Verbal Folklore

Fieldwork

Process of finding and collecting folklore as it is performed.

Performance

The assumption of responsibility for a demonstration of communicative competence in front of an audience.

Context

The environment in which folklore is performed.

Components of Context

• Physical

• Social

• Economic

• Psychological

• Traditional

Types of Context

• Natural

• Induced

• Induced Natural

Natural Context

Determined by the performers

Induced Context

Determined by the collectors.

Induced Natural Context

The collector’s attempt to reproduce the natural context.

Variation

Differences that occur between folkloric practices because of the need for new creative acts.

Informal

No required to meet a set of expectations regarding decorum. Not set in stone. Not controlled by an institution.

Folkloric

Like or related to folklore.

Folkloristic

Like or related to the study of folklore.

Native Category

A label or class devised by the performers. AKA emic.

Academic Category

A label or class devised by outsiders, collectors.

Fine Art

Not folklore.

Has an original from which copies draw authenticity.

Descriptive

A category formulated by looking large number of members or potential members of a class and arriving at a set of criteria that categorize that category.

Prescriptive

A category formulated by starting with a general premise and eliminating those members that don’t fit the preconceived definition.

Folktale

A fictional, prose narrative transmitted in oral tradition.

Fairy Tale

A fictional narrative based on or resembling a folktale structure, theme or character.

Motif

Recurring structural element of a narrative that persists in tradition and is distributed across international boundaries.

Tale Type

Recurring set of motifs that constitutes a developed and self sufficient plot.

Legend

A narrative or kernel of a narrative set in recent past, the truth of which is subject to debate.

Myth

A sacred narrative set in primordial past featuring gods and monsters that recounts the origin of the cosmos and humanity’s place in it.

Mythology

The entire body of myths told by a group of people.

Folk Belief

Conscious or unconscious assumptions related to cause and effect held informally by members of a folk group.

Atroipaic

A behaviour or object thought to deter bad luck and evil.

Aesthetic

A sense of what is beautiful, taste.

Folk Music

Songs originating and perpetuated in oral tradition that are performed a capella or with acoustic instruments, generally reflecting a rural or local way of life.

Joke

An intentionally humorous statement consisting of a set-up that creates an expectation in the audience’s mind and a punchline that undermines that expectation in an appropriately incongruous way.

Appropriate Incongruity

The perception of a relationship between categories ghat would ordinarily be regarded as unrelated.

Street Jokes

Intentionally humorous statements, circulating informally, that has no known origin.

Esoteric

An adjective describing knowledge and performances meant only for members of a specific folk group.

Function

The job accomplished by or consequence of the performance of folklore.

• Intentionally or unconsciously

Denotation

The explicit and literal meaning of a word - what you would find in a dictionary.

Connotation

The set of associations, feelings and implications evoked by a word or text that goes beyond its denotation.

• Determined by personal experience

Essential Properties

Those aspects of a class/definition that are necessary for you to consider as a member of that category

Accidental Properties

Those aspects of a class/ definition that are possibly present but could be absent without reclassifying it.

Lullaby

A song performed to help someone fall asleep.

Allusion

A short, indirect reference to another work.

Adaptation

The process of translating a work of art from one medium to another.

Incorporation

A retelling of a traditional story that features a protagonist or other character s or other characters from a current story.

Invention

A pastiche narrative that employs a fictional genre in characters from another genre are aware that they are dealing with elements of the fictional genre.

Performance Representation

The depictions of characters in the act of performing oral tradition.

Vernacular Web

Internet sites produced by local groups or individuals who are operating outside institutional control but employ institutional forces to create discourse that is participatory and commonly accessible.

Meme

Group of digital items sharing common characteristics of content, form, and/or stance, which were created with awareness of each other and were imitated and/or transformed.

• Non standardized tradition with variation therefore folklore

Stance

Information memes convey about their own communication , or how the sender/creator positions themselves in relation to the communication itself and its receiver.

Snowclone

A verbal sequence that serves as a phrasal template in which some words of a phrase are replaced by different words during memetic transmission.

Folk Ideas

Traditional notions that a group of people have about he nature of humanity, the world, and of human life in the world.

The Mandela Effect

The realization that one’s memory does not match documented history and that others share that same alternate memory.

The attribution of memory slippage to an external force other than the human brain- often to the collision of multiple realities.

Twin Laws

Any new performance is always conserved. If always conservative it must always be innovative.

Revenant

Anything that comes back from the dead

Analysis

An investigation into and report on the basic elements of a subject of study