1. Definition of Folklore

Folklore is the conventional art, knowledge, and practicewide spread primarily through oral and behavioral communication. Every community with a sense of its own identity shares, as a central part of that identity, folk traditions-something that people traditionally believe（planting practices, family traditions, and other elements of world philosophy）, do（dance, music, making clothing）, know（the way to build an irrigation dam, how to deal with an ailment, how to prepare barbecue）, make（craft, architecture, art,）, and say（personal experience stories, song lyrics, riddles）. As these examples illustrate, in most instances there is no such hard-and-fast separation of these categories, no matter in everyday life or in folklorists' work.

The word“folklore”contains an enormous and comprehensive dimension of culture. Considering how large and complicated this subject is, it is no wonder that folklorists define and describe folklore so differently. But one thing in common among these definitions is that they challenge the notion of folklore as something characteristic of being“old-fashioned, ”“exotic, ”“rural, ”“uneducated, ” “unreal, ”or“dying out. ”Though folklore connects people to their past, it is a key part of life in the present, and is at the heart of the global culture.

The following are some typical definitions：

Folklore is many things, and it's almost impossible to define simply. It's both what folklorists study and the name of the discipline they work within. Folklore is folk songs and legends. It's also quilts, Boy Scout badges, high school marching band initiations, jokes, nicknames, holiday food…and many other things you might or might not expect. Folklore exists in cities, suburbs and rural villages, in families, work groups and dormitories. Folklore is present in many kinds of informal communication, whether verbal（oral and written texts）, customary（behaviors, rituals）or material（physical objects）. It involves values, traditions, ways of thinking and behaving. It's about art. It's about people and the way people learn. It helps us learn who we are and how to make meaning in the world around us.

Folklore is a meta-cultural category used to mark certain genres and practices within modern societies as being not modern. By extension, the word refers to the study of such materials. More specific definitions place folklore on the far side of the various epistemological, aesthetic and technological binary oppositions that distinguish the modern from its presumptive contraries. Folklore therefore typically evokes both repudiation and nostalgia.

Folklore has four basic meanings. First, it denotes oral narration, rituals, crafts, and other forms of vernacular expressive culture. Second, folklore, or‘folkloristics', names an academic discipline devoted to the study of such phenomena. Third, in everyday usage, folklore sometimes describes colorful‘folkloric' phenomena linked to the music, tourist, and fashion industries. Fourth, like myth, folklore can mean falsehood.

After all, Folklore is the totality of convention-based creations of a community with the same culture, which is expressed collectively or individually and recognized as mirroring the expectations of a community since they reflect its cultural and social identity. Its values and standards are verbally transmitted by means of imitation, its forms being, among others, language, literature, games, music, dance, mythology, customs, rituals, handicrafts, architecture and other arts.

As a result, folklore culture always possesses obvious features of region and folk. Closely connected with one place, it is both a limitation and a feature deep-rooted in people's mind.