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Transcript

the teller of an urban legend is apt

to rely on skillful storytelling

and reference to putatively

trustworthy sources

Complex societal phenomenon involving the creation and transmission of folk narratives — narratives which are indeed usually false, but which also, on occasion, turn out to be 99.99% true.

Urban legends are a type of folklore, defined as the handed-down beliefs, stories, songs and customs of ordinary people ("the folk").

A secondhand story just believable enough to be believed

Lecture Taken from:

Brunvand, Jan Harold. Encyclopedia of Urban Legends. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2002.

Let's Review:

• It's a narrative.

• It's alleged to be true.

• It's just plausible (sometimes just barely plausible) enough to be believed.

• Its veracity is unproven.

• It's of spontaneous (or indeterminate) origin.

• It varies in the telling.

• It's likely to take the form of a cautionary tale.

• It circulates by being passed from individual to individual orally.

• It's attributed to a trustworthy secondhand

sources

change over time due to repetition

ORIGINS

The phrase "urban legend" entered the popular lexicon in the early 1980s with the publication of folklorist Jan Harold Brunvand's first book on the subject, The Vanishing Hitchhiker: American Urban Legends and Their Meanings.

Emerge spontaneously and are rarely traceable to a single source

Pop rocks and Coca-Cola can explode your stomach!

Are you for real?!

Interpersonal Communication

Person to Person

GOSSIP!

SOCIAL MEDIA!

horrific, embarrassing, ironic or exasperating series of events

that supposedly happened to

a real person

One way to differentiate urban legends from other narrative forms (e.g., popular fiction, TV dramas, or news stories) is to compare where they come from and how they're propagated.

URBAN LEGENDS

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