Gurevich, P. S. Semiotics of Oral Folk Arts

Abstract: The article tells us about traditions related to researching the myth and fairy tale as a part of semiotics. The author of the article underlines the role of Vladimir Propp in the analysis of oral folk arts from the point of view of semiotics. The author also provides a description of Claude Levi-Strauss’ structural anthropology, emphasizes peculiarities of semiotic interpretation of the myth and fairy tale and describes traditions in interpretation of this topic represented by Franco-Belgium school and American researches. At the same time, the author shows that the most recent researches of modern folk arts refer to returning to traditional methods in philology. It allows to record the rise in diachronic researches of folk arts. Folklore studies have always been very close to the science about language and literature. Due to the fact that folklore researchers were quite interested in methods of structural linguistics, structural-semiotic studies on the basis of the synchronous approach became the major field of research. However, very soon the researchers realized that such an approach was too one-sided and limited so they became interested in diachronic researches, i.e. evolution of folklore genres and dynamics of the structure in folk artwork. There is a growing interest towards structural-semiotic studies of forms of folklore and social environment influencing the verbal folk arts. In Russia methods of philological research are now associated with the methods of structural-semiotic folklore studies.

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