Folklore is the collection of traditions and practices shared by a specific group of people, culture, or subculture. This includes stories, legends, sayings, poems, and jokes passed down through speaking. It also includes physical items, like the way buildings are made by the group. Folklore includes customs and actions that show beliefs, such as religious traditions, and the ways people celebrate events like festivals, weddings, dances, and ceremonies that mark important life changes.
Each of these examples, alone or together, is called a folklore artifact or traditional cultural expression. Just as important as the form of these traditions is how they are shared from one place to another or from one generation to the next. Folklore is usually not taught in schools or through formal art classes. Instead, it is shared informally between people through speaking or showing how things are done.
The study of folklore is called folklore studies or folkloristics. This field can be studied at the undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral levels in schools.
Overview
The word "folklore" is made up of two parts: "folk" and "lore." It was first created in 1846 by an Englishman named William Thoms. He made up the term to replace older phrases like "popular antiquities" or "popular literature." The word "lore" comes from the Old English word "lār," which means "instruction" or "teaching." Folklore includes the knowledge, traditions, and stories of a group, often shared through spoken words.
The meaning of "folk" has changed over time. When Thoms first used the term, "folk" referred only to people living in rural areas, often poor and without formal education. Today, "folk" describes a social group of two or more people who share common traits and express their identity through traditions. "Folk" can mean a large group, like a nation, or a smaller group, like a family. This broader definition of "folk" includes more types of traditions and stories, called "folklore artifacts." These artifacts include things people create with words (verbal lore), with their hands (material lore), or through actions (customary lore). Folklore is not limited to old or outdated traditions. These traditions are usually passed down informally, without specific names, and often have many different versions. Folklore is connected to a group’s shared identity and is created and shared by the community, not by individuals. For example, new groups like surfers, motorcyclists, or computer programmers have their own unique traditions.
Unlike high culture, where individual works by named artists are protected by copyright laws, folklore is tied to the shared identity of a group.
A professional folklorist studies the meaning and importance of beliefs, customs, and objects within a group. These traditions are passed along because they are meaningful to the group. However, their meanings can change over time. For example, the modern celebration of Halloween is different from the medieval tradition of All Hallows’ Eve, and it has created new stories unrelated to its history. Similarly, cleansing rituals in Orthodox Judaism originally helped with health in areas with limited water, but today they may represent a connection to being an Orthodox Jew. In contrast, actions like tooth brushing, which are also shared within groups, are usually seen as practical health habits and not traditions that define a group. Traditions start as repeated actions, but they continue only if they gain meaning beyond their original purpose. This meaning is the focus of the study of folklore, called folkloristics.
As social sciences have developed, it has become clear that folklore is a natural and necessary part of every social group. Folklore is not only old or outdated; it is created and shared constantly. In any group, folklore helps people distinguish between "us" and "them."
Origin and development of folklore studies
Folklore became a separate field of study during the time of romantic nationalism in Europe. One important person in this development was Johann Gottfried von Herder. In the 1770s, Herder wrote about oral traditions, explaining that they were natural parts of life connected to local communities. After French forces invaded German states, many Germans began using Herder’s ideas. They organized and recorded folk traditions, using them to help build a shared national identity. This idea was also adopted by smaller nations, such as Finland, Estonia, and Hungary, which wanted to gain independence from larger neighboring countries.
In the 19th century, European scholars studied folklore to compare it with the changes brought by modern society. They focused on the oral traditions of rural peasants, seeing these traditions as remnants of the past that remained in lower social groups. The most famous collection of European peasant folklore is the "Kinder- und Hausmärchen" by the Brothers Grimm, first published in 1812. This interest in stories, sayings, and songs continued throughout the 19th century, connecting the new field of folkloristics with literature and mythology. By the start of the 20th century, the study of folklore had grown in both Europe and North America. European scholars focused on the oral traditions of similar peasant groups, while American scholars, like Franz Boas and Ruth Benedict, studied Native American cultures, including all their customs and beliefs as part of folklore. This approach linked American folkloristics with cultural anthropology and ethnology, using similar research methods. These differences between European and American approaches created a variety of ways to study folklore, which continues to be discussed in the field.
The term "folkloristics," or "folklore studies," became widely used in the 1950s to describe the academic study of traditional culture, separate from the actual folklore items themselves. In 1976, the U.S. Congress passed the American Folklife Preservation Act to celebrate the country’s 200th anniversary. This law marked a major step in recognizing the importance of folklore in the United States.
The law defines "folklife" as the traditional cultural practices shared by groups in the United States, such as families, ethnic communities, and religious groups. These practices include customs, beliefs, skills, language, art, music, dance, and rituals. They are usually passed down through oral teaching, imitation, or performance, without formal schooling or institutional guidance. This law, along with other laws protecting the nation’s natural and cultural heritage, showed a growing recognition that cultural diversity is a valuable strength for the country. It also highlighted that cultural differences bring people together rather than divide them. The diversity of American folklife is celebrated each year at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival and other similar events across the country.
There are many other definitions of folklore. According to William Bascom, folklore has four main purposes.
Definition of "folk"
In the 19th century, the term "folklore" referred to the people known as "the folk." These individuals were typically rural, had little or no formal education, and lived in poverty. They were peasants who lived in the countryside, unlike the people who lived in cities. By the end of the century, the urban working class, influenced by Marxist ideas, was also included in the definition of "the folk." The shared characteristic among these groups was their status as the lower class in society.
As the 20th century began, scholars in the social sciences helped folklorists update their understanding of "the folk." By the 1960s, it became clear that social groups, or "folk groups," existed everywhere. Every person belongs to many different groups, such as family, age group, language group, and occupation. The first group a person joins is their family, which has its own unique traditions and stories. As a person grows, they join more groups, each with its own folklore. Studies have shown that these groups share their own traditions, such as jokes, sayings, and customs.
Folklore is passed down informally through observation, copying, repeating, or being corrected by others in the group. This shared knowledge helps members of a group feel connected and reinforces their identity. It can be used within the group, such as during a ceremony to welcome new members, or outside the group, like when performing a traditional dance at a festival. Folklorists study groups in two ways: by first identifying a group and then exploring its folklore, or by finding folklore items and using them to understand the group.
Starting in the 1960s, researchers expanded the definition of "the folk" by studying previously overlooked groups. For example, a 1975 issue of the Journal of American Folklore focused entirely on women's folklore, using perspectives not shaped by men. Other groups, such as non-traditional families and people who create folk items across generations, were also recognized as part of the folk.
In 1976, folklorist Richard Dorson stated that the study of folklore focuses on traditional, unofficial culture—what is known as folk culture—rather than the culture of people in positions of power. This study aims to learn about the lives of people often ignored by other fields of study.
Folklore genres
Folklore items are often grouped into three main types: material, verbal, and customary lore. These categories include physical objects (material folklore), sayings, stories, and songs (verbal folklore), and beliefs or practices (customary lore). There is also a fourth type called childlore, which includes games and stories told by children. These categories help organize and label folklore items so that scholars can discuss them clearly.
Each folklore item is unique, and variation is a key feature. Unlike manufactured goods, which are made to be identical, folklore items change over time and across groups. This variation makes it difficult to identify the main features of each item. While classifying folklore is important, it only provides labels and does not explain the deeper meanings or how the items developed.
Classifications can be misleading because folklore items are not isolated. They are part of a community’s traditions and often combine different types. For example, a birthday celebration might include a song (verbal), a cake and presents (material), and customs like blowing out candles (customary). Even within the same event, details may change over time, such as differences between a six-year-old’s and a seven-year-old’s birthday party. Each item represents one version of a tradition in a specific place and time. Folklorists study these items to find the common themes, such as honoring individuals or celebrating with food and family.
Verbal lore includes spoken or written words that follow traditional patterns. These are not random conversations but phrases that people recognize as part of a shared tradition. For example, the phrase “An elephant walks into a bar…” signals a joke, and songs like “Old MacDonald Had a Farm” use repeated patterns to teach about animals. Verbal lore has been studied for centuries, starting with William Thoms, who encouraged collecting stories from rural communities. Over time, scholars developed systems like the Aarne–Thompson classification to organize folktales and other oral traditions.
Material culture includes items that can be touched, such as tools, clothing, or decorations. These objects are often handmade or mass-produced but are still considered folklore because of their long history and traditional use. Before the Industrial Revolution, most items were made by hand, and folklorists worked to record both oral traditions and crafts before they were replaced by factory-made goods. Today, handmade items are still common, used for repairs, unique designs, or as hobbies. These items carry meaning for the people who create and use them, showing how traditions balance change and continuity.
Folklore performance in context
Folklore artifacts, such as tools, stories, or crafts, are not meaningful on their own without context. Only when these items are used in performances do they become active parts of a group’s culture. Through performance, people share traditions, and this is how cultural knowledge spreads. American folklorist Roger D. Abrahams explained that "folklore is folklore only when performed." When performed, these items gain power and meaning, and they are no longer just isolated objects or stories. Without performance, these items are not considered folklore; they are simply unique or unusual things.
This understanding of folklore changed in the second half of the 20th century. Folklorists began using terms like "folklore performance" and "text and context" to describe how traditions work. These terms are not opposites but are used depending on the topic being studied. "Performance" is often used for spoken traditions or customs, while "context" is used for physical objects. Both terms help explain that folklore needs to be connected to its culture to be understood.
The idea of cultural performance is also used in anthropology and other social sciences. Anthropologist Victor Turner identified four features of cultural performance: playfulness, framing (setting up the performance), symbolic language, and the use of hypothetical language. During a performance, the audience imagines a different world, like pretending "what if?" This fits with spoken traditions, such as fairy tales or jokes, where the audience is not expected to take things literally. Customs, like games or traditions for children, also fit this idea.
Physical objects, like quilts, need to be used in a way that makes them part of a performance. For example, a quilt might be made during a quilting party, used in a special event, or given as a gift. These actions are part of the object’s context. Even when focusing on context, elements of performance—like an audience, a framing event, or symbols—can still be seen.
Before World War II, folk artifacts were viewed as old pieces of culture with little use today. They were collected without much information about their meaning. Folklorists tried to record them before they were lost. The Historic–Geographic Method was used to track these items, mostly spoken traditions, across time and place.
After World War II, folklorists began to study folklore in a more complete way. They focused not only on isolated items but also on how these items were used in living cultures. Alan Dundes, in his 1964 essay "Texture, Text and Context," and Dan Ben-Amos, in a 1967 speech, helped shift the focus to how folklore is part of human behavior. Richard Dorson called this new approach the "behavioral approach," which saw folklore as an action rather than just an object. This change meant that folklorists saw folklore as something people do, not just something they own.
Folklore is transmitted through communication between people. One person or group shares information with another, and both have specific roles. The tradition-bearer is the person who shares knowledge, like a parent singing a lullaby or a group performing a dance. These people are usually well-known in their community for their knowledge. The audience is the group that listens or watches. Most audience members do not become tradition-bearers but remember the tradition.
There is communication between the performer and the audience. The performer shares something, and the audience reacts, showing they understand. The goal of the performance is not to create something new but to repeat something already known. Both the performer and audience recognize and value the shared tradition. Folklore is about remembering and passing on behavior that is meaningful to a group.
For a performance to happen, there must be a frame—a signal that what is happening is a performance. For example, life events like birthdays or dances are framed by their setting. Games are framed by rules. Folklorist Barre Toelken described how Navajo family members took turns performing and watching string figure games.
In spoken traditions, performers often use familiar phrases to signal the start and end of a story. For example, jokes might begin with "Have you heard the one about…" or "An elephant walks into a bar." Fairy tales often start with "Once upon a time" and end with "They all lived happily ever after." These phrases help the audience know they are hearing a story, not regular speech.