FOLKLORE: A STUDY ON ORIGIN, TRANSMISSION AND FUNCTIONS

Debates about how folklore should be defines have been waged continuously ever since the word was coined in 1846 by William Thomas. Most definitions concern the “lore”, but some concern “folk”. Lore – the materials of folklore rather than the people who use the materials – has been described in terms of origin, form, transmission and function. However, there has been no widespread agreement among folklorists about what folklore is. Not only do folklorists in different countries have different concepts of folklore, but also folklorists within one country may have quite diverse views concerning its nature. Perhaps the most common criterion for definition is the means of the folklore's transmission. Specifically folklore is said to be or to be in “oral Tradition”. This criterion, however, leads to several theoretical difficulties. First, in a culture without writing almost everything is transmitted orally; and although language, hunting techniques and marriage rule are passed orally from one generation to another, few folklorists would say that these types of cultural materials are folklore. Also, even in a culture with writings, some orally transmitted information such as how to drive a tractor and how to brush one's teeth is not ordinarily considered to be folklore. The point is that since materials other than folklore are also orally transmitted, the criterion of oral transmission by itself is not sufficient to distinguish folklore from non-folklore. Second, there are some forms of folklore which are manifested and communicated almost exclusively in written as opposed to oral form, such as autograph-book verse, book marginalia, epitaphs and traditional letters. In actual practice, a professional folklore does not go so far to say that folktale or a ballad is not folklore simply because it has at sometime in its life history been transmitted by writing or print. But he would argue that if a folktale or ballad had never been in oral tradition, it is not folklore. It might be a literary production based upon a folk model, but this is not the same as the folk model itself. However, the written forms previously mentioned are rarely if ever communicated orally