23rd Annual Student Research Conference
Fantastic Tales: A Semiotic Analysis of the Identification of Folklore
Laura A. Wellington
Mr. David Leaton, Faculty Mentor
Mythology and folklore are used to explain the world. In a semiotic context, this fantasized storytelling contains a rich collection of identifiable signs. These signs help those in the community find connections between their world and the unexplainable. Additionally, the stories variations show how each society uses basic signs and interprets them in a way that correlates most directly with their understanding. Using folktales from Western culture, Eastern culture, and ancient Greek/Roman mythology, the semiotic domain is dissected in order to get a more complete understanding of the discourse that contributes to the structure of each tale. These individual analyses are cross-analyzed with each other in a compare/contrast structure to further develop the overlapping domains of the folklore of various societies. Semiotic theory works to supplement the classical approaches of Jung and others by providing a structural analysis of the work at a linguistic, rather than literary or cultural, level.
Keywords: Folklore, Linguistics, Semiotics, Storytelling, Structural Analysis
Topic(s):Folklore
Linguistics
Interdisciplinary
Presentation Type: Oral Paper
Session: 12-2
Location: MG 2050
Time: 8:15