The notion of ‘doing folklore’ is based on a teacher’s guide I wrote to introduce oral history and folklore to 100+ 9th grade English classes. The original course had nine lesson plans that I’ve adapted for the general public.
For me, and nearly all folklorists, fieldwork is the best part of learning about a new topic. And it’s always the best way if you want to record things happening in the present. In fact, without your documentation now, historians of the future won’t have anything to study! That idea comes up a lot. The only lesson you need now is that fieldwork takes place away from libraries, archives, and is off campus for students and teachers. You initiate contact with people you often don’t know. Now, if your topic is about university students’ stories, well, that is not any different. In that case, students’ or teachers’ topics would be fieldwork on-campus. That’s not as common as off-campus fieldwork in communities. You can do fieldwork wherever you live. Etiquette is the same.
A folklorist talks to strangers and people we barely know, by choice! We leave all our judgements behind, long before we knock on a person’s door or say hello to someone we don’t know. Folklore etiquette is a reminder how to treat everyone like your nan, grandmother, great-aunt, poppy, or grandpa, aunty, or grandma. The relationship between parents and children is a bit different. “Elder” is the key word for this kind of etiquette. Without it, why would a person invite us to cross over their threshold and step into their house?
When etiquette keeps a project going, it means the folklorist doesn’t always invent the etiquette; we follow the lead of the people we want to introduce ourselves to. We must be excellent "guests", that’s our role. Our "host" is the person we want to meet. ‘Host” has different rules. That’s for another day.
