The article raises the problem of the speech-genre status of remarks, by which the narrator accompanies his or her narration. The question of the boundaries of these elements and their relations with the folklore text (fairy tale and non-fairy tale prose), on the basis of which they arise and exist, is investigated. The principal differences between commentary in a fairy tale and in a mythological story and the reasons for these differences are revealed. It is established that the key parameter distinguishing the text of folktale narrative and commentary is the image of the author, as the change of the status of the subject of speech changes the genre. It is also important that each type of subject is correlated with a certain chronotope corresponding to it as a constitutive feature of the subject of speech.

The problem of the relationship of the narrator’s remarks with the narrative text is discussed using the methodology of speech genre theory. It is proposed to consider the narrator’s commentary as an element (microgenre) of the macro-genre “interview/conversation”, breaking through into the folklore text (secondary genre). The speech deictic mode inherent to colloquial speech and, accordingly, to the macrogenre “conversation” manifests itself in the narrator’s remarks, which immediately marks the speaker’s “exit” from the fairy-tale text into a real communicative situation, whereas in the case of mythological stories it is imperceptible due to the similarity of the modality and deixis of these texts with the speech substratum.

The paper discusses stereotypic formulas, which represent a commentary on someone else’s use of language. The mentioned formulas are constructed according to the model that places a quote from someone else’s speech in a context that seems to be more suitable for it and, thus, signaling the irrelevance of the words chosen by an interlocutor. Usually these contexts are profane, and sometimes imply the use of obscene vocabulary. Such formulas are reproduced as a reaction to violation, firstly, of general speech norms, as a speaker understands them, and secondly, of group (professional) speech conventions. They are used particularly in such hierarchical communities, as family, school and other educational institutions, army and professional groups. The author suggests a classification of the ways of constructing these metalinguistic formulas, which are often based on wordplay with ambiguity (homonymy, polysemy, homography, synonymy and homoformy are involved) and classifies types of lexical units which are reflected (action designation, object designation, group designation and stereotype formulas). In particular, such functions of the considered formulas as the building of hierarchical relations between the speaker and the interlocutor, socializing, “dueling” and mnemonic are highlighted. The paper also demonstrates influence on the mentioned speech practice of the culture of speech, as well as certain mechanisms of naive metalinguistic consciousness.

Reports about the “Bigfoot” are very heterogeneous. There are some authentic records of oral narratives but more often they come secondhand, when the words of tradition keepers are retold by the outsiders. Moreover, sometimes these words are initially shaped in the foreign language, which is not native to the informant. The texts of this kind typically indicate the source of the narrator’s information: whether he witnessed the event, or transmitted his message from hearsay (heard it from a direct witness, or another “reteller”, etc.). The presence of such “verifying comments” gives grounds to speak of evidentiality as a special narrative category in the traditions of “mythological prose”.

“Credibility of messages” is ensured by several rhetorical methods: by describing recent events as maximally obvious, or, alternatively, by relying on long-standing information, which is presented as time-tested and firmly established. Sometimes it is a “personal testimony” of the narrator or, on the contrary, the authorship is transferred to another, while narrator asserting oneself only in the role of a relay. It can be also done either by referring to rumor, to the general perceptions of local residents, or to a specific “authoritative source”.

The authoritative status of the source is guaranteed by kinship/ acquaintance with the original narrator, by his belonging to the group of socially, culturally, religiously significant persons – for instance, to the militaries who have a wider experience of the outside world, or to the intellectuals (in a broad sense) who are seen as reliable carriers of “positive knowledge”. In some cases, the source can be a “personal history”, a specific case, or the event itself, described without reliance on someone else’s words. More often the information recorded by the “external observer” is transmitted not by participants/witnesses of the event, but by anonymous or group “retranslators”, whose presence lengthens the chain of information to three or even four links.

The very position of the “external observer”, usually the author of the “final” text, is quite mobile: he can be a native of a given local tradition, a foreign expert on a given region, or (most often) an inquisitive dilettante, fascinated by the search for Bigfoot.

In fact, verbal charms represent two different genres and bodies of texts, one of which functions in the oral, folklore tradition, and the other in the “grassroots” handwritten tradition. Accordingly, researchers and publishers of verbal charms are quite clearly divided into two groups: oral verbal charms are mostly dealt with by folklorists, and handwritten verbal charms are dealt with by historians, literary scholars and archaeographers. If the former find their sources in folklore expeditions and in archives that store records of similar expeditions of past years, then the latter study in archives mostly with materials from the 17th – 19th centuries.

Verbal charms, on the one hand, include a number of varieties (ritual formulers, apotropaic, verbal charms-prayers, etc.), and on the other hand, texts of other genres are recorded in some manuscripts with them. In this regard, the commentator is faced with the task of identifying the genre nature of the text, which may relate to one of the types of verbal charms or even relate not to the verbal charms themselves, but, for example, to apocryphal prayers.

The commentator deals, on the one hand, with individual verbal charms, and on the other, with those hypertext structures in which these verbal charms are included. In the case of oral spells, these are, firstly, other spells that are included in the repertoire of a given performer or local tradition, and secondly, the ritual setting in which the spell is performed. In the case of handwritten verbal charms, the commentator considers the text as part of a specific manuscript and in the context of the available information about its origin and content.

One of the challenges facing spell researchers and publishers is to develop a certain standard of scholarly publications that would meet academic requirements in the field of textual criticism and source criticism. To implement the tasks facing publishers of magical folklore extracted from manuscripts of the early modern period, it is necessary to train specialists who could competently engage in field, archaeographic, and publishing work.

The article discusses the problem of emic (“inner”) commentary on folklore texts as a text-producing strategy that continues and transforms the plot. In the materials of folklore and post-folklore, the author considers how emic commentary “works” in the case of mythological prose. For comparison, we take the oral tradition of Russian Old Believers of the Perm region and a particular segment of the internet lore – publications in communities specializing in “mystical stories”. The substantive commentary on belief narratives in both cases represents a new text – a narrative (a bylichka), a non-narrative explanation (a pover’e), or an instruction (how one should/should not act). A story agon usually occurs if a belief narrative is offered in response. In the oral tradition, such agons may cycle around mythological characters, motifs, actual loci and persons. In the case of internet lore, cyclization around characters, motifs, or the general theme of “mystical accident” is possible. At the same time, comments on belief narratives on the Internet exhibit greater diversity compared to those in the oral tradition. In addition to the common types of comments – belief narrative, non-narrative explanation, instruction, clarifying question, and emotional response – in internet lore, one can find doubts about the authenticity of the story, criticism of it, and evaluation of the performance.