Customary Folklore

Children’s Folklore

The traditional culture performed by young people younger than adults and adolescents, the ages of which vary by culture.

Folk Belief

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

Apotropaic

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

Folk Game

Traditional action sequences defined by working within a set of unofficial rules to achieve cooperation or competitive goal.

Official Rules

Published and widely available

Enforced by members of the institution

Changes are enacted by institutional authorities

Characteristics of Folk Games

• Rules are negotiated by players before and during play

• Boundaries determined at time of play

• Lots of arguments

• Often incorporate prefabricated materials ie cards or balls

Occupational Folklore

The informal expressive culture that develops among and adheres to a folk group of coworkers.

• Narrative, Training, Subversion of Authority, Nicknames, Folk Beliefs, Folk Speech, Legends and Games

Cultural Scene

A recurrent social situation in which two or more people share some aspect of their cultural knowledge or folklore.

• Based on the communication of experiential knowledge

Canon of Work Technique

The body of informal knowledge used to get the job done

• Establishes a hierarchy based on skill

Folk Speech

The distinctive manner of speaking developed within and used by a folk group.

Ritual

Repeated, recurrent symbolic enactments intended to complete a task and carried out with reference to something sacred or an overarching institution or principle.

Sacred

Set apart from everyday life, considered inviolable and worthy of reverence.

Rites of Passage

A set of symbolic enactments that marks the transition from one social status to another and eases the tensions of that transition.

Symbolic

Representing another phenomenon - symbolism is about meaning: what you see means something other than itself.

Liminality

The condition of being in transition between two well-defined states.

Aesthetic

A senses of what is beautiful

A pattern of things that are considered beautiful or appropriate in art and life observable in the taste of an individual or folk group.

Bloody Mary

A custom traditionally performed by pre-teenage girls in which a supernatural woman is summoned by chanting in a darkened room; the ghost is said to harm the summoner in some way.

Ostension

The enactment of a narrative tradition: “presentation rather than representation”.

• Different than drama, which is acknowledged as fiction by performance and audience

• ex. Wether Bloody Mary counts as a game or a ritual

Interpretation

An explanation of the meaning or functional of a subject of study

• Often made with the aid of a theory

Quasi-Ostension

Interpretation of evidence as if the evidence as if part of a narrative tradition.

Theory

A framework or perspective that facilitates a specific kind of interpretation of a subject under study. It can be an explanation of why something happens the way it does or a description of meaning.

Psychoanalytic Theory of Culture

Culture can best be understood as an expression of the unconscious. Because customs stem from the unconscious, they operate symbolically. Culture - including folklore - can thus be interpreted by studying, for example, sexual symbolism and defence mechanism.

Festival

An organized series of community events expressing traditions meaningful to that community and set at a time and place transformed so as to be outside everyday activities.

Vernacular Religion

The totality of a group’s or individual’s understanding, practice, and experience of religion.