The anthropological turn in folklore studies: A look at the classification of oral prose in the light of a new paradigm

Abstract

The article deals with the problem of genre classification of oral reliable prose in connection with the change in theoretical attitudes in modern folklore studies. The new anthropological paradigm has led to an expansion of the subject field of folklore, so that the methods of this science began to be used to study not only traditional folklore genres, but also speech genres of everyday communication of tradition carriers (autobiographical narratives, descriptions of ritual practices, motivation of ritual actions, etc.), in fact, all verbal forms of tradition. At the same time, the texts are described through the use of a scientific terminology that was formed within the framework of the previous theoretical paradigm, one involving a different idea of the folklore text and of the boundaries of the concept of “folklore” and that was aimed at a different type texts. This leads to contradictions and overlaps, as may be is observed, in particular, in the terminology related to oral prose with modality of reliability. To solve the problem of consistent classification, it is proposed to use the parameter of the communicative situation - canonical (as in colloquial speech) and non-canonical - as a criterion for differentiating texts, and further genre division and description should be carried out within each group.