Folkloric orality in contemporary culture

Abstract

Accepting the anthropological perspective of analysing oral folklore, understood as a part of culture – any culture – requires a redefinition of the notion of orality in contemporary culture. Orality does not mean solely oral direct transmission of texts; it also reveals a way in which human beings operate in their world, as well as the manner of its cognition formed by folk-type thinking. A message may also be transmitted in the form of visual or electronic communication. Analysing contemporary folkloric texts from the anthropological perspective requires changing the existing method of acquiring research material. This includes primarily the situation in which the given text is realized. The cultural context is especially significant in analysing Internet-based form of folkloric communication, where it is necessary to take the role of virtual community into account. By penetrating the Internet, the content which until then functioned outside it is subjected to changes resulting from the Internet-related inspiration. It therefore co-creates e-folklore, the analysis of which must take the exceptional activity of Internet users into consideration. The process of contemporary cultural socialisation has been in a nearly natural way enriched by folkloric orality.