Folk text in dialogic mode: On the status of the language of folklore

Abstract

The status of the language of folklore is a theoretical problem of Folklore Studies that has a long history, but it has become even more relevant recently due to the expansion of the Folklore Studies research field. Traditionally, characteristic features of the language of folklore were defined in relation to dialect and literary language, and the researchers supposed that the language of folklore is supradialectical phenomenon, like the literary language of dialect speakers. However, observations of linguistic organization of oral prose with a focus on reliability (mythological stories, etc.) show that these theoretical approaches are not applicable to such texts. The language of these texts is the colloquial (dialect, vernacular, or literary) speech existing in a dialogic mode and possessing all the structural features of spontaneous colloquial speech. The article suggests to distinguish between “the language of folklore” and “the language of folk tradition”, that is, the language of the genres of traditional folklore (songs, epics, fairy tales, etc.) – structurally ordered, “polished” by numeroius repetitions in the process of transmission, with a clearly expressed aesthetic function, and the language of everyday communication in which texts expressing traditional knowledge emerge and exist.