Style in the FolktaleAuthor(s): John BallSource: Folklore, Vol. 65, No. 3/4 (Dec., 1954), pp. 170-172Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. on behalf of Folklore Enterprises, Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1259244 .

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170 Collectanea

to, their families, and also as it is not customary for man and wife to eat together it can be seen that the man is no ordinary man. Then there is the kindness to the lame man as indicating a version of the theme of the good and bad sisters.

M. D. W. JEFFREYS

STYLE IN THE FOLKTALE

" Many people have an illusion that style is something that belongs to literature," wrote Edward Sapir in 1927 (" Speech as a Personality Trait," American "7ournal of Sociology, 32: 892-905). " Style is an everyday facet of speech that characterizes both the social group and the individual."

Not only is style now conceived by linguists as something far different from the literary scholar's concept of it; George L. Trager states that the traditional analyst of style is tackling the job of the linguist or metalinguist, and tackling it " badly and prescientifically ". In The Field of Linguistics (Norman, Oklahoma, 1949) Trager defines metalinguistics :

Language has been indicated as being only one of the systematic arrangements of cultural items that societies possess. A culture consists of many such systems-language, social organization, religion, technology, law, etc. Each of these cultural systems other than language is dependent on language for its organization and existence, but otherwise constitutes an independent system whose patterning may be described. In theory, when one has arrived at the separate statements of each such cultural system, one can then proceed to a comparison with the linguistic system. The full statement of the point-by-point and pattern-by-pattern relations between the language and any of the other cultural systems will contain all the " meanings " of the linguistic forms, and will constitute the metalinguistics of that culture.

The metalinguists' method of studying style in relation to the whole culture can readily be applied to folklore. From the style of a tale that has been well told and well recorded we can see the continuing and developing dynamic relationship among style, story, teller, audience, and culture.

The well told tale is rare, however, and the well recorded tale is more nearly an ideal than a possibility. For style in the folktale includes intonation, voice rhythm, continuity, speaking rate, pitch, voice in- tensity, pauses, facial expressions, gestures, pantomime or re-enactment by the speaker, voice imitation (even of the opposite sex or of animals), methods of reacting to audience response-in fact the whole delicate and complex process of participating with the audience in the story-telling situation. Only when all these aspects of style can be observed can a balanced, multi-dimensional study of style be made.

Obviously this sort of full study of style can best be made during field research. The next best approach for the student, and the best for the

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Collectanea 171

collector, is through sound motion pictures. Only the community dynamics are omitted in collecting with the sound camera; unlike a member of the audience the camera cannot watch both teller and audience at the same time and so must miss part of their interaction. A sound film library of well-told folktales from many cultures must be collected before research can determine the full possibilities of folktale study based on metalinguistics.

Recording on tape retains pitch, intonation, and voice intensity, but omits gestures, facial expressions, and practically all concept of audience. Accurate collecting of folktales in manuscript omits everything but the words-omits the pre-symbolic meaning often given a symbol through intonation, omits most clues to connotation, and omits the continuing, insistent awareness that this is a real story-telling situation. Inaccurate collecting of folktales in manuscript leaves us with something less than words, or worse, something other than the words of the tale-teller. But we have not reached bottom yet: I have encountered careless abridg- ment of inaccurate translation of inaccurately collected folktales.

Sapir's distinction between the style of the individual and the style passed along in the culture of social group is an important one. " It would be a very complicated problem to disentangle the social and individual determinants of style, but it is a theoretically possible one," he says.

It may be said that a culture develops a way to tell a story. From " once upon a time " till " and so they lived happily ever after " certain aspects of style become customary in story-telling. There is a way to tell a ghost story in our culture-a pattern of pauses, of intonation that would make it possible for any of us to tell what was going on if he came upon the teller and his audience around the campfire. There is a way to tell a tall tale, a way to tell a travelling salesman story, a way to tell marchen.

So distinctive are these ways of telling that it is often possible to identify a teller's cultural background by the way he tells mdrchen. Studies of the differences in style between well-known versions of the same mdrchen offer interesting challenges to metalinguistics; it may be that the interaction of style and culture is more a two-way process than we have thought, and that along with considering the way Teutonic and Romance cultures (for example) influence the style we should consider the way the style and its language patterns influence the culture. Cer- tainly in a culture where mythos and legend form the main body of verbal tradition the influence of their language patterns on the culture may be traced.

It may be said also that individual tale-tellers develop ways to tell their stories-ways of their own within the framework of tradition. The skilful story teller can be identified by his style-and it is important that he be identified because (as William Jansen has pointed out in Folk-Lore) there are so few skilful performers. Some communities develop one or two, some none. Unfortunately the best tale-tellers do not always have the longest life-span, with the result that many

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collectors have gathered reams of material from tale-tellers who are awk- ward, forgetful, inept. The skilful story teller is the real keeper of the tradition; he learned his tales to remember and pass along, while the members of his audience who sometimes tell them to collectors heard them as members of an audience and so remember them imperfectly (as the audience of the play remember the lines and could recreate the play less well than the actors). Retaining the traditional style of his culture and recognizing the integrity of the traditional story itself, the master tale-teller through timing, nuances of voice, gestures, and facial expres- sion; and the whole projection of his personality creates a virtuoso per- formance in the medium of language. His style is what we customarily think of when we think of style in the folktale, for even stripped of everything but words on paper his language has individuality, vigour, life.

Besides the culture's way of telling a story and the individual's way, I would distinguish a third style which the collector will encounter, the style of the tale itself. Within the framework of the style of the culture, an individual tale will accumulate a traditional way to be told. Gestures, pauses, and other stylistic devices become a very real part of the story, so that no one would think of leaving them out. Stylistic characteristics of the tale itself are easily confused with the style of the teller; without several versions of the same story told by different story-tellers from the same culture it is nearly impossible to pin down which of the character- istics belong to the tale.

The use of style as an index of authenticity deserves further study. It seems to me that if the three styles (of tale, teller, and culture) are consistent the tale is reasonably sure to be authentic; if they are not there are at least grounds to hold the tale suspect.

The whole question of style in the folktale deserves further study, as Stith Thompson points out in The Folktale. Classification and sub- classification of stylistic aspects are not needed, however; we cannot reach the dynamic relationship among style, story, teller, audience, and culture through complex nomenclature. We need more collecting of the full story-telling situation before we can do much at all.

JOHN BALL

Folk Life and Traditions

FOLK LIFE AND TRADITIONS

Plough Sunday From The Times, Jan. II, 1954.

Plough Sunday was commemorated at several churches yesterday. At Heddenham, Norfolk, the rector, the Rev. A. G. Paget, blessed a plough which had been placed in the chancel, and offered prayers for all engaged in agriculture.

In the City of London a ceremonial plough which 24 men and women who work in the fields of Dorset brought up with them from Springfield, near Dorchester, was blessed at St. Helen's Bishopsgate. After the ser-

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