Language, culture and values: the economic images of everyday life in short folklore forms

The proposed project focuses on short folklore forms as metaphorical and stereotypical imprints of the economic image. In folklore, proverbs speak of experiences, riddles of observations, greetings of wishes, stories of events, fairy tales of broader perceptions. Values can be extracted from all genres. Folklore can tell us about artefacts and entities (Georges and Jones 1995) tied to everyday life and details configured into generic type sets and transmitted through space. Language and culture (in the broadest anthropological sense) are most closely linked and intertwined. Language plays an essential role not only in the socialisation/inculturation process but throughout the individual’s life and the life of various social groups: language names and comments on reality/the world, its processes, and interpersonal relations. Words are combined into shorter or longer phrases, which can be transformed into linguistic forms that function as ready-to-use phrases, semantically predetermined, and are often metaphorical. In folklore studies, these forms are considered short folklore forms and are a specific genre of folklore. They are characterised by brevity, conciseness and frequent metaphoric character, as well as relatively fixed forms, content and functions. We will consider folklore forms as diachronic reflections of social concepts in everyday speech and synchronously used units; we will focus on the everyday economy as a dominant part of everyday life. In this research project, we are dealing with folklore forms as a reflection of everyday life. The everyday in contemporary ethnology refers to the 'culture of the many', the banal, widespread phenomena of culture (Bausinger 1987: 38), but more broadly, it is the most universal and, at the same time, the most unique, the most social and the most personal arena of life (Lefebvre 1991). Everyday life most faithfully mirrors the understanding of life and the world. Economic activity and thought permeate the everyday life of individuals and societies. The history of culture shows different and changing attitudes to work and the economy from temporal, spatial, and social perspective. The material necessities of life are universal, and how they are met are culturally diverse. To exist, human beings need adequate air, temperature, water, food, protection from disease and injury, and shelter from external danger (clothing, housing). These are made possible by everyday productive activity (e.g., agriculture, handicrafts, housekeeping) and a cooperative community. Social relations characterise the latter (e.g., gender, age, economic inequalities), which significantly create and regulate the material conditions on which the material well-being and social power of the individual and the group depend. The economic knowledge and habits generated have been and are being passed on in various ways, including from older to younger generations. The primary arena not only for economic but also for cultural transmission is the family economy. The present research project, however, aims to link folklore forms as part of Slovene folklore and the diachronic cultural perspective, using the example of the changing economic image, attitudes and valuation of economic endeavours and their social structure, as they have been expressed to date in stereotyped expressive form.