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

The project focuses on short folklore forms as metaphorical and stereotypical imprints of economic images. In folklore, proverbs speak of experiences, riddles express observations, greetings articulate wishes, stories relate events, and fairy tales narrate broader perceptions. Values can be extracted from all genres. Folklore can tell us about artefacts and entities tied to everyday life and details configured into generic type sets and transmitted through space. We consider short 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.

The objectives of the project are:

1. To analyse and interpret economic images of everyday life as reflected in short folklore forms.

Short folklore forms are a genre of everyday speech: they capture material or content from everyday life, not only about the world of the subject and the actions related to him/her but also about existing values and understandings of the world. The economic dimension of everyday life is discussed in relation to work and family/social life. The analysis of the material will show which elements of everyday economic life are emphasised in the short folklore forms and, thus, as stereotypes are also socially resonant.

2. To socially contextualise folklore forms and track their changing connotations.

Short folklore forms can only be analysed in context - contextual and social. Both the frequency of use and the meanings accorded to them change along with shifting/evolving social norms or circumstances. Examples whose occurrence/use was recorded centuries ago may have been accorded different meanings or connotations in contemporary usage. An analysis of recent occurrences will thus demonstrate the range of use and meaning of short folklore forms and their social dimensions.

3. To produce an ethnolinguistic map of stereotypes related to the economic image of everyday life.

An ethnolinguistic analysis of folklore forms will reveal stereotypical images of particular phenomena, such as clothing, money, household objects, work, and relationships – all of which are linked to the economic image of society. In addition, the research will provide a list of linguistic stereotypes in the semantic field under consideration.

4. Conduct a conceptual analysis of the values associated with work as a central element of economic practice.

The category of work is at the heart of the proposed research. Until the modern era, idleness had a higher cultural status than work, and humanism defined idleness as immoral and reprehensible. In the spirit of the Protestant ethic, mercantilists elevated work to a noble activity and productivity to an educational tool. The Industrial Revolution made work the central value since it was the only way to increase profits, which is the main objective of the capitalist economy. The ideal of the upper bourgeoisie, by contrast, was the complete absence of physical labour. The research will analyse, from a diachronic and synchronic perspective, the values people attribute to work and its antipode - inactivity, idleness, or laziness.

5. Strengthen interdisciplinary research on folklore material.

The divisions between ethnology and folklore studies are still present in the Slovenian research area. Aware of the intertwining, complementarity and overlapping of these two fields, this project aims to combine field and analytical approaches, thus demonstrating the importance of interdisciplinary research and the complexity of research topics that can only be thoroughly addressed through the interplay of analytical approaches and the synthesis of results.

Dissemination: the project will organise a national symposium on folklore and the images of everyday life and economy reflected in them (20th month) and an international conference at the end of the project (35th month of the project or at the end of the project). Scientific and technical articles will be published in scientific journals, articles in the general public media, presentations at various professional meetings, including an international conference at the end of the project.