Analytical Categories and Ethnic Genres

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Analytical Categories and Ethnic Genres

• Dan Ben-Amos

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• Incongruity between cultural modes of
  communication and models for textual organization
• Impossible to synchronize different folklore
  communication systems each based on distinct
  sociohistorical experiences and cognitive
  realities into one theoretical analytical
  system w/o cultural variation.

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• Genre is not a scientific concept or autonomous
  entity w/ inherent qualities of its own, but
  dependent on cultural expression and perception.
• Attempt to establish folklore as science genre
  as thematic group
• Ignoring structure and performance genre as
  distinct unified structure, pre-existing
  description and genealogically related

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genre

• Archetypal
• Verbal representation of universal concerns
• Identified through genre, circular reasoning
• Function, cultural experience not form itself,
  unique not cross-cultural.

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• Analytical category academic identification
• Ethnic genre rules for use w/in group
• One no more valid or logical than the other, just
  different systems not necessarily congruent
• Ethnic genre self-contained system of symbolic
  connotations and social controls by which a
  society defines its experiences, imagination, and
  commentary.
• Characterized by relation between formal
  features, thematic domain, and social use.

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• System of distinctions and correlations, cultural
  metafolklore
• Concept culture has of its own folklore
• Defined by objective nature of speech and
  subjective thematic and behavioral features
• Must have defining features to signify
  connotations and distinguish make
  understandable.
• Each genre has distinctive thematic and
  behavioral attributes that contrast w/ other
  genres.
• Also have relation of equivalence, substitution
  across genres w/o meaning change
• Categorization consistent w/ cultural cognitive
  reality, difference/equivalence fit society.

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• Role of form in culture indicated by term used to
  describe it
• Most important aspects, larger unifying traits of
  group
• Word alone cannot express meaning, so study of
  genres must combine cognitive, expressive, and
  behavioral levels in a culture.
• Folklore communication based on culturally
  defined rules system of ethnic genres is
  primarily formulation, essential to explore them
  to study folklore.