engleski

Rhetoric and Folklore, Rhetoric in Folklore: Genres and Prototypes

Rhetorical approach has been seen as complementary to folkoristic research at least since the influential work “Introductory Remarks to a Rhetorical Theory of Folklore” by Roger Abrahams in 1968. At the same time the term rhetorical genres has come to use both in Croatian literary and folklore studies as an umbrella term for folklore/oral genres such as counting-out rhymes, tongue-twisters, verbal charms, blessings, curses and toasts. Nevertheless the term itself has not been accepted among international scholars of folklore. First systematic descriptions of Croatian rhetorical oral genres insist on persuasiveness and verbal expressiveness as their key features. In later studies the language and speech playfulness were added to these key features as well as the aim to achieve the communication effect by means of the textual form itself. Terming all these different folklore genres as rhetorical means that they all share some common traits, such as the orientation towards the other participants in verbal communication (a single person or a crowd) and the emphasis on the performative power of the word. For instance, the curse is uttered in order to inflict evil on an addressee and this is possible because the addresser firmly believes in the power of the uttered phrase (especially when it is strengthened by the divine or infernal authority). In contrast to this during the performance of a toast the speaker uses especially stylized speech to express good wishes to his/her addressees. The performative aspects of oral rhetorical genres could be described as illocutionary and perlocutionary (according to speech act theory). The differentia specifica of oral rhetoric is that, unlike all other folklore genres, it achieves a specific communication (performative) effect by means of the esthetic values of the text. By using theoretical insights of cognitive poetics, especially Prototype Theory, as well as different approaches to the concept of genre the paper elaborates theoretical validity of term rhetorical genres. Furthermore the paper proposes classification of rhetorical folklore genres exploring sound-content relationship which is considered essential in understanding the nature of oral rhetoric.

folklore, genre, prototype, rhetoric, rhetorical genres

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