Text
In Folklore, Text is any meaningful cultural artifact such as words, objects, stories, dances, etc. Text is important because as Martha Sims and Martine Stephens write, “folklorists are interested in oral and written verbal texts not as static objects but as an aid to learning about people, tradition, and expressive culture (20). Thus, texts present us a way of understanding more deeply the folklore that is presented to us. It allows us to look both forward and backwards and create a comparative understanding of a certain tradition.
Context
Whereas the text is the act of folklore, the words, the stories, etc. The Context of folklore is all that surrounds that text. Once again from Stephens and Sims context is used to “mean everything that surrounds the text—the setting, people, situation— anything in addition to the expressions, item, idea, or objects being shared (20?).” These two parts of folklore study are incredibly important as they form the bedrock for folklore. What is being practiced and what the practiced events tell us about the surrounding community.