Nils-Arvid Bringéus was born on 29 March 1926 in Örkelljunga, in the northern part of the province of Skåne in Sweden. After a long and active life in ethnology and folkloristics, he died on 21 April ...2023 at the age of 97. This article focuses on the significance of his work as a researcher in folkloristics, more specifically referring to his investigations into customs, beliefs, legends and tales.
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.
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