insight into narrative analysis?

It can show the events in sequence and how the norms define the story with syntagmatic structure and cultural contradictions defining a story in paradigmatic structure

What are some functions of folk music?

They can drawl people together, they can communicate a certain cause, they can teach about the past, they can represent a cultural precedent, etc..

How does breaking down subcategories of folk

music and song help us see the various aspects of

music- and song-making in everyday life?

It shows that not only is there songs for so many scenarios, but that it has also become tradition in some groups to create these functional tunes to go about daily life in synchrony.

How do jokes and structured forms of humor fit

into our conception of folklore?

While there is a formulated structure and usual punchline, the content of most jokes shift and change over time as well as format to match the context and moment

Why are jokes funny?

There is a sense of appropriate incongruity that adds both shock and understanding of a joke to create a reaction from the recieving end of the joke

What are the functions of jokes?

Blatant form of shared values and fears communicated in groups through humor

How do proverbs change meaning despite remaining the same?

Because they are based in truths, they can be said in different contexts and still remain a general relativity to the subject

Why do we tell riddles?

To show off some form of intellectual knowledge of the answer to the Q+A and to test the answerer

How do we conceive of folk speech today?

Kitchen sink, or left overs of short expressions that mark group identity through idiom

What are the categories we can use to organize

and analyze customary folklore?

1. Calendar / seasonal

2. Rites of passage / life cycle

3. Contingency / occasional customs

4. Occupational / organizational

How do we study folk games, and for what purpose?

They show how people express themselves and puts reality and society into a different perspective. They can be studied by looking at how the rules vary each time they’re played and how the players or spectators perform.

How is play a serious subject?

Deep play is serious because involves high risk