Urban Legends as an Emic Category

Abstract

The second half of the twentieth century saw important paradigmatic changes occur in anthropology, ethnology, and other humanities disciplines, shifting the focus of attention from rural worlds to urban environments. Marking this shift in folkloristics, the urban legend was proposed. Despite its early popularity among folklore scholars, evidence kept piling up that the narratives signified by this term are not necessarily bound to urban areas, because of which the term’s analytical value, and consequently its use in scholarly debate, gradually declined. Nevertheless, following the large commercial success of certain legend anthologies, the term was eagerly appropriated by mass media and popular culture, crossing language barriers, enabling its entrance into the world of vernacular. Once there, the term was embraced by the ‘folk’, the bearers of legends themselves – becoming emic in the process – and was attributed a whole new set of conceptual and connotative meanings. When studying vernacular culture and communication, one can thus observe four different emic conceptualizations of urban legend: urban legend as a folk genre, urban legend as a frame of reference, urban legend as a metonym, and urban legend as a marker of identity.