From the semiotic point of view, folklore tradition is transmitting culturally and socially significant messages via oral communication channels. Strong interrelation to dynamic interaction of people in vernacular contexts (as opposed to rigid institutional channels and static social structures) is one of folklore’s primary characteristics. With this perception of folklore tradition, folklore studies become a disciplinary area that accumulates unique research experience both on comprehension of transmitted messages and on methodological principles of working with texts and mechanisms of their transmission. This allows us to suggest that in research practice in neighboring fields two variants of transference of folklore studies’ theoretical resources may prove productive: according to presence of folklore elements in the studied material and according to general principles of working with texts (in the broad semiotic sense of the word).

The participants of the forum, all of them researchers with extensive experience in field work as well as in theoretical comprehension of oral tradition – were offered various problems for discussion. These problems included, but were not limited to, the boundaries of folklore studies’ object field, employing folklore studies’ methodological tools for analysis of other disciplinary fields’ objects, interaction of folklore studies with other academic disciplines, etc.

The article analyses the application of dialectological methods in studies of Slavic mythological system, as exemplified by the parallels between Polesie, the Carpathians and the Balkans. Possibility of implementing dialectology in the field of folklore studies is connected to the concept of ethnocultural area – a set of features, characteristic for a tradition, that are common in a certain area and stable geography-wise. The article considers dialectal distribution in Polesie of the following four motives: 1) «a snake that no one has seen acquires mythological features»; 2) a dead man becomes “walking dead”, if an animal has jumped over the body; 3) to keep the dead man from “walking” someone tells him nonsense; 4) a man turns into a werewolf, if his parents violated any prohibitions. Mapping of these motifs on the territory of Polesie demonstrates that their distribution is noted exclusively in central Polesie and, partially, in western Polesie. The density of these motives in the Polesie region is small, while in the Carpathian region they are represented widely. The presented material demonstrates the links between these regions. The mapping method allows us to understand the formation of Polesie mythological system and to solve the problem of diachronic description of the East Slavic tradition.

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.

Firs-person narratives involve constructing of self, conceptualization of reality, analysis of one’s personal experience, and moral implications. Folkloristic methods help discover all these implications by underlining textual parallels, speech genres, formulas, motifs, etc. The article explores the mechanisms that help to form the image of Aesopian language in interviews with urban dwellers of different generations. Each interview corresponds to reality in a complex and indirect way. For instance, the article gives examples of anecdotes and anecdote-like stories, comical and didactic stories about communicative gaps, and formulas, such as “Sofia Vlasievna, the name for Soviet regime”, used in interviews, but also in press and literature. Basing on the material of interviews, we can explore not so much the practices of Aesopian language in late Soviet time, but the complex of motifs that form the image of this phenomena. It is important for the worldview of both those who lived in late Soviet times and the younger generation – those who were children at that time.

This paper dwells upon the fall of the demons from heaven in Russian iconography. It covers the key concepts concerning the origin of the demons transmitted in medieval Russian booklore and their visualization in icons, fresco paintings and miniature paintings. The most important visual themes reflecting the idea of the angels’ transformation into demons as an outcome of a battle in heaven are as follows: a defeat from the heavenly host / Archangel Michael, falling into a river of fire, falling down to the Earth, etc. Russian iconography of the Final Judgement, finally emerging by the second half of the 15th century, came to be the visual compilation of these motifs. In Judgement scenes, demons are playing a wide spectrum of roles: losing the battle in heavens and falling down to the Earth in the beginning of times, fighting for human souls (waiting for the souls at the stations of ordeal, adding scrolls of a soul’s sins to the scale of righteousness, pursuing the angels that carry saved souls away and pushing the condemned into the hellfire), tormenting the sinners in various segments of hell and, finally, being themselves the eternal prisoners of the pit of hell. In the 17th century all these motifs, including that of the angels’ fall from heaven, will be elaborated upon in illuminated collections.

Digital media have shown to alter how people deal with and plan time in everyday life. Quantitative research on the subject is scarce. In this paper, I address this by providing a survey design to measure temporal change in two cultural contexts, namely the German and Chinese one as they were previously two different temporal cultures which are now assumed to homogenize. Drawing upon a theory of habitualization, the theory of the social construction of reality and triadic causes I sketch how digital temporal change can be tackled through a bilingual questionnaire, i.e., German, and Simplified Mandarin, presented here in English. Internet-mediated communication is measured alongside personal factors, social and situative influences as independent variables. Temporal understanding as the dependent variable is a nine-dimensional construct, consisting of emic German and Chinese time notions.