Final Exam

Question 1

emic

Answer 1

perspective of insider, participant

Question 2

etic

Answer 2

perspective of outsider, observer

Question 3

motif

Answer 3

smallest plot of information (specific plot elements, shared structural patterns, formulaic repetition

Question 4

oikotype

Answer 4

localized variation of folklore, inclusion on specific details to make it sound more believable

Question 5

mercantile effect

Answer 5

legends that deal with businesses and corporations

Question 6

Goliath effect

Answer 6

urban legends frequently attach themselves to the largest company or the most successful product on the market

Question 7

emotional selection hypothesis

Answer 7

people tend to pass on the legends that evoke the strongest emotional response (disgust, anger, fear, sadness, joy, hope)

Question 8

rumor

Answer 8

short, non-narrative expressions of belief, often open-ended

Question 9

plausibility

Answer 9

having an appearance or truth of reason; historical events lend plausibility

Question 10

David Effect

Answer 10

blame migrates down the social scale and affixes itself to the poorest and most powerless (Hurricane Katrina, “Hold the Mayo”)

Question 11

ostension

Answer 11

the enactment of a legend (ex: Bloody Mary ritual)

Question 12

legend trip

Answer 12

an organized activity where individuals make a journey to a place where ‘uncanny’ events are believed to have occurred in the interest of testing a local legend

Question 13

social context

Answer 13

setting in which a story/legend is told in

Question 14

cultural context

Answer 14

larger environmental/culture which is placed in and it’s place in history

Question 15

individual context

Answer 15

who tells or hears the story

Question 16

comparative context

Answer 16

how its told in different situations

Question 17

legend

Answer 17

narratives of belief containing motifs linked to modern life; focus on a single episode which is presented as bizarre or embarrassing; set in historical time; negotiation of the truth

Question 18

kinesics

Answer 18

communication expressed in body language, facial expression, and other forms of non-verbal expression involving music

Question 19

proxemics

Answer 19

concerned with spatial relationships and cultural conventions concerning nearness, distance, and placing

Question 20

cultural source hypothesis

Answer 20

people are influenced by their culturally informed beliefs; suggests that narratives describing supernatural experiences are “fictitious products of tradition” or “imaginary subjective experiences shaped by tradition”; people use pre-existing beliefs to explain something that happened to them

Question 21

experiential source hypothesis

Answer 21

experiences people describe should be taken at face value; suggests that “some significant portion of traditional supernatural belief is associated with accurate observations interpreted rationally”; experiences causes traditional narrative and belief, not the other way around

Question 22

Forteana

Answer 22

anomalous, strange, uncategorizeable events

Question 23

memorate

Answer 23

first person account of a supernatural or numinous experience

Question 24

Mara

Answer 24

a supernatural attack, it’s unwanted and terrifying; waking up during the night, hearing and/or seeing something come in the room, being pressed on the chest or strangled and feeling suffocation, paralysis

Question 25

liminality

Answer 25

a state of being “betwixt and between” normal categories of life; middle phase in ritual where categories become warped, exaggerated, and permeable

Question 26

FOAF

Answer 26

“friend of a friend”; a characteristic of a legend that states someone who tells someone who tells someone and that is how a legend spreads

Question 27

taboo

Answer 27

cultural or societal prohibition (killing, eating certain things, bodily functions, sexual activity)

Question 28

wedge drivers

Answer 28

driving a wedge between different groups in society

Question 29

Bigfoot

Answer 29

the figure of the “wild human”, the person living outside of or at the edge of society; hairy biped, 7 foot tall, dark hair, potent odor, glowing eyes, aggressive

Question 30

Xerox lore

Answer 30

photocopied letters, pictures, poems or jokes; exist in variant form

Question 31

memes

Answer 31

emergent patterns of widely disseminated, visually oriented vernacular expression on the internet

Question 32

copypasta

Answer 32

“copy and paste”

Question 33

creepypasta

Answer 33

subcategory of copypasta; consists of a narrative intended to be frightening (ex: Jeff the Killer)

Question 34

The Space Brothers

Answer 34

origins on Venus, instigated humans growth and development 18 million years ago; tall, blonde, beautiful, “Nordic”; peaceful, advanced intelligence; warn of dangers of nuclear weaponry and the atomic age

Question 35

The Grays

Answer 35

alleged extraterrestrial beings whose existence is promoted in paranormal communities and who are named for their skin color

Question 36

moral warning

Answer 36

la llorona warns men about female sexuality and the dangers of women; addresses parental concerns: release frustrations and tensions, express anxieties about child care, speak of difficulties of caring for children in poverty

Question 37

dynamism

Answer 37

force of change and variation in the transmission of folklore through time and space

Question 38

conservatism

Answer 38

promotes retention and discourages change in the transmission of folklore through time and space