Category Archives: Folk speech

Kola Nut Offering

Age: 20

The Story:

So this story is about the kola nut. It’s not really about the nut itself, it’s an offering. The kola nut is the center of the prayer, and the prayer revolves around the core of Igbo tradition.

We believe in three chis. There’s Chukwu, which is God. And then there’s chi, which is like your guardian angel. My great-grandfather would break the kola nut in his house before he left the house. The prayer invokes your chi, invokes Chukwu to guide your steps. It also invokes an internal ethics, don’t do to someone what you wouldn’t want done to you. That’s the traditional religious version.

When someone comes to visit you, you don’t do anything until the kola nut is broken by the owner of the house. By breaking it, you’re signifying that whatever you do in the house will not harm the others. Usually the oldest male present breaks it. At events, the kola nut is broken as a symbol of peaceful coexistence. But in some Igbo traditions, only women with titles can break it.

At weddings, the nut is divided into two. The father of the bride or the bride’s kinsmen offer the kola nut to the guests. There’s a prayer for the couple to have children. If it breaks into four segments, that’s a good omen, it means the couple will have luck, lots of babies. The kola nut affirms the union of families.

Reflection:

The informant’s story reminds me of UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) framework. The kola nut ceremony has Turner’s “two poles of the symbolic”: a sensory pole (the nut, the breaking) and an ideological pole (prayer to Chukwu, peaceful coexistence). When the nut breaks into four segments, the ritual is complete and there is a superstition grants peace and mutual existence between the two parties. The “three chis” reveal how ritual encodes worldview.

Additonally, I believe this ritual combats the Western framework of ownership. The kola nut ceremony cannot be copyrighted, as it belongs to the Igbo community; however, ICH designation risks “fossilization” or freezing a practice that was never frozen. The informant’s great-grandfather did it. And the informant plans to do so in the near future, so the chain of the tradition won’t be broken.

Band Mantra

Text:

“We we pled to serve as masters of goodwill for Tucker High School. presenting ourselves as a showcase of excellent, elegant, sophistication, spirit of the core, and dignity. Love the band. 

So that’s what we had to say. At the end of every single practice. And so it was just a reminder —those are all the things we have to be if we want to, like, wear our bands, colors, or our uniform. “

Context

The informant was a member of her high school marching band for five years, and they recited the mantra at the end of every practice. She describes her time in band as a deeply formative and positive experience. She explained that the mantra was an effective way to reinforce their collective identity and shared standard of conduct, with the students’ repetition and time together as a cohort making it meaningful.

Analysis

This mantra functions as a form of institutional oral tradition — one that channels group identity and behavioral norms through repeated, ritualized speech. Marching band culture is colloquially known for its intensity, precision, and the necessary love of the labor. The matra serves as a kind of folk covenant: a verbal agreement among members to declare who they are and how they represent themselves as a unit. It retains psychological resonance; in particular, the sign-off “Love the band” is effective, direct, and unanimous to internalize. It suggests that folk speech embedded within institutional settings can extend beyond the institution itself, becoming part of their identity and continuing even after the collective context has ended.

Pumpkin Head Joke

Age: 20s

(1) text

Informant: A man walks into a bar with a giant pumpkin for a head. The bartender says, “Hey, you’re walking around with a giant pumpkin for a head. How come you have a giant pumpkin for a head? The man with a giant pumpkin head sits down at the bar and he says, “Well, it’s a long story. But I’ll tell it to you. You’re not going to believe this. But the story starts with, I found a genie in a bottle.” Bartender goes, “Then what happened?” He goes, “Well, I found this genie, and he came out of the bottle and he says, ” you freed me from this bottle, and I’m offering you three wishes.” The bartender is amazed. He’s going, “Well, okay, what happened next?” He goes, well, then, for my first wish, I wish for the most money in the world. I wished for like 100,000 billion dollars. Bartender’s like, oh my God, what happened? He’s like, well, I looked at my bank account. You’re not going to believe what was there. It was $100,000 billion dollars. I was the richest man in the world. The bartender was just floored by this. He goes, “For my second wish, I wish for like the most gorgeous woman in the world to be my wife. Not only someone who was attractive, but someone who could challenge me and I could fall in love with and stay in love. The bartender was like, okay, well, then what happened? He goes, well, then you’re not going to believe who showed up.” The most gorgeous woman I’ve ever seen. And she was smart and talented and funny, and she challenged me, and she proposed to me on the spot, and we’ve been married ever since. Bartender goes, ” oh, my God, this is an amazing story. What happened next? What happened to your for your third wish? And he goes, “Well my third wish is where I really blew it.” Bartender goes, well, what happened?” He goes, “Well, I wished for like a giant pumpkin head.” 

(2) context

The informant explains that growing up in New York, this joke was a common occurrence at family gatherings. The first time he was told it was by an uncle at a family dinner. He later accounts hearing it told by Super Dave Osborn and Norm McDonald.

(3) analysis

The joke follows a traditional structure, starting with “A man walks into a bar…” The joke subverts expectations with the added element of a pumpkin on his head. What makes the joke effective and ultimately gets a laugh from the audience is the long, drawn-out explanation that builds anticipation from the audience as they wait to hear the punch line. They expect something wild to have happened for the man to end up in this position. Instead, they are met with the most obvious answer. The punchline then makes the joke an anti-joke of sorts.

Sana Sana

Age: 24

TEXT: Sana Sana Colita de Rana

CONTEXT:

Informant- “Okay, so Sana Sana is, I guess I think it’s like, when I’ve looked it up online, it’s supposed to be like a nursery rhyme. It’s usually what people use to consult the children in their family when they’re not feeling well, when they’re hurt, which I think means heel heal- something like that. So the full story for me is that I grew up, I grew up having stomach issues, problems with my GI, or GI issues, um, problems with my intestines as they were like distant I was a kid. And so I was always in pain. And I was especially in pain, like if I ate something that didn’t agree with me. And at that point, I didn’t have it under control like I did now, so it really any little thing would hurt me. And my grandma would always, I go, I’d run to my grandma and I’d tell her that my stomach was hurting or something like that. And so she would like sit with me or she’d lay me down and she’d put her hand. It was specifically her right hand, her right hand on my stomach, and she would say “sana sana colita de rana” and she would change it. She’d say make (informant’s) belly feel so much better. And then she’d like, as she’s like rubbing it, then she’d like pretend like she was pulling the illness out of me and like grab it off my stomach. So, I guess my relationship to it is that it reminds me of my grandma. I even as an adult, like even when I was 18 years old, I would still say, grandma, my stomach hurts. “Can you sana sana me?” And she would come over and son us son on me… I don’t really remember the very first time I heard it. It’s just always been something that she’s done for me. Um. Yeah, I guess it is a sense of the comfort for me. Cultural reference, obviously, for me being Hispanic and like that, but it is a sense of comfort for me that she would use it. I don’t know if it was mind like a minding her mentality kind of thing that I swear every time she did do it, I ended up feeling better after that. So that is my full story of sana sana. That’s my relationship to it. It kind of follows my relationship with my grandma. And I she would always use it when I wasn’t feeling well, mainly with my intestinal issues.”

ANALYSIS:

In the story, the informant tells me of their experience with this traditionally, Hispanic saying and how it was used to comfort her as a child with intestinal issues even into her adulthood. She goes into whether or not she believed that just her grandmother saying this and performing a specific hand motion tricked her mind into making her feel better, but regardless, she believes wholeheartedly that the same always made her feel better. I know this informant quite well and during times where I myself have gotten hurt or felt sick she has performed Sana Sana on me and I think that it’s a very sweet and caring way of sharing culture with someone else.

塞翁失马，焉知非福 or sài wēng shī mǎ，yān zhī fēi fú

Age: 24

TEXT:

“塞翁失马，焉知非福” or “sài wēng shī mǎ，yān zhī fēi fú”

CONTEXT:

Informant- “Another Chinese proverb called “sài wēng shī mǎ，yān zhī fēi fú” meaning “the old man lost his horse, who knows if it is not a blessing”. So the story is about an old man whose horse ran away and his neighbors felt so sorry for him, but he said, “who knows if this is a bad luck?” And later the horse came back with another horse. The neighbors congratulated him, but he said, “who knows if this is good luck?” And then his son wrote the new horse and broke his leg. And again, everyone thought it was terrible, but soon after a war broke out and all the young men were drafted except his son because of his injured leg.

So this message is that like luck can change and we should not judge events too quickly. This is like, I’ve heard it from my parents, but we also taught, we also like teaching this story to little kids in school. So it could be seen as a proverb of moral tale and folk philosophy about fate.”

ANALYSIS:

This proverb provides a fluctuating understanding of fate and destiny, as well as provides a tale that instructional listener not to be too quick to judge and rather to wait to see how things play out in the long run. It makes a lot of sense to me that this proverb would be taught in schools and two young children because young children are often very quick to judge a book by its cover or react in haste rather than process their emotions and respond accordingly. This folk speech reminds me of the reading, Mechling, “‘Cheaters Never Prosper’ and Other Lies Adults Tell Kids.”