Heda Jason

Texture, Text, and Context of the Folklore Text vs. Indexing

O f alt possible aspects of ordering and classifying oral and folk literaiure, I
have chosen to discuss here the relations betvveen indexing and the investi*
gadon of context(s). In recent decades, in folkloric parlance, context" has
bcen narrowed down to performance, i.e., to the most immediate and
simple social and theatricai aspects that are most readily and easilv observable and describable (Dundes 1964; Fine 1984). However, there are other
kinds of contcxt that are much morc important for thc shaping o f works of
oral and folk literature, for their significance in society, and for their
significance for individuals. The invesdgadon of these olher contcxts can
sub$tandally benefit from putung thc tcxts into some kind of ordcr, and
many quesuons can be answered only on the basis o f a body of well*ordered
texts. By anatyzing works in terms o f moufs, cpisodcs, typcs, and genres and
their texture in terms of formulae and figures o f speech and by ordering
these into meaningful groups and semandc fields, the invesugator prepares
the material for many and variegated quesuons. A series of contexts for
work$ of orai and folk literature will be briefly sketched and their reladons lo
ordering on various levels oudined.
1) Language. The dialect(s) used by a perform er/author (or group of
performers) to perform/compose the works forms its linguisdc context.
The invesdgauon of the language and of its dialects is the domain of
linguisdcs proper and not of folklorisucs, but the results of linguisdc invesugadon have to be considered as a basis from which the folklorist's invesugauon begins. The semandc aspcct of the vocabulary and the ordering o f the
vocabulary into semanuc fields are of paramount importance when cultural
and social signiflcance, meanings, and funcdons arc invcsugaied.
2) Sound. Any vocat pcrformance carries somc musical component, evcn if
not sung. (We are not concemed here with instrumental music but with the
musical component o f a performed text.) The aspect of sound also relates
to the wording of a recited work (i.e., a work not sung, be it couched in prose
or verse) insofar as intonadon may determine meanings in the text. Sentcncc structure and melody are closely connected and shape the prosody of
a work (see below, secdon 4.1).
Journal o f Folklort R tuarth. Vol. S4. No. S. 1997
Copyright C 1997 by ihe FolkJore Im titute. Indiana Umvenlty

222

Ilea Jason

While ihe musica! component of sung texts has received much scholarly
attention, very litUe research has been done on the sound component of
recited texts. The musical culture of the society forms the sound context for
both sung and recited works o f oral literaturc. Investigation of this musical
culturc is the responsibi!ity of musicologists (ethnomusicoiogists), and the
investigator of oral literature will build on thc results received from the
musicologist (classiftcations and othenvise).
3) Kinetics. Any work performed in view of an audience indudcs a kinetic
component which is the third aspect of the oral teKt, after the wording and
sound components. Movement i$ the subject of a special field of inquiry;
$ystematic descriptions and classification schemes for movement in a culture have not been made as yet (comparable to descriptions of music, for
example). Such descriptions and schcmes would help put the performance
into its contcxt.
4) Literary-artistic qualitie$. The two basic levels of the work are the texts
texture organized by the prosody and the content organized into logical
forms and content patterns.
4.1) Texture. The metric organization of the works wording into verscs,
alliteration, and rhymes; its formulae; and thc figurative language of poetic
images used have bcen much investigated. Both organizc the contcxt for
handv use by the performer-improvisor.
No index of formulae has been made to date (of any ethnopoetic genre),
and no invcstigation has come to the authors attcntion that would scarch
for those parts of thc content that are organized into formulac (semantic
fields). Both kinds o f investigations would put the individua! formula into
the wider context of its literature and culture. Recently the first index of
similcs has been compiled with thc prospect o f organizing the two parts of
similcs into scmantic fields and thus has put the individual simile into its
literary and cultural context (Selivanov 1990, done for Russian epics and
ballads; it is a pity that texts from several genres have been mixed and thus
the picture is not clear).
4.2) Content. Contem has been most elaborately investigated and ordered.
A. Aarnc (1910) bascd his typc$ for narrative and qua$i-narrativc genres on
content, while Wienert (1925) based his Sinntypen for parables on the idea
that the content expre$ses. For the non-narrative genre of proverbs,
Permjakov has established a scheme of logical types based on the logicat
form of thc argument in the proverb (see Permjakov 1968 and Kapits
1983).
All threea content type, a Sinntypc, and a logico-thematical typebring
a singlc text into the immediate litcrary context o f its variants (a serics of
variants forming a primary Iiterary context) and into the wider contexts of
its genre (or sub-genre) and o f the rcpertoirc o f thc rcspcctivc social unit
(see below, point 7).

T exture, T f.xt, and C ontext of the Folklore T ext vs. Indexing

223

The scheme of types for a genre orders the genre$ pool of contems for
various purposes. It should be kept >n mind that the meanings and
significances of works of oral and folk literature are encoded in their
content (and not in their form!). Among thc uses of an index is thc
systematic investigation o f the development in history of a culiure-society's
oral and folk literature. This is achievcd on thc basis o f a series o f descriptions of $ynchronic cross<uts of a genres repertoire in a culture*society (or
of the societys whole repertoiresee be!ow, point 6). Diverse cultures can
be systematically compared, mutual relations of oral and written traditions
and of high" and folk" literatures in a spedfic culture can be systematically
investigatcd, and so on (the emphasis hcre being on "systematically").
Investigation of mcanings has to be bascd on exact and systematic data
about content, and this data can be obtained only from well-made indices
focused on various levels: poetic images, formulae, motifs, episodes, content
types, idea-types, logical forms, genres, etc.
5) LiUrary~historical eonttxts. The whole literary repertoire, past and present,
of a culture, its whole oral and written tradition, its whole folk and high,
religious and secular literature, etc., form the most important contcxt for
the oral and folk literature of a given $ociety at a given moment in hi$tory.
Let us add that, of course, neighboring cultures (in space and time) also
form an important context. Without orderly indiccs of all levels of significancc, no systematic invcstigations of the rclations of a givcn body of
litcrature to its literary context are possiblc (investigaiions such as historical
development of literaturc, mutual influences, contacts in space and time,
Tife" of a theme, etc.).
6) Cultural conUxts. In addition to literature (and language, sound, and
movement of which oral literature is composed), culturc consists of many
more elements. All of these form contexts to literature, be it oral or written,
"folk" or high. Among these are, in order of importance for litcraturc,
bclicfs (of the official religion and otherwise), knowledge of all sorts (scientiflc/tcchnical, philosophical), and ideologies; visual arts, music, and dance;
and material culture. The relations of literature to all these as they havc
cxisted in the past and do exist in the investigated present should bc
handled in the motif index, which organizes thc content of literary work$
into scmantic fields and puts thcsc at thc disposal of thc invcstigator.
7) Soeial and psyehologicat conUxts.
7.1) Tht performer. Thc work livcs in the consciousncss of thc performcr as
an individual (a psychological aspect) and as a memt>er ofsocial groupings
on various lcvcls of complexity (a sociological aspect). Most of thesc groupngs form the audience." All pcrformers of a village or a district can bc said
to form a group, with common characteristics. Some genres are performed
in a sitting by a single individual performer; other genres in the same $ociety

224

Heda Jasort

may be performed as a production of a group of people (each piaying a

differeni pari in the production).
7.2) The audience. The audience of a performer in a single performance
may be thc fellow villagers/tribesmen of the performer, or a chance group
of people for an itinerant performer-visitor. The audience may also be
permanent, i.e., the performers villagers/tribesmen who are largely con*
stant throughout life. The oral artist's performance is socially meaningful
only in the framework of the audience. The audience-community i$ again
divisible into age, sex, professional, and class groupings; each of these can at
times function as a closed audiencc for certain groups of works. Thesc two,
the performcr(s) and the audience, are primary social actors who can bc
readily and empirically observed. Their behavior and interaction are the
uppermost level of the oral*literary work, open to immediate observation
and most easily recorded and described.
More complex groupings are secondary: they are theoretical and not
observable. They have to be consiructed by the investigator on the basis of
observable data in primary performance-audience groups, i.e., thcir investi*
gation needs much more sophisticated scholarly tools. Such secondary
groupings include ethno-religious, generational, gcnder, professionai, and
class groupings, the members of which exceed the local community. These
may be scattercd in spacc and time throughout the overall $ociety; a whole
culture-society (e.g., a nation) which is ethnically homogenous; and a
cultural area including both many ethnically homogenous culture-societies
and scattered groupings of the kinds mentioned above (consider, for in*
stance, the Muslim cultural area with its many ethnoreligious nations and
groups).
7.3) Social organizadon. A third factor impinging very much on oral and
folk literature is a societys organization and institutions. Ufe flow$ in the
framework of social organizations and institutions, and literature is part of
iifes activity. Let us mention, for example, popular religious literature
produced by religious instilutions, religious preaching that entcrs directly
into oral tradition, the culdvation of oral literature at medieval courts, oralliterary works that are obligatory parts of rituals and customs, and the
meddling into the flow of oral literature by political agents using it for
propaganda purposes. All of these change meanings and messages by
changing the pool of contents, its symbolic meanings, and the combinauons
simpler units enter into to form more complcx compositions.
Each social unit, from the individual performer to a wholc sociecy, has a
repertoire of works built from a pool of contents, combined with the help of
a set of certain composidon rules into works o f various gcnres. A mouf index
describes thc pool of contents and orders it into semandc fields; the type
index (or index of logical forms) orders and describes wholc works; and thc
gcnre indcx dcscribcs thc composidon of the repertoire. Indices of formu*

T exture. Text, and C ontext o f the Folklore T ext vs . 1ndexinc

225

lae and of figures of speech should describe and order the poetic means that
shape the texture of works. Thus, on every level indexing is a ncccssary
prerequisite to research. For a list of indices for motif, type, and genre up to
1992, see the second volume ofjason (forthcoming).
Jemsalem

REFERENCES CITED
Aame, Antti
1910 Vmeichnis der Marchentypen. FF Communications No. 3. Helsinki:
Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia Toimituksia.
Dundes, Alan
1964 *Texture, Text and Context." Southem Folklore Quarteriy 20:251-65.
Finc, Elisabeth C.
1984 TheFolklore Text. Bloomington: Iniana University Press.
Jason, Heda
(forthcomingJiVfo/i/, Typeand Genre. Vo). 1: A Manual for Compilation of Indices.
Vol. 2: Bibliography of Indices and Indexing. FF Communications.
Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatcmia Toimituksia.
Kapiis, Gcorgi I_
1983 Somaiijskieposlovid ipogovorhi. Moscow: Nauka.
Pcrmjakov, Grigorii L.
1968 hbrannyeposlovici i pogovorki narodov Vostoka. Moscovv: Nauka.
Selivanov, Fedor M.
1990 Hssdoiestvennye sravnenija msskogo pesennogo eposa: Sistematieskij ukazalel'.
Moscow: Nauka.
VVienert, Waltcr
1925 Die Typen der griechisch-romischen Fabel. FF Communications No. 56. Hcl*
sinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia Toimituksia.