In recent decades, the focus of Folklore Studies has shifted from analysing the products of oral traditions as texts to examining the ways in which people use and produce these items, and the areas ...of study have broadened to include vernacular cultures and genres in diverse verbal and material forms. As evident from the introduction and twelve chapters of this collection, these interests are today shared by several disciplines that cooperate in the area of cultural studies. This book provides insights into current questions about the “nature” of words: it discusses both the inherent essence of vernacular expression and how that essence is tied to various genre-ecological, performative, and material environments. The chapters include studies on the poetics, form, function, performance, and composition of traditional and new vernacular forms, including explorations of hybridity, materiality, and change, as well as critical examinations of archival practices and publication processes.
Storytelling is a culturally universal phenomenon deeply intertwined with human language communication and social cognition. This paper explores the cultural evolution of stories from two ...perspectives: (1) their adaptive function for humans and (2) the cognitive and environmental constraints for humans transmitting and consuming stories. Drawing on empirical studies, the paper discusses how stories encapsulate valuable knowledge that aids adaptation to social and natural environments. Then, the interplay between the cognitive basis and the adaptive function of stories is discussed, especially focusing on their role in facilitating language communication. Finally, we present a hypothesis that stories have made it possible to transmit information more efficiently, and that the existence of these stories may have influenced the way humans are. We emphasize the importance of interdisciplinary research to test this hypothesis.
The study aims to present certain methodological approaches used in the research of dialect narratives. In the introductory part of the article, the author discusses the links between the related ...sciences, analysing oral text: traditional dialectology, oral history and ethnolinguistics. The concept of cultureme as the unit describing realia, deeply entrenched in a certain type of culture, composing a certain identity of an ethnic group, is also introduced. The notion of a cultureme is very close to the notions of a keyword, described by Anna Wierzbicka, and a stereotype or concept, described by the ethnolinguistic school of Lublin. The difference, however, is that that the description of concepts is aimed at reflecting the folk or nationwide worldview and human view, while culturemes are used to identify a specific community, show the specificity of a certain region and its values. The example of the description of one cultureme (the manor) is used to provide the complicated structure of dialect narrative, its stylistic values, types of a narrator, and subjective way of perceiving and assessing the reality.
This article explores various dimensions of the memory-folklore nexus to contribute to interdisciplinary dialogues between folkloristics and memory studies by drawing on a shared paradigm; examining ...the historical, theoretical, and methodological intersections; and mapping out overlapping approaches in each area. It thus establishes and introduces the concept and approach of folkloric memory to provide broader perspectives on common issues such as referential, migratory, transmedial, mimetic, aesthetic, schematic, and procreative aspects of collective and cultural narratives. The article ultimately aims to review the correlation between memory and folklore, delve into previously unexplored aspects of this connection, develop an interdisciplinary approach, and establish a groundwork for future research.
Birds are present in everyday life, in forests, parks, cities, in fields and on playgrounds, by rivers and at entrances to stores, etc. Their ubiquity in human everyday life all through history leads ...to “birds” developing metaphorical meanings and producing powerful stereotypical images, which also motivate wider conceptual meanings. This article focuses on the lexeme ptica “bird” in Slovenian short folklore forms, its stereotypical representation and its metaphorical meanings. The ethnolinguistic approach will provide insight into the characteristics ascribed to birds as well as personifications and metaphorical transfers in short folklore forms, i.e., it will show what the bird symbolizes.
Ptice su prisutne u našoj svakodnevici: u šumama, parkovima, gradovima, poljima i igralištima, uz rijeku, na ulazu u trgovinu itd. Budući da su kroz povijest ptice bile sveprisutne u svakodnevnom životu ljudi, jasno je da će “ptice” imati metaforička značenja kao i izrazite stereotipne predodžbe, koje će motivirati i šira konceptualna značenja.Ovaj se članak bavi leksemom “ptica” u slovenskim jednostavnim usmenoknjiževnim oblicima, stereotipnim prikazom ptica kao i metaforičkim značenjima. Etnolingvistički pristup pružit će uvid u karakteristike koje se pripisuju pticama kao i u personifikacije i metaforički prijenos koji se javlja u jednostavnim oblicima, odnosno pokazat će što sve ptica simbolizira.
In his study the author observes how several Czech and Slovak musicologists since 1950s paid attention to this distinct phenomenon in Janáček's music, i.e. modality. These are represented maily by ...Jiří Vysloužil at the prominent Janáček congress in Brno in 1958 and subsequently in the article published by Hudební rozhledy "Modální struktury u Janáčka" (Janáček's Modal Structures), later by Jaroslav Volek and his significant studies "Modalita a flexibilní diatonika u Janáčka a Bartóka" (Modality and Flexible Diatonicism in the Music by Janáček and Bartók) and "Modalita a její formy z hlediska hudební teorie" (Modality and its Forms in the Perspective of Music Theory). Volek was followed by further authors considering modality from the point of view of music theory (Risinger, Smolka, Tichý) and studying modality in the works by Leoš Janáček; also two speakers from abroad should be mentioned: C. L. Firca from Romania and Z. Helman from Poland. Then there are mainly Czech authors who refer to these problems at Janáček congresses in Brno in 1968, 1974, 1978 and then 1988 (that particular year was dedicated to the problems of modality). Also the contribution by Jan Trojan must not be forgotten. He specialized in tonality and harmony in Moravian folksong, i.e. phenomena that Janáček himself studied in his folkloristic treatises and that influenced so strongly his music thinking which tends to be more horizontal, melodic (this relates to the use of modal terrains that resist the hierarchization of individual degrees of the scale). Problems of Janáček's modality were also often discussed at the Ostrava conferences Janáčkiana. It was here that Jaroslav Volek, for instance, presented for the first time his new concept of modality as early as 1978, 1979 and 1981. In the first decades of the 21st century in Ostrava there followed further papers on Janáček's modality, e.g. those by Leoš Faltus (2008), Roman Dykast, Markéta Štefková, Juraj Ruttkay (2010) and Zuzana Martináková (2016).
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