Folklore, Children’s

Folklore is the term for the everyday, informal, sometimes artistic communication in small groups. Folk groups can be as small as two people or as large as a group can be and still provide for frequent face-to-face communication. Even the face-to-face element can be adjusted to account for the folk cultures that emerge in electronic communication on the Internet and in social media platforms (e.g., Facebook, SnapChat). Folklorists generally look at three large categories of communication in folk groups—oral culture (e.g., stories, jokes, proverbs, insults), material culture (things made by people or machine-made things appropriated by people for their own use in the folk groups), and customary culture (e.g., pranks, foodways, celebrations, initiations). Folklore can be instrumental (i.e., useful, functional for the individual and the ...