Folklore as Commemorative Discourse

Abstract

This article inspects a ballad performance to assess the relationship beween poetic and prose narrative, between the language of the song and the language that surrounds it in the singing event. Contrasting discourse types, the informative and the commemorative, are identified and discussed. Commemorative utterance exhibits regularized acoustic textures in presenting what are taken for immanent truths. Such discourse possesses remarkable efficacy, due in part to the impact of measured and allusive speech on the central nervous system, and to the exploitation of these effects in appropriately orchestrated social settings.