The Folklore Concept: For and Against Interdisciplinary Terminology

Abstract

The article is dedicated to the presentation of the term folklore concept as a productive instrument of the folkloristics. Recent researches in this theme have started to consider an issue why a new interdisciplinary term should be introduced? as a rhetorical question. The place of this term in foreign studies on a folk concept and in the recent Ukrainian scientific discourse has been ascertained. The authoress’s definition of the term is submitted. The changed five-level classification of basic folklore concepts (universal-existential, emotional, individual, spatial, morally-value) is proposed. They are distinguished on the basis of research of Ukrainian historical folklore. The authoress is putting an example of folklore concept of war which helps to express the universal knowledge and the dramatic experience of Ukrainians about World Wars. It is concluded that this concept of war takes a significant and constant place in the Ukrainian folklore picture of the world. It is objectivized through a stable chain of semantic equivalents expressed by a set of notions. These conceptions function through the structure of folklore works of various genres as motivemes (or elements of motives) or as universal symbolic images. Taken together, these definitions demonstrate the cognitive potential of Ukrainian folklore as a significant information resource. It is stated in the conclusions that the folklore concept has peculiarities connected both with the canons of semantics and symbolic interpretation of the content of the classical examples of folklore and also with the communicative task for the future of a folk work, with the social nature of folklorized and stylized as folk texts from the repertoire of modern bearers of tradition and performers.