Genre Grammar in Popular Narratives. An Exploration

The following essay aims at elaborating some aspects of the genre grammar of linguistic practices embodied in folk narratives. It starts from the idea that linguistic practices like narratives are controlled by a corresponding genre-knowledge just as it holds for most types of human actions in general. Individual linguistic practices are thus sequenced and arranged according to a corresponding knowledge frame that is related to the situationally activated genre. The term text is used to denote this sequence of situationally and interactionally coherent linguistic practices that are construed according to the grammar of a 'genre in action'. A genre will be understood as a semiotic unit whose signifiant corresponds to a set of types of lexical and grammatical patterns ultimately represented by the micro-structure of the text. Its signifie will be interpreted as a text world model (TWM) that is internally invoked by the functionality, semantics, and quantification of the types of construction that occur in a text together with their syntax as well as by corresponding world knowledge. The essay first discusses some theoretical aspects of a genre-based approach to one kind of linguistic practices, namely narratives before turning to an illustration of the approach by referring to some selected aspects of two folk narratives, one taken from Grimms' collection of folk narratives, the other stemming from the Udi community in the Eastern Caucasus (Northwestern Azerbaijan).