Forms Terminology Formation as Part of Serbian Folkloristics History

Folkloristics 10/1 (2025): 117-133
Author: Nemanja Radulović
Text:

The history of folkloristics is to a great extent a history of terms and their use. The history of Serbian folklore studies also paid attention to this aspect of the disciplinary history. Another view on the use of terms in the 19th century, given in this paper, shows the “fluidity” of terms (various terms for one genre and plural meanings of one term) in protoacademic and early academic approaches. Various terms slowly became “crystalized.” The stabilization of terms was facilitated by different cultural influences (Russian and other Slavic, German) and international scholarship. National terminology (partly emic, partly from written literature) offered various possibilities of use. However, even when taking Serbian terms, scholars never simply transposed emic terminology. In spite of the efforts of positivist literature historians and folklorists to embed different terms into the system, it was not until the late 20th century that terminology became standardized. This history could serve even today as a reminder of how to deal with still under-researched genres or how to include international (mostly English) terms.

Keywords: terminology, the history of folkloristics, oral prose.