The IUP Journal of English Studies
Discourse and Context: Beyond the Morphology of Folktales

Article Details
Pub. Date : Dec, 2023
Product Name : The IUP Journal of English Studies
Product Type : Article
Product Code : IJES071223
Author Name : Devika Sharma and Amitabh Vikram Dwivedi
Availability : YES
Subject/Domain : Arts & Humanities
Download Format : PDF Format
No. of Pages : 12

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Abstract

The study investigates the role of context builders in meaningful formation of Dogri folktales. Context determines meaning, and when language users employ it in folktales, the meaning is understood through intuition, native knowledge, and interpretation, further supported by grammatical structures. The traditional folklorists study tales-they provide interpretation or analyze their grammatical structures, but in the process one of them is compromised. However, this paper endeavors to strike a balance between the two when it analyzes Dogri folktales. The focus is to analyze folktales and their narrative structure while closely studying the interrelated events that lead to the formation of their discourse. For that, contextual information comes to the forefront, and the roles of cohesive units like discourse markers, topic words, creativity, and others become quite important.


Introduction
We find in folktales the origin of storytelling culture, which is "handed on by tradition, either by word of mouth or by custom and practice" (Taylor 1948). This oral tradition of storytelling began before writing was even introduced (Renate and Shari 2016) and continues to play an integral part in the lives of humans. Various studies have been conducted analyzing folktales both traditionally and linguistically to capture this flow of knowledge from past to present, ancestors to posterity, and peers to peers (Thompson and Jordan-Smith 2016).


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