ABSTRACT
Controversy has developed about what exactly constitutes context, for the term can connote significance secondary to that of the performance itself. Some folklorists consider audience reactions to enunciating a proverb or playing a fiddle tune as part of the performance proper, while others may relegate those elements to context, the background or setting for the tune or proverb. Generally, one expects folklorists today to define as vital parts of the event many components of an event that their predecessors would have identified as context. Although they may owe a debt to Malinowski’s emphasis on the interrelatedness of folklore with the rest of culture, folklorists perceive milieu as more than a subsidiary factor that contributes to a tradition’s meaning or how it is realized; it is an aspect of the performance. Consequently, modern folklife studies tend to blur the distinction between “context” and “text,” recognizing that features of the performance that may once have been considered contextual background are actually part of the communicative folk event.
