What's Folklore?

DEFINITION What's Folklore? Robert M. Rennick I'd like to correct what I feel are certain antiquated impressions about the nature of folklore that are still commonly held by people outside this discipline. First, who and what are the folk? There are different ways of identifying and describing the folk. It used to be widely accepted that the folk, or rather a folk group, were the residents of a particular place, usually rural and characterized by a common cultural heritage and set of traditions, languages, values, beliefs and a common identity as a people set apart from any others. They were also characterized as an essentially sacred people—meaning tradition-bound and resistant to change, in direct contrast to urban or secular people who valued change, often for its own sake. A similar dichotomy referred to the means by which these two kinds of people acquired their knowledge of the world about them or their patterns of appropriate behavior in various situations. The folk were usually non-literate people who learned everything they needed to know to survive in their small, relatively self-contained environment by direct observation or imitation or through oral transmission from other people. The non-folk, on the other hand, derived their knowledge from indirect sources, notably the written or printed word or, more recently, through the mass media and the Internet. That's the old way of characterizing the folk. Now, however, most folklorists have come to think of the folk largely in terms of the lore created by them. Apeople are a folk to the extent that at least a part of their knowledge and behavior are derived through oral transmission or by imitation, direct observation, or experience. And that would include people in even the most highly civilized societies, such as ours, where traditional and literate learning are combined in the life of each person. Now folklore can be regarded, collectively, as a body of customs, habits, sayings, beliefs, songs, narratives, dances and other products of popular expression that have in common the fact that they are circulated orally or by demonstration. Or, to put it another way: folklore is the oral or customary traditions of a people—everything 36 that a people may learn, reflecting the values, experiences, conditions, or beliefs of some tradition. But even more than the products of popular expression that I just listed, folklore involves the actual process of creating and producing these products—the behaviors of composing and singing a song, making up and telling a story, designing and constructing an artifact, dancing and so on. The latest fashion of folklorists has been to include among the folk any particular grouping of persons having something in common. Social categories like peer groups or patterned contact groupings of any kind may reveal the qualities of the folk I've already mentioned. They don't have to be characterized as highly cohesive or homogenous entities (i.e. with a common background). The identity of some folk groups may exist in the relationship itself, more specifically in the performance of a particular activity which is the reason for the group's existence in the first place. We call this a contact group, and the basis of it is the process of interaction; it's this which the group's members have in common, rather than a similar cultural background. The folklore of the contact group would emerge only from the purpose and nature of the contact. Examples of this are the give and take of students and teachers in the classroom, the traditional repartee ofbartenders and their customers, taxi drivers and their fares, and such exchanges as the banter of persons when they answer the telephone: "It's your quarter," or "Blanding Hall—Who in the hall do you want?" We say these exchanges are patterned; there are certain standard things that are said and done here. They're repetitive or customary at least with reference to the roles, if not the particular individuals who are playing them. In short, folklorists are getting away from the idea that the folk and their lore are to be found only in so-called tradition-based communities or self-contained and homogenous...